The poor ability to manage information technology and its devices on the part of many "users" indicates the need for a new humanistic approach

A funny old story about the digital world, but tragically true. Here she is. Call Centers: “Lord, what's the problem?”; User: “The monitor won't turn on!”; Call Centers: “Have you checked if the electrical outlet is plugged in?”; User: "Now I'll check, there's been no electricity here for an hour, I can't see well with the candle..."; Call Centers: "...!!!".
This is a story that has been around for decades in many different versions, especially in the environment of those involved in computer technical assistance.
A term has also been coined for that type of user who does not understand what a computer is or how it works (not even a general idea) and often wastes a lot of time for those who should help him: "utonto". in English “luser” (loser user).
At the time, the undersigned followed a very entertaining blog, "The fabulous world of users", where a help desk employee of an important IT company recounted the various experiences lived from October 2009 to March 2013; the stories are all still there, if you want to have a laugh (some are quite technical).
Having dealt myself with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for almost twenty years, I can testify that beyond the extreme cases, the average computer user, at least in Italy, is rather unprepared. And that, above all, refuses to learn. Let's try together to understand why.

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A useful premise to “understand”

What is true for computers is also true for smartphones and tablets. Sure, these last two digital devices were born later and with the express purpose of making information technology more intuitive, but that doesn't prevent the risks of incorrect use, especially on the Net. But first things first.

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Amarcord (my first 40 years)

The first computer I ever used was an Apple IIe, bought by my father for work in 1983, when I was 19 years old. As far as I can remember, I was immediately hooked on it, but not because I had any prior interest in computer science. Meanwhile it was something new, stimulating.
Secondly, I was fascinated by the potential of a device capable of making calculations for us and working for us, slavishly obeying commands written in a mysterious language, the code. Perhaps being passionate about science fiction had an influence, I don't know.
First I learned to use ready-made programs (especially Visicalc, the daddy of all spreadsheets). So I began to study on my own a little "high level" language (Apple Basic) and also the far more mysterious "low level" language (Assembler) which allowed to obtain much faster functions and performances, even at of graphics. I still have somewhere a notebook where I collected the prints (made with a noisy, slow and vaguely disturbing dot matrix printer of the time) of graphs obtained from functions and mathematical equations that I enjoyed simulating, often a little at random.
Computers back then were ridiculously expensive and ridiculously slow machines compared to what an average smartphone today can calculate, but to us they were spaceships for exploring the deep cosmos, with their 80-column green phosphor monitors, their 5-inch floppies with the discs that buckled and without any icons, menus or nice high resolution images.
We were nerds, or geeks, or whatever you like.

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First type: the snooty ones

I have always appreciated Andrea Camilleri's books and the television adaptation of "Il Commissario Montalbano", of which I have seen all the episodes, even more than once.
However, I was struck by a specific aspect of Montalbano's stories: among the protagonists, in the entire Vigata police station, the only one who knows how to use a computer, and even quite well, is Catarella.
Who, as anyone who has seen the series knows, doesn't exactly shine for quick understanding.
This humorous choice by Camilleri underlies an attitude that I have encountered in many Italian intellectuals, even of a certain level: an ill-concealed contempt for information technology, computers, smartphones and tablets, the Internet and so on.
The writer originally from Porto Empedocle expresses it with elegance, others do not.
I don't think it is necessary to recall the controversies of recent months on distance learning, which often lead to rants against the whole digital world, with its video games ruining the new generations, the terrible Internet full of pornography, the cries of alarm for books that are no longer read; alarms in general launched by elderly philosophers, by politicians who have their secretaries print emails, by fellow teachers who consider the use of digital technology in teaching to be the source of all evils (and they launch these alarms, please note, on Facebook).
But this attitude derives from something else: it is not only linked to the digital world and its effects on society.
The cause is much older, linked to a certain part of Croce's philosophy, according to which humanistic knowledge is intrinsically superior to scientific and mathematical knowledge; and which technological object in the common imagination is closer to science and mathematics than a computer?
Thus we come to see intellectuals publicly boast of not understanding anything about computers and the digital world, almost as if it were a frieze to hang on a jacket.

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Our “Je t'accuse”: so what?

Ours is a “Je t'accuse”. Absolutely not! First of all because, apart from a few islands of diehards, this phenomenon is diminishing.
It is now relegated to traditional media (generalist TV broadcast, paper newspapers), which the new generations - but not only - are gradually abandoning in favor of more digitally integrated media. Second, this has always been an attitude cultivated by a select few. The general problems are quite different.

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The other types of “utinti”

We have identified a first type of user: the one, if you like, the most unpleasant.
But as I wrote it is a minority. In my career I have identified at least two others: the superficial and the scared, both valid for any sex or gender.
Let's start with the second.

