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[randomness]

People who think of technology as a panacea tend to be confused and irritated by expenses for training and maintenance.

Technology does not replace training or maintenance. Higher technology requires better trained staff to operate it and more expense for its maintenance. This will continue to be true until we reach the "say a magic word and it happens" level of technology. (Although, even then, training will still have to include teaching people which magic words to say, and when.)

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Though when technologies get to their mature stage, user training and technology maintenance start going down because that's what becomes the competitive differentiator. (Witness the old saw that Rolls Royce once decided to not go into mass manufacturing because there could never be enough chauffer-mechanics to drive a large population of automobiles.)

Computer-literate people have highly complex mental models of how computers and operating systems do what they do, and geekly conversation is made up mostly of an exchange and comparison of these models.

Users do not want a complex mental model of their dishwasher and fiercely resent attempts to instill one. It makes them feel put-down for not having one and yet, at the same time, they know they neither want nor need one. All they want to know is what to set the knob to. They are appliance users and they want the computer to act like an appliance. [...]

As Tim Hunkin points out in his TV series, "The Secret Life of Machines," an appliance interface is the most difficult and sophisticated interface that can be constructed. To allow people accomplish a complex task without possessing a mental model of the process is extremely difficult.

-- "Ask Mr. Protocol" by Michael O'Brien