This mentality transcends Microsoft.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| r_a_trip Jul 30, 2006 6:48 AM EDT |
Does Microsoft impose a prisoner mentality? No, we can't blame Microsoft for this. MS has done many repugnant things to force Windows being used as the preloaded default OS on new computers and they may have used lockin tricks on their formats, but they did not actively brainwash the world into thinking their OS is the only choice. The prisoner mentality goes further than MS software alone. It is a general apathy that seems to have swept over Western societies. People no longer care for the world or their own place in it. Here in the Netherlands I often hear: "Dat hoef ik allemaal niet te weten!" Translated: "I don't need to know all that!". It is a sign that people have given up on self-empowerment and making a difference. They have stopped living and went into some form of active hibernation. They trim down their lives to an uninspiring minimum. They become consuming drones, waiting for their own demise to arive. It's a deeper and wider problem than MS alone and I'm not sure what has caused it. Maybe the human condition has reached an all time low. |
| hkwint Jul 30, 2006 7:34 AM EDT |
Quoting:It is a sign that people have given up on self-empowerment and making a difference. It may be as well be a sign that the world of today is becoming too complex for humans to keep up with everything. There are a lot of things people already have to know in life, especially in Western countries. How to fill in those 80 tax forms, how to get a mortgage or subsidy to rent a house, traffic rules, they should know how to work with a computer, what the law allows them to do and what not, what the 'bestemmingsplan' for the ground surrounding them is (the 'destination/usage' the municipality chose for their ground), what all those people ringing at the door are collecting for, how those hard-disk recorder and magnetron works, political issues in the world, and so on. Then, there's a plethora of other things they would want to know. I believe, in the beginning, people want to understand everything around them. However, soon or late, there will be a point when stuff becomes too complex and too much to keep up with. After people find out all the stuff they could learn, especially with all the stuff they can find on the internet and all the advertisements being fired upon them, they become overwhelmed, and they finally give up trying to understand everything. A case of too much impulses/stimuli to process. They finally become immune for all such stimuli and rather want to be 'comfortably numb'. I myself studied physics for one year (or so) and learnt, the more you want to know about something, the more complex something becomes. The same is true for ICT, Linux, Taxes; whatever. Any topic can grow over your head in the specialized world of today. Speaking for myself, this sometimes happens when trying to fix Gentoo and reading some forums. Especially when other, very specialized people start talking, you think you will never be able to understand all the stuff they are talking about, and feel like giving up, since all that stuff seems to be 'just too difficult'. There seems to be a trend not to consume information; the fact that you have access to information is enough, and if people know they have access, they don't even look at that information anymore. Even when people know they could switch to Linux, the fact that they know they can, may be well enough for them, and they don't really switch; afraid of all the new information that might come their way. |
| r_a_trip Jul 30, 2006 8:48 AM EDT |
You make a good point, hkwint. But you mostly talk about information overload in areas that doesn't affect direct life. I've experienced situations where information was rejected that was necessary to know how to solve the current problem. In that case it wasn't too much irrelevant information. It was just a few basic steps to correct the problem, but the ones having it were trying to offload the solution to somebody else. It was a case of wanting to be fed fish, instead of learning how to fish. It's ok if somebody wants to waste his/her potential like that. It's just that nature has a nasty way of imposing an "Adapt or Die" policy. The ones thinking they can become a body without a usable mental capacity present, might find themselves on the lowest rungs of the ladder someday. Seeing how much people really can achieve if they actually want to, it makes me sad to see how many squander their talents just to "gain" a little consumptive comfort. That grey stuff between a persons ears is not just there to fill up the cerebral cavity. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 30, 2006 9:56 AM EDT |
I think it's a problem of choices. A lot of people really dislike making choices and will do a lot to avoid making them. Take for instance the popularity of TV. What's on is already chosen for you. All you have to do is sit down and flip it on. You don't have to choose between thoudands of programs, just between a dozen or so channels. The same goes for pretty much everything, including PC software. They don't like the thousands of choices so they want it reduced. They want someone else to make the choice for them, and if that doesn't happen they'll just follow the popularity vote. Hmmm... sounds a lot like US elections to me. |
| salparadise Jul 30, 2006 10:39 AM EDT |
I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to know how to make use of all the potential a computer offers. After all, an awful lot of work has gone into making the GUI environment as easy as it can be.
And when you get right down to it, the "completeness" of some of the bigger distros (SuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora etc) makes it even easier to use than a Windows box. There's very little extra you need to install and installing that extra stuff is easier than having to trawl through several sites and then run Setup.exe, which then asks you questions about locations and so on. People should be free to use their computers without being told they are lazy/dumb or willfully ignorant when they choose not to learn all it can do. There is also a lot to be said about people "giving up" on living consciously and this is largely due to advertising and the current political climate. Corporations who make food from crappy chemicals and pollute the environment have a vested interest in keeping people ignorant and distracted from the truth, politicians who serve such corporations do likewise. As you rightly say, this is nothing to do with Microsoft (though they may have capitalised on this trend). What we need to fight against is the idea that "I am just one person, what difference can my refusing to buy product X (or refusing to vote for such blatantly corrupt politicians) possibly make?". People are deliberately bombarded with too much information. It makes it very hard to sift the wheat from the chaff, important things get lost amidst the noise and when something big does get noticed it's not long before something else comes along to sweep it away. I would suggest that this is not happening by accident. |
| jimf Jul 30, 2006 1:01 PM EDT |
> Does Microsoft impose a prisoner mentality? MS is quite aware of the studies on both prisoner and hostage syndrome, or for that matter, battered wife syndrome. It is curious to me that many Windows users are reluctant to leave MS in spite of bad treatment and a crappy experience. Many of them continue to tout the goodness of MS in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. Coincidence? Well, anything is 'possible', but, MS is such an upstanding member of the community, they would never....... |
| helios Jul 30, 2006 1:08 PM EDT |
I would suggest that this is not happening by accident.... Whew, that's a relief...Sal and I see the same black helicopter hovering over our homes. And to think for a minute, I thought it was just me. Smart remarks aside, I think there is both much more and much less to this issue. I do subscribe to the theory that there is much we are channeled into...anything from what television we watch as sited above to what jobs we perform or what cars we drive. Are you seeing a commonality here? It's ok...I didn't see it until I actually understood I could learn something from taking a few marketing classes. What a shock...I actually DIDN"T know everything. I was crushed. Some of you may recall our failed effort known as "The Austin Project." It did not fail due to the lack of money. It did not fail due to the lack of people to help organize and build it. It failed because we could not persuade a company or group of individuals to keep track of the money. WE had over 9 thousand dollars in Q in the first 48 hours after announcing the effort. It would have been large amounts of money, so I don't outright blame anyone for being hesitant...however, we contacted multi-billion dollar companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Novell and Bank of America with this problem. Even our old friend AppGen, an accounting software firm, would not count our beans for us...and therein lies the problem. Yeah, MS got ahead of the game by shrewd OEM strategy and some questionable business tactics, but GNU/Linux or "Linux" for short, as I call my good friend, had ample opportunities to rectify that situation. Linux is not advertised, does not advertise and as far as the United States of "A-Slogan-For-Every-Product America goes...that fairly well sounds the death buzzer for a product. Look...I have not accomplished alot in my life, but one thing I can openly boast...I have personally assisted hundreds of people, one on one, with the installation, learning and use of Linux. A conservative number of seventy percent all have asked me the same question. "Why haven't I heard of this...Cheeze Whiz on a Cracker, this is GREAT!" Yeah, MS does play the prisoner game, but it is us who weld, place and fortify the bars on that prison...MS simply shows us the door. We, like good little lazy consumers do the expected thing. We close and lock the door on our own prison cell behind us. As an aside...has anyone seen the latest Gateway response to the Dell Ads on TV? Without mentioning anything about it, the announcer talks over a series of frames with people sitting in front of their computers and doing various projects. For about two seconds, one on of the large flat screen monitors, plain as day...is the Ubuntu logo on a log in screen... just wondered if anyone else has seen this. h |
| jimf Jul 30, 2006 1:24 PM EDT |
> We close and lock the door on our own prison cell behind us Those with no conscience or morality, have always known and used the fact that most people are followers. |
| r_a_trip Jul 30, 2006 1:51 PM EDT |
People should be free to use their computers without being told they are lazy/dumb or willfully ignorant when they choose not to learn all it can do. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough, but what I wrote was in general and not only in computing. I also talked about the bare minimum knowledge. It's not only in computing, the most important tool in our age, but in all things one needs to know to be an integrated part of society. It seems like general education and self-improvement has become dirty. I've stopped expecting that most people will ever reach my level of understanding, (which I still deem moderate), when it comes to computing. But some people only seem to be satisfied when computers have become things with one button to click. Impossible if the PC is to stay a general purpose tool. I know I sound like an elitist bastard. I probably am one. Taking my mother as an example though, I do her configuration and updating for her, but she discovered the rest on her own in the GUI. Simple basic tasks. I know people who are even unwilling to do that, but they still complain that they can't work the machine. The rest of your post, salparadise, makes sense, but even if people are manipulated, they are still Free to accept that manipulation or think for themselves. They seem to have gone the easy way. |
