Koen Hufkens, PhDMay 11

The slow death of the power user.

"This isn’t an accident. This is the result of two decades of deliberate, calculated effort by the largest technology companies on earth to turn users into consumers, instruments into appliances, and technical literacy into a niche hobby for weirdos. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations"

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

#technology #tech #sustainability

The Slow Death of the Power User — fireborn

Show threadDavid Cantrell 🏏May 11
@koen_hufkens We can't all be "power users" in everything we use. I'm 100% OK with instant usability. If someone wants to just use a computer without knowing how it works that's no different from me wanting to just use clothes without knowing about weaving and stitching. Yes, that means that I'm dependent on Big Sewing. I'm OK with that. I don't want to be a self-sufficient peasant who can do everything he needs to survive but can't go to the opera.
Show threadJohn

@DrHyde @koen_hufkens I think the difference is that you plateau at a different level if you were just a soft user of computers.

I've had the experience where I've seen someone making painful little edits in a GUI editor and I say let me have that, do a couple things in vi, to their amazement

Or not knowing how to reduce the size of a scanned pdf, a quick shell loop and Image Magick

You may spend your whole life doing painful little things, that individually are easy, but over a lifetime..

May 11 at 2:52pmMastodon for Android
Show threadJohnMay 11

@DrHyde @koen_hufkens I had a sudden thought. What if you have been doing GUI editing all your life, and doing search and replace, and there has been a little check box there labeled "regex" and you've never used it?

Just imagine.

Show threadTim5d ago

@buckfiftyseven @DrHyde @koen_hufkens regex? *Shudders*.

I know how it works. I have used it. But also I've done a lot of damage with those tools as well on an OS.

Regex on files is a VERY risky procedure, and I'd rather most people didn't know how to do that....

Show threadJohn5d ago
@radioclash @DrHyde @koen_hufkens I'm afraid your operating system was built by people who did.
Show threadTim5d ago

@buckfiftyseven @DrHyde @koen_hufkens they mostly knew what they were doing.

I deleted the /priv folder on my Mac once digging around. Did not do it any good.

Show threadDavid Cantrell 🏏5d ago
@radioclash @buckfiftyseven @koen_hufkens FWIW as someone who probably wrote some code that is on your machine ... nah, I still screw up every day in really stupid ways 😉
Show threadDavid Cantrell 🏏May 11
@buckfiftyseven @koen_hufkens I'm sure that an expert in any other technology could think of similar things in their area of expertise. For example, there's people who can reverse a huge articulated lorry around a corner and up to a loading dock, and plenty who take several attempts to merely park their car and avoid even trying to park in some places where they could. Imagine how much time they could save and how much easier their life would be if they learned just one simple technique!
Show threadJohnMay 11

@DrHyde @koen_hufkens for sure.

It's probably isn't a coincidence that "power users" try to rack up skills across disciplines, so that they can reap as many benefits as possible.

Show threadDavid Cantrell 🏏May 11
@buckfiftyseven @koen_hufkens do they? Plenty of people are "power users" in just one or two disciplines, or at most in parts of several disciplines that they use together to achieve a single goal.