Yesterday, I described the job of technology writers as “helping people choose what’s right for them.” All too often, however, we establish our camps then relentlessly defend those products we use and/or attack those that others do. There’s an almost feudalistic world in technology where one is either an Apple fan, or an Android fan. (Or one of those other OSes out there. Bet someone still has a Palm Pre they use every day.) This worldview may come from spending a lot of time in the Apple sphere, which only comes with the territory of being an Apple user. I’m not likely to get information about what I want on Paul Thurott’s Windows Super Site, or from Gizmodo who has been pissed at Apple ever since the stolen iPhone 4 saga.

One the one hand, the second-class citizen status of Apple users from the 90s until the release of the iPhone and iPad, was guaranteed to foster an attitude of snark towards the “competition.” This is something that even permeated Apple’s advertising and messaging, culminating in the—admittedly hilarious—PC vs. Mac ads. Yet, this sort of behavior isn’t exclusive to Apple fans. Stick your head into the comments on any (non-Apple-focused) technology news site, and see the flamewars for yourself. If this the discourse that passes among passionate users of technology, we’re in trouble.

It’s not the fault of technology writers for inspiring polarized discussion in comments. It’s not polarized discussion in comments that inspires polarized discussion in the technology sphere. These are both symptoms of a larger problem of psychology and tribalism that occurs in any sphere of human endeavor. I’m sure you’ll find corners of the internet where supporters of linguistic relativity flame supporters of linguistic determinism with the same fervor as Apple and PC/Android users.

The people with the ability to control and define the terms of the debate are technology journalists and pundits. I’d love, and would even pay good money, to read pieces along the lines of Andy Ihnatko’s switch to Android that provide legit, unbiased comparisons of products on a level much deeper than feature comparison checklists. I want to read people smarter than me discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of a closed, App Store environment like iOS versus Android’s free-for-all(-ish) environment, without resorting to talk about “freedom” and the virtues of open source. I’d like to see someone switch from Apple’s ecosystem to a Windows ecosystem and talk about the benefits and drawbacks. I’d like someone to do the same thing from the other direction.

There are two things standing in the way of making these happen. One is that these sort of articles require a lot more time and nuance than is available on most of the high-profile sites. For every piece of awesome long-form journalism on The Verge, there’s dozens of shorter pieces going up every day. By any estimation, a short, feature checklist product review is going to be easier to write than a detailed product comparison built around a deep dive from a user perspective. This leads to the second problem: short, easy articles give you more page views, ad views, and Google Juice.

Not that I want to make a scapegoat of Internet Advertising and blame it for the state of things online. These are problems that predate Internet advertising, and even the Internet as a concept. Advertising is just another factor that is simply not helping. It’s an added financial incentive to keep posting polarized and polarizing articles because that’s what will bring in the ad impressions. The problem still lies within all of us, and so does the solution. Let’s stop focusing on how right we are for using certain tools, and instead focus on using the communicative power we have to teach people how to find the right solutions for their problems. We can do this no matter which company’s products we prefer to have on our desk and in our pockets.

There’s been a bit too much griping in the technology media I consume about the inferiority of certain “competing platforms” in the mobile and tablet space…

Oh, hell with it. I’m sick of hearing knee-jerk Android bashing come from obviously smart people who should know better. The most recent episode of Amplified was absolutely painful to listen with Jim Dalrymple’s claim that Apple “is the only [company] that has lead” in the tech space. This is absolute nonsense, and he knows it. Jim “likes to use products that work” and Apple products work for him. Great. They work for me too. I wouldn’t have a MacBook on my desk, an iPad in my bag, and an iPhone in my pocket if this were not the case.

Jim’s blanket dismissal of Android as “not working” ignores people like Andy Ihnatko. The great thing about Andy’s three-part rationale for switching to Android is that he doesn’t claim that Android is for everyone. He explains the reasons why Android works for him, and suggests that if you have a similar set of needs and wants as him, Android might work for you. He doesn’t say that iOS “doesn’t work,” or tacitly insult those who deign to use a competing platform. Compare Jim’s statements with Andy’s on the most recent The Ihnatko Almanac where he discusses putting thought into the tools you choose to use, and not just buying a product, knee-jerk, because of the logo on the back.

It’s to everyone’s benefit to have a variety of options for hardware and software. A competitive environment drives innovation, and provides options for all of us. There are people whose ideal mobile computing environment is iOS, a customized Android, or even Windows Phone, Symbian, and Blackberry OS. It’s not our job as technologists or technology pundits to tell people the choices they’ve made are wrong. It’s our job to help people choose what’s right for them. No matter what we use, or how well it works for us, the tools we use are conscious choices and not dogma. We are free to explore other options, change our minds, and be wrong. There’s something to take from everything out there.

Marc Scott of Coding 2 Learn has raised a few hackles with a recent piece making the rounds. The title alone should explain why: “Kids can’t use computers… and this is why it should worry you”. Here’s the gist of the article, quoted:

…[A]ren’t all teenagers digital natives? They have laptops and tablets and games consoles and smart phones, surely they must be the most technologically knowledgeable demographic on the planet…

The truth is, kids can’t use general purpose computers, and neither can most of the adults I know.

He’s absolutely right on the money with the line I italicized. Well, he’s right for certain values of the word “use,” at least. There’s two ways to know how to use a computer: task-based knowledge, and skill-based knowledge. The former is much easier to acquire than the latter.