| Libervis Jul 30, 2006 3:06 PM EDT |
I think that, at least in the realm of information, the issue comes down to oversaturation which, ironically, makes it too challenging for people to actually dig through it all to find what they need and instead many times prefer someone else doing the job for them. Another problem, as already mentioned, is advertising and propaganda which seems to support a culture of consumership. However, contrary to that is the disatisfaction of many people about the state in which they are. Most people want better lives, and yet they are still afraid to step from the crowd and do something about that themselves. In most western countries, actually initiating something yourself is still very possible. At least in a free market economy, everyone (or at least most of everyone) can be an enterpreneur. On internet, everyone can start a blog or a website. The digital age we are living in allows every person with access to this technology (basically a computer) be a succesful enterpreneur, initiator and creator in some field. So it's really a weird thing. People try to escape challenges, corner themselves in mere consumership and yet they have this big incentive to escape that and become an initiator for their own betterment. Is it really that fear of challenge so badly outways the incentive of taking on it? |
| salparadise Jul 30, 2006 10:29 PM EDT |
People are basically unhappy with the state in which they are... ...and are waiting for an advert to appear on the telly to tell them what to do about it. Imagine what an impact an advert would have that asked people "sick of crashing, sick of viruses and trojans and being scared of e-mail attachments? Sick of having to pay and pay and pay and pay? Well, there is another way..". People would leave Windows in their tens of thousands. |
| grouch Jul 30, 2006 10:45 PM EDT |
I'll put US $20 in the pot for that ad. |
| devnet Jul 31, 2006 12:44 PM EDT |
Quoting:I've experienced situations where information was rejected that was necessary to know how to solve the current problem. I think you hit the nail on the head. People don't want to solve problems because they don't want the responsibility that comes with solving those problems...they might have to care and do some extra work! *gasp* This is precisely what I've found in many MS centric businesses. I entered into my current job and found that none of our domain servers (W2k) were syncing time...I told them that I could have a network time server up on a spare 1u in under 30 minutes for free and it would update itself. They didn't want to hear it..."no, we need Microsoft. What if the operating system crashes? Who will we call? How do we get our updates? Who can vouch for this new servers' security??" They rejected what was necessary to solve the immediate problem. So they elected to go with MS. As a result, 4 months later we still don't have a server (beauraucratic reasons it stalled...I work for the state) and our domain servers still don't tell time correctly...which means my Win XP desktop is 11 minutes fast. Gotta love how people don't want to solve problems. They're too busy amassing their own nest eggs to care about the benefit of those around them. In the end, it all comes back to selfishness. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 31, 2006 1:09 PM EDT |
Quoting:eople don't want to solve problems because they don't want the responsibility that comes with solving those problems... Looking around the (big, bureaucratic) company where I work I see something different. People don't mind the responsibility of solving it, they just don't want to be responsible if the solution fails. That's why the solution is usually to buy something with support from a third party. If the solution fails it's the third party's fault. If I could get that through management's thick skull here I could save millions. Instead I'm filling in 8 page questionarires to instruct the third party print server implementor to enlarge the barcode on the pallet label by an inch ... sigh :-( |
| hkwint Aug 01, 2006 10:33 AM EDT |
I recognize the company my father works for (Largest American oil company; dirty word) in the above messages. The most important lesson over there, he says, is: "Whatever the problem is, be sure it isn't your problem." That may be also why people want third party support, though that support isn't that good most of the time. Quoting:which, ironically, makes it too challenging for people to actually dig through it all to find what they need That reminds me of some funny fellow I once met, the brother of a Dutch comedian. A bit drunk he was, and we sat in the (Dutch) coffeeshop, arguing with each other about life and SQL, after which he told the whole world was made of WHERE and SELECT, and those two were the most important in life. After all, in the light of this discussion, I think he might be right. Quoting:I'll put US $20 in the pot for that ad.I would do the same. I also put E20 in the Dutch Firefox add (which became an awkward story of a lot of arguments and a lack of money), but a Linux add would be much, much more valuable. After several Firefox adds, one would ask why no-one started such a Linux add. Probably because everyone wonders, without starting it. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 01, 2006 12:36 PM EDT |
Quoting:After several Firefox adds, one would ask why no-one started such a Linux add. Probably because everyone wonders, without starting it. Because FireFox is a product that's easy to target and market. Linux is not. You need much better advertising skills to market Linux with the same effect as FireFox. |
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