28 Jun
2004
28 Jun
'04
1:11 a.m.
At Mon, 28 Jun 2004 01:22:05 +0200,
Fons Adriaensen wrote:
"... whenever we invite someone into the news studio, he has to make
his point in 12 seconds. If I know he can't, I will not even
consider him." Why not ? "Beacause it's bad TV, and our market share
will go down. Our viewers just don't want to concentrate on any
issue, they want to be entertained. Anyway that's what our
advertisers tell us: we want the largest segment, which are the
people who don't want to think or do any other mental effort."
This is just one of the many things I learned over the last years,
and which all point into the same direction: the main social
dividing line in most western societies these days is one that
reflects education levels. It determines lifestyle, consumption
patterns and political preferences, and it is much more influential
than financial status or the old social classes.
Your insinuation that those with a higher level of education aren't
susceptible to the 12 second attention span problem (for the record,
you and I at least agree on the fact that it *is* a problem) doesn't
hold water. At least in the United State of Maryland, most
institutions of higher learning that offer an on-campus living
solution also offer a cable TV package (MTV included); if there was no
demand, there would be no supply.
Your point is an anecdotal non-sequitur anyway, although it does
reinforce opinions of your elitism (well, at least my own).
More and more, as an 'intellectual' I find
myself in a position that
comes down to this: either you budge and dumb down, or you'll be
excluded. This is just one step from what happened during the Nazi
regime, the 'Cultural Revolution', or the Pol Pot government, where
everyone who dared to think was just eleminated.
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/Godwin_s_Law.html
Going back to our original point: if a user is too
lazy to read a
manual, I can't be bothered with his problem. And if someone
proclaims that aversion to reading documentation is 'normal', I will
disagree, and now you all know why.
That's a straw man. The original point was something to the effect of
"a volume knob which can only be operated after studying a manual is
an indication that the UI designer is a failure," although my
rendition is probably more caustic than the original.
-Pete
www.gazuga.net