Task-based knowledge is functional. If someone wants to check their email, go onto Facebook, or watch a cat video on YouTube, people will figure out a way to do it that works for them. Their methods might end up seeming completely roundabout to a more savvy person, however. A while back, a company’s article on Facebook logins ended up as the top result on Google for “Facebook login” leading to them getting thousands of confused comments and emails from people whose Facebook workflow was to search to get to Facebook’s login page. This is the downside of task-based knowledge: when something changes, it can potentially break the workflow. This is also an advantage that mobile and tablet OSes have over traditional desktop computing. When all you have to do is tap the little blue box with the white “f” to get to Facebook, there’s a lot less cognitive load involved.

It’s skill-based knowledge where people fall short, and using a computer to its full potential is largely a skill. Turning on Wi-Fi is a task, and that’s something a person can learn, but skill is knowing how to find the settings for something you need to turn on and fix, no matter what it may be. The car metaphor, which always comes up in discussions like this, is apt. Most of us view our car as a method to get from point A to point B. We know how to drive it, and we know how to park it, and we know how to fill the gas tank. When something goes wrong, or even when it needs maintenance, we quickly turn to a professional. We can learn to fix our cars ourselves, but why should we? It’s much the same with computers.

Why this sorry state of affairs? Marc claims:

Being a bunch of IT illiterates themselves, the politicians and advisers turned to industry to ask what should be included in the new curriculum. At the time, there was only one industry and it was the Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft thought long and hard about what should be included in the curriculum and after careful deliberation they advised that students should really learn how to use office software. And so the curriculum was born.

I don’t know if it’s quite as insidious as that. The most common application many people use computers for in their professional lives are word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Even now, most of our jobs don’t require us to get deep enough into a computer to require learning how to code. A basic computer literacy course for students to impart task-based knowledge of office software is probably the best all-round education they need from a vocational perspective. That doesn’t make it the best possible education in computing, however—just the lowest common denominator.

Marc does have a point about the locking down of educational computers “…preventing kids and teachers access to system settings, the command line and requiring admin rights to do almost anything. They’re sitting at a general purpose computer without the ability to do any general purpose computing.” While a locked down environment is easier for schools to administer and reduces the potential for security issues, we lose the ability to teach people, if not the skills of maintaining a computer, at least giving them the task-based knowledge to configure a network connection. At a certain point, computer education needs to move beyond how to use office software and into how to use the computer as a whole.

While having parents and schools alike teach children to try and solve problems themselves is sound (if impractical in the bureaucracy of a school system), the rest of his suggestions border on lunacy. Where things fall down are suggestions like using Linux—even on a cell phone. Marc even admits that his phone “can’t use 3G… crashes when I try to make phone calls and the device runs so hot that when in my jacket pocket it seconds as an excellent nipple-warmer…” If you want to teach an ordinary, non-technically inclined person how to be frustrated and give up on computing, by all means sit them in front of a Linux box. [1]

The problem needs to be approached from both sides—how we teach computers, and how computers work. Apple seems to be the only company on the right track. However, with Marc’s outright dismissal of iOS, I’m sure he’ll disagree. He might agree that we should be making technology easier to use and more intuitive—while not sacrificing the things that make it powerful. More often than not in the attempt, we end up with interfaces that are either too dumbed down to help users learn anything, or interfaces that stubbornly refuse to change for marketing reasons. [2]

Marc lists a series of events that prove people don’t know how to use computers. I ask: Why is the OS insecure enough, out of the box, that a user needs to install software to prevent viruses and malware? Why should someone need to reinstall the insecure operating system to fix it? Why is there a hardware switch to turn on Wi-fi on a laptop, and why is it on the side of the machine, out of sight? Why are error messages for simple issues written in a complex way, or easily dismissed without actually resolving the problem? Why does a cell phone not automatically back itself up remotely? The only issue in the litany that isn’t based around a technical shortcoming is the user who lost their Internet Explorer icon in a mess on the desktop—though there’s a technical solution that exists.

We’re making progress in this area, but not fast enough. Any change that makes a computer easier to use for people, and reduces the potential for things to go wrong and a technician to be brought in, is usually fought against with knee-jerk kicking and screaming from the technical elite. For the majority of people, we want something to work, and work with a minimum of fuss. It’s not that kids don’t know how to prevent malware or configure a wireless network, it’s that they shouldn’t have to. Until that day comes, let’s at least teach them.

On episode 65 of “Amplified” Dan Benjamin and Jim Dalrymple had an interesting conversation about the relationship we have with the content we consume and the platforms we consume it on. As we move into consuming our media digitally, our content is simultaneously becoming locked into platforms. [1] Media content, no matter how we choose to access it, has become a feature of a software and hardware ecosystem rather than a thing of its own. When you commit to Apple, for example, you’re typically committing to buying your media from iTunes, at least if you want to have it on all your Apple devices with the least amount of pain. It’s the same if you buy an Amazon Kindle, or a device built around Google Play. The media library is a feature of the product.

This also functions as a form of lock-in, though it’s not a particularly secure lock in many cases. If you’re buying music, whether from iTunes, Amazon, or any other legitimate music download service, DRM is a thing of the past. Your iTunes and Amazon files will play on almost anything you throw them at. Video content is still locked down with DRM, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before TV and movie studios wise up in the way the recording industry has and take the locks off. DRM is also a problem in eBooks that I hope will be temporary as well. Amazon has a more subtle lock-in strategy with their use of the MOBI format, and eschewing the ePub standard. Even if the publishing industry were to give up DRM, I can’t see Amazon embracing the ePub format on Kindles. They have too much to lose.

These are issues you simply do not have to worry about for physical media. A CD will play in every CD player, a DVD in every DVD player, and so on. You might have a hard time copying it or converting it to digital file, but you can take the physical copy and play it anywhere, regardless of the brand of