Perception throughout the Ages. Part 1.

 

Altered image licensed under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
Original photo by Dave Bezaire.

I want to get this article out rapidly, mainly because this is a fleeting thought and as most of you know sometimes you just have to grab the idea before it flies off into the ether, never to return.

I just spent the afternoon with someone who has a different way of looking at things due to their age and background. Needless to say they've been around for quite a while and they are trying to learn Windows 11 and indeed everything about the fundamentals of a computer we take for granted.

We are starting from the very beginning of cursor control, using the touchpad and what the various keys on the keyboard do. The challenging part is becoming clear to me and that is that the problem is not intellectual, it is rather out fundamentally different way of working with the world.It is physical involving three-dimensional actions. One pulls a lever and sees the spring the fulcrum acts on. It is very visual and clear not at all abstract. A modern graphical user interface on a computer is the exact opposite. Mere images are referred to as physical things "The Taskbar" for example, it is treated in discussions and books the same way of physical item is in the real world. The same holds true for "DragBars". Even the action of "clicking and dragging" is often treated in speech the same way as if it were a physical item. To this person however the computer screen is an image composed up of rectangles squares and circles. When I use the term Drag bar it took quite a bit of explaining and I think at that point they were just humoring me when they said "I understand…"

People build up mental models of their world as they proceed through life but these become structured and limiting if one is not careful. For example when I was growing up every car had a key that you physically put in to start the car. I still find it somewhat odd when I am in the vehicle and instead of a physical key they use a small electronic device or fob or even a fingerprint. I am sure they would find the world equally odd and it audits with their perceptions if they were to go back to 1960. Everyone's mental model in that era out was much more physical and just plain different. You would have to explain to a modern person just exactly how to use a rotary phone and why the heck the dial had the letters of the alphabet printed on it in such a ridiculous matter. (If I can find a good video explanation online I will put a link here of a rotary phone in action.NOTE: This link is to a 37 minute YouTube video on the rotary telephone by the channel "Our Own Devices" . It is a thorough overview and well worth the watching.)

Build Your Own Television Receiver
Science & Invention magazine cover art,
November 1928. Volume 16 Number 7
In the public domain. (Get Archive)

This is something that happens to everyone, the time you are born, the technology around you and other factors form on a very deep level how you interact with the world. I go into it in a little more detail in the short video included with this article, but suffice it to say that "not only are we, star stuff. We are products of the very time the star was made."

I for my part am so thankful that I get to experience and understand all these subtleties in life. Every time I think I've got a handle on them, reality and mother nature come along and say "There's more to this story…"

Why exactly do people stop adapting their mental models? The initial obvious answer is that it is easy to just rely on what has worked in the past and stick to it. But I think there is more going on. Many articles go on this blog I wrote a short piece entitled "They Have Never Been Taught To Think" and that may be a partial answer. As I see it diversity and challenge are what keeps you going and indeed growing. Maybe we have "overdone it" when it comes to certain types of automation and convenience. Do you really know what is going on behind the scenes when you click that icon on your phone to open any particular app? The probable answer is "No", but you do expect to work". But if that was the singular answer in this elderly person would have adapted to their new laptop quickly. For the simple reason that through most of their lives they've had to work things through. A light didn't just come on when they walked into a room, they had to turn it on. Further, they had to understand at least partially the number of things that had to occur for things to work. If the light didn't turn on when they flipped the switch may be the fuse, which was a precursor to the modern circuit breaker, needed replacing. Their mental model had to be adaptable. That again brings me full-circle back to the initial question at the beginning of this paragraph.

I will be filling this article out more as we go a long.

August 28 update:

 Perhaps the best way to move forward in situations like this is to find out what their, for lack of a better word, baseline is. For example I remember a few years ago working with someone who in their mid-adult years used Microsoft MS-DOS extensively. As a matter of fact when I was working with them they still had a computer running that operating system and had it online using a dial-up modem service in conjunction with the program called "Telix". This meant that they can only connect to the Internet via a strictly text interface. There were no embedded graphics at all.

Over the course of months we attempted to move them to a "Windows 7" machine which they absolutely hated. Ultimately to he did decide to go back to their old machine with the dial-up modem. Even though the new computer functioned quite well.

So on my next visit to our current user I'm going to ask them what using a computer was like originally for them and try to put everything in a similar context.

Take care Patrick.