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Those scared of innovation

People who have a sacred fear of digital. Often sensitive and intelligent, when they are in front of a monitor they apparently lose a good part of their intellectual abilities. They panic if any system message appears and seem unable to interpret it.
They desperately try to memorize all possible combinations of commands, menus, available workflows, which of course is impossible.
They are firmly convinced that they have no ability to understand the digital world, a bit like people convinced they are out of tune and "have no ear for music", which do not exist, except in rare pathological cases.
The frightened simply missed a first step: methodical curiosity, the will to understand. They understand the importance of this approach to the world and experience their condition as a kind of handicap.
They are people left in front of the door, with a vaguely sulky air and reluctantly use the digital medium, often forced by work commitments, or simply because today certain services require its use.
Often still recoverable, they come in all different degrees (from restless fear to despair) and the moment they change their minds about themselves and "get down to it", they start having fun and can even become good at it.
Small personal note: sometimes, indeed more and more often, I understand frightened users well. Computer science is not always as friendly and intuitive as it appears.
Indeed, in some widespread operating systems the "bureaucratic mentality" appears to be inherent in the interface inconsistency, in the semantic inconsistency of some solutions, in the jumble of layers with different logics one on top of the other to create an incomprehensible hodgepodge.

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The superficial many of technology

And here we come to the worst and, I fear, most widespread problem.
There is still a widespread dichotomy between “real” and “digital”.
As if the digital world were something ethereal (!), nebulous and virtual in the sense of "not true", unable to influence our daily life. Shallow users are convinced that one computer is as good as another, so why spend more?
That a website built for 500 euros or 600 francs by their XNUMX-year-old cousin is as good for their company as a professional website. That the GDPR is a kind of prune-flavored ice cream.
That a software can be developed in moments of pause, so much that it costs you? That the piece of music composed for the jingle of their commercial is not worth more than 1.000 euros: "soccia", it's all done by the computer, right?
To better understand the type of social damage created by superficial people (who, it must be said, are mostly entrepreneurs, executives of large companies, city or provincial councilors, medium-high level bureaucrats, in short, alas, they reside in decision-making positions) we must starting from a general consideration, this valid on a planetary level.
To drive a car, a motorcycle, any means of transport, you need a licence. All over the world. Of course, people who drive a car are no longer expected to be "quasi-mechanical", also because the cars produced today require highly technical specialization to be able to operate them, often specific training for specific brands.
But for a driver (at least until the mythical autonomous driving is not a real function) to know the difference between the steering wheel and the gearbox, between the accelerator, the brake and the clutch, it seems reasonable to everyone, right?
Well, all this does not seem to apply to technological devices.

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The formation, this unknown

Someone at this point will have thought "but there is a European Computer Driving Licence": I would prefer not to address this point because I think it would require a separate article.
I only and humbly point out that if, at least in "real Italian professional life", this license has a value corresponding to the two of spades in trumps, perhaps there will be a structural or cultural reason.
However, one thing is clear: there is no training in the intelligent and effective use of digital technology unrelated to specific platforms, or at least it is not mandatory at an educational or professional level, in most cases.
And the current mentality doesn't seem to require it, it doesn't care much about it. On the other hand, one computer is as good as another and one device is as good as another (but try asking one of these "entrepreneurs" to swap his Audi A7 for a Dacia Sandero and see what he replies).
Hence the origin of the tasty stories told on Facebook by our editor Andreas Voigt, somewhat horror stories that guarantee creepy fun but which also make us understand the origin of many of the problems of the country Italy.
E-commerce systems sold by the kilo by computer consultants who disappear soon after, institutional sites infested with viruses and pornographic photos, self-styled SEO experts who don't know the difference between the Web and the Internet.

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Towards a new digital humanism…

Perhaps the solution is in digital humanism, in a new encounter between technology and humanity, a sort of integration that relies on the best of both worlds, so that they become one world.
The trend seems to be that, with devices that become thinner and thinner, almost as if they wanted to disappear until only the functions they perform remain.
On the other hand, in many sectors there is still a lack of real integration: in music, for example, the taste for buying a "physical" object linked to the piece or record purchased has been lost, so much so that there is a return to the old, even to the vinyl record: but this is certainly not the solution.
Whoever writes the solution doesn't have it yet, but is working on it.

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Bonus Beat: the “Bureaucratic Monster”

I hadn't forgotten, I just wanted to save the best for the conclusion.
Put the IT medium in the hands of a "True Bureaucrat", that is a person who reasons by certified codices and stamps, and you will get a good part of the infernal IT solutions that still infest the Public Administration services.
Certainly there have been patchy improvements over the last two years, but there is still a lack of a mid-term project and an overview.
So here is that the worst kind of Utonto, the "True Informatic Bureaucrat", develops before our terrified eyes like an uruk-hai created in the industries of Isengard by the writer JRR Tolkien, emerging from a placenta immersed in the muddiest code imaginable.
And create online services that close at a certain time such as offices, which require printed documentation in triplicate hard copies, perhaps making you pay stamp duties and secretarial fees where all the work is automated.
Services that do not communicate with official databases and each time request all your data even though they already have it, that "for safety" do not allow copying and pasting on the fields of their pages, that impose incredible limits on the creation of passwords forcing you to jump through spelling .
With all due respect to poor Alan Turing.

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