How to help someone use a computer
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Sat, 2006-05-20 12:25.
Alex forwarded me an article by Phil Agre, professor at UCLA: How to help someone use a computer.
Computer people are fine human beings, but they do a lot of harm in the ways they “help” other people with their computer problems.
Boy, that’s the truth. The newbies can be frustrating, sure, but you as a computer geek can go a long ways to helping your own cause by treating these as opportunities to Teach, not to Solve or Fix. Agre’s article is from 1996, interestingly, but the lessons are the same.