In this 1997 essay I pinpointed two things about computers and the Internet that either mislead people or leave them in a state of confusion. The two problems I described continue to exist today, in a somewhat altered form.

What's Wrong With the Internet?
(Circa 1997) 

by Ken Sanes

As anyone who has been on computers  even a short while knows, the Internet, which is supposed to be the most efficient information transmitter in the world, is doing a poor job conveying information about itself. The problems it has in this area come down to a number of basic shortcomings.

First, the Internet has become a hotbed of misleading advertising that is as bad or worse than the false come-ons in the rest of society. It is teeming with disguised ads, phony promises of free stuff; and efforts to lure people into providing information about themselves so they can be put on marketing mailing lists. It similarly has links that promise to take visitors to a page with information, that actually lead to more advertisements.

But in addition to all this deliberate deception, there is a second shortcoming in the way information is conveyed on both the Internet and computers, in general, that is harder to figure out. For some reason, many of the people whose job it is to tell us how to use software, don't seem to know how to communicate competently or clearly.

Not infrequently, they offer help menus that don't do even the most basic things when it comes to explaining how something is done. They don't put a good overview first; they don't start by summarizing the most important things one needs to do to get started; they leave out information or assume you know something when you don't, so you get stuck halfway through an operation; and they create all those endless branching trees of clickable help menus, so you end up clicking and clicking to get tiny bits of information, spooned out a little at a time. And they often do all of this in overcomplicated prose that would win a Pulitzer Prize if the Pulitzer committee were made up entirely of the people who wrote the directions for my VCR.

This state of affairs is particularly hard to explain because the rest of popular culture, when it comes to television, newspapers and magazines, specializes in making things clear and interesting. The actual content of what they convey is often not of much value, but at least it is easy to follow.

Some of the problem may be a result of the old cliché about the computer "nerd" who is good at relating to machines and not very good at relating to people. Such people have trouble "taking the role of the other" -- they don't seem to understand what they have to say for another person on the receiving end of the information flow to get it. With so many people like this in the world of computers, it seems that, at least, initially, a series of  bad conventions were formed about how to explain things to users. Throw in the fact that there are so many people who got into this industry so fast, and that their job is to convey somewhat technical information, and you have some of the explanation for the problem.

Windows helped solidify these trends, with those "help" menus that aren't much help, particularly for the new user. Windows is easy to use once you figure it out, but virtually unexplained. And even when users get the basics, they are still left in the dark about the purpose of many of the files on their hard drive.As a result, most people confront computers as opaque and mysterious objects, and they frequently find themselves in a deep state of frustration as they try to figure out what to do next. This is the most important reason many people still aren't on computers or online. They are afraid to make such an expensive purchase when they feel, rightly, that they would be getting involved in something that is confusing and that requires time and a tolerance for aggravation, with plenty of opportunities to make mistakes.

We're all familiar with what the computer industry has done to deal with the problem. In part, an industry of computer how-to books has grown up to fill the void, along with a growing number of  explanatory web sites. While they have  helped, they don't begin to correct the problem. In addition, many companies are only too happy to offer you telephone assistance -- for a fee. They sell software that is unnecessarily confusing and that often has bugs in its operation,  and then charge you for "help", which may or may not know give you good information.

What we need is a new set of conventions about how to explain things, which will require that we identify what is currently being done wrong. The essence of it will be the development of software that is not only well explained in help menus that are organized in continuous, readable text, but that also explains itself as it goes along. And we need operating systems that let users go anywhere in the system and find out, in detail, what the function of a file is and how it interacts with other files. In effect, we need software that is transparent to view and that provides an overview, so it is easy to control. And we need full disclosure laws on and off the net, to end this saturation of deceptive ads.

Fortunately, market pressures will eventually solve at least one of these problems. Sooner or later, computer companies and would-be entrepreneurs will figure out that the ability to make things easy is where much of the money is. As one company offers an easy-to-use product, its competitors will be forced to do the same, even if it means (as it often does) that they steal many of the ideas from that first company.When it comes to deceptive advertising, that's a problem our legislators and president don't seem very interested in doing anything about. If consumers don't demand reforms, nothing will be done. Even if they do, it may not be so easy to end the deception and manipulation that has become a fixture of our economic system.

Email / What's Being Said About Transparency 
© 1996-2011 Ken Sanes

Image by Alan Light (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons