The Gulf between the Geek and the Users

Image by Francis Storr via Flickr

Like many of you, I spend a portion of each day pouring over RSS feeds, blogs and pod casts to get my daily tech and news fix.  Tech is a passion for me, and there is always something new and interesting to read and learn.  And I guess it is always cool to be the only guy in the room that knows about the latest Apple product, or the sales figures on the popular Apps stores, right?

OK, yes it does sound a little pathetic if you put it that way, that is why most of us have blogs, twitter accounts, and other ways to express geeky ways without too much ridicule.  If only this stuff was more interesting to the general public.  The problem is that it is not.  Despite the end user being more technologically savvy, that has not translated into them being interested in the technology they use.  I guess the good thing is that those of us in the service industry will always have a place, but the issue here is that the users will now be the driving force behind the future of technology, and if we can't pack the user base out with the savvy geeks, then the future is going to be heading in the direction of Facebook, Apple and Nintendo.

You may be under the misapprehension that the users have been coming to technology and the Internet because it is the future, and that it is just an evolution of man to use the best communication and socialisation tools around.  I think this is the wrong view.  The users are moving to technology and the Internet because these technologies and services have become easier to use and use the right psychological hooks to keep you coming back.

Shiny things

Think of the iPhone/iPod as a technological case study.  Apple created devices that made the Mp3 player and the smart phone both usable and desirable.  There had been many Mp3 players and smart phones up to that point, but the interfaces and the ecosystem that Apple provided with iTunes fixed the usability problems that were holding most of the potential users back.  Of course there is the other part to this equation and that is the cool factor that Apple was able to create.  Despite the bevy of better technology, and truckloads of more experienced manufacturers, Apple in a few short years was able to become a power house, and market changer, all because they made a product cool, and usable/understandable by the everyday user.

Us geeks may have been excited about the iPhone when it came out, but were over Apple's arrogance in leaving out what we thought were key features (multitasking, and cut & paste) but the new user didn't care because the device worked, looked cool, and was an accessible smart phone just like all the geeks had.  In time, all us geeks got the iPhone for similar reasons.  It was nice to have a true developing platform that worked and didn't needed to be restarted every couple of hours.

So what we have here is a success story which wasn't due to the geeks, or in some ways the technology, but purely the users.  Apple tapped into the broader market and it paid off for them, for the geeks, though, we are kind of stuck with a bloated App store and a uncertain future of the platform, as now Apple knows where their customer base lies and it isn't in the bosom of the geek.

Keeping up with Friends

This sort of pattern has also followed us onto the secret geek place, the Internet, with all the activity surrounding the rise and rise of the super social network Facebook.  Once membership to the Internet was almost as hard to get into and understand as one of the fabled boys clubs on American universities.  But then, just as you were setting up your profile, you find your mum and people you went to school with actively Farmvilling away.  It makes sense that people would use something like Facebook, but come on, some of these user don't even have PC's!

Facebook is a great example of how things are moving out of the reach of the geeks.  We should be aware of the privacy concerns surrounding Facebook.  Many high profile geek, tech pundits, and commentators have outed Facebook for what, to us, seem to be some big privacy issues. But Facebook continues on.  Why?  Because the majority of the user base are not geeks.  The majority of the user base doesn't really take this whole Internet thing seriously, and many have a "leave it to the government to sort out" approach to things they don't understand.

If you are not familiar with the "Government" defence to ignorance, it goes like this.  You have your own little world and everything outside of family, job, hobbies and your understanding is the Governments problem.  "That is what they are there for, and that is why I pay my taxes" is the reasoning.  It is a great way to relieve stress.  The issue is that you tend not to think past that reasoning.  If there is a fault with a car then we know that there is process in place to recall and sort it out.  If there are privacy concerns at a bank or medical facility, then we know there are government agencies and law enforcement in place to deal with that.  Just look at TV, no naughty things on during the day to bother the kiddies, the Government fixed that for us.  So it stands to reason that Internet has the same type of control, doesn't it?

So while we geeks blog, rant and start groups over the privacy issues in Facebook, the rest of the four plus million users are happy posting pics, commenting and "liking" their way around the Internet without a care in the world.  And in most cases, they probably don't have a care.  They will just hang out with their ten/twenty friends and family, and share lives and never be affected.

The other issue is that the geeks have more to lose, this may be why we care so much about our online privacy.  Most of our lives are lived on the Internet, it is where we work, shop, and get entertained.  But for the users, it doesn't have the same level of importance, and if there was a problem, the government will fix it.  Unfortunately we know that isn't the case, darn this knowing stuff.

What this means is that change is going to happen along the pathways of least resistance and so when Facebook says that the majority of their users are OK with the changes they are not talking about us.  So Facebook will keep to their course of eroding the privacy of its users to the point that they can sell to your door, and as long as they can maintain most of said 4 million users, they won't miss the noisy geeks.  And ironically, because we fought so hard to stop government regulation of the Internet in the early days, there isn't even the government to fix it.

First the Money then...

The gulf between the geek and user has more to do with the money than the ideology.  The geeks are the creative minds, the fixers, tinkers, and hackers are the ones with the interest and drive to care about technology and how it is used.  As we began to play with this new technology, this open playground called the Internet we found ways to get stuff for free, to access information that got us stuff for free, and of course, create free stuff.  We also learnt that the knowledge we gained around the technology of the Internet was worth something.  So we set out to make money off those who didn't know, and this has always been the craftsman's way.

The problem is that some of us started companies and started to make some of those technologies.  Others started services around those technologies and making a lot more money. Gone was the ideology of the hacker, in came the MBA's and the lawyers.  There was money to be made in them thar digital hills and all it took was the right time and a product that could bring in the unsophisticated users.

The upshot of all this is that the playing field is changing, and we need to start recognising this. We have to start shaping the Internet back into the way we want it by doing things, rather than just complaining about it.  The Facebook and Apple case may be out of our hands due the momentum that their user base gives them.  So let's work on the systems and services that we want and re-start the open Internet revolution again.  If we build it and it works, is cool, and can offer the openness that the others don't, then as the non-geek users begin to chafe under the closed systems that introduced them to the Internet, then the alternative will be available..

But if we just troll and flame, we'll just become assimilated into the "closed net".  So it might be time for us all to bone up on our open source, and step away from those nice sleek white devices.  Just as the industry starts to make some good desirable devices/services they go and close the ideological door on those that put them where they are.  The crazy thing in all this is that it sounds like such a good movie.

Jason Remnant

...if it isn't Broken, there isn't enough money in it.