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Techie Blogg
2010
The year 2000 was a biggy of course, a new millennia. But somehow 2010 sounds just a little bit more sci-fi and compared to 2000 it is. Back then the techie dream was all about convergence, but nothing actually worked. Early adopters were constantly disappointed. The internet was 28K's. Mobile phones were used for calling people. Yet over the past ten years this dream has quietly become reality and that reality keeps moving. If you don’t believe me, go and see Avatar 3D!
The problem with being a techie is that normal people ask you for advice, assuming that you know everything tech. They only ask questions which they assume will end in a concise answer. They don’t say, ‘so how do you feel about broadband?’ We’ll be in our comfort zone then! Of course when tech doesn’t work its always our fault too, because we are the only ones who understand it, even though it was supplied by BT or Carphone Warehouse.
The reality though is that we techies don’t know anything at all, but we do know how to ‘RTFM’, Google it if you have to, and of course Google is the manual of all manuals. Techies can have the answer in seconds, so long as we are online and these days there’s really no excuse not to be, hands free of course. How would we all survive if they took away Google? Yet that is just what Google are thinking of doing in China. As someone recently said, you won’t even be able to Google another search engine.
Not only do we techies not know anything, but we can’t remember anything either. No matter. Everything we’ve ever said is backed up five times in three geographical locations. So when someone important says ‘can you call me?’ we’re horrified. What, no record of our conversation? I will still have to type it all up anyway, so why talk in the first place? An actual physical meeting? You are joking aren’t you? Think of the environment. So when you finally do see them, it dawns upon you that they haven’t actually read the idiot proof five page instruction document, with screen shots, that you typed up, tested, retested and emailed to them at 11pm on a Friday night.
Of course talking IS important really, particularly when you need help. One of our products requires your surname and password to get in. We’ve lost count of the number of times people have called and asked ‘what’s my surname?’ Last month I was trying to get some support on our VOIP telephone system. I kept filling out the online form, because no one would talk to me. The requests got angrier and angrier because there was no response at all. Then Christmas came along and I gave up. 7 days later I got a response that said that each time you send in a request it resets the support system to 7 days. Very cunning!
This morning, a friend asked me about whether he should keep the .net and .org domain names that he had, or at least I think that’s what he was asking because he already had them, and I said yes, if he was going to use them, which he's not at the moment despite registering them 6 months ago, because there are no rules against keeping them and your competitors might get them instead. Out of curiosity I looked the domain name up and found he didn’t have the .co.uk! To us techies that’s pure comedy! Now where's my credit card?
Stuart Rand-Bell
srb@caldes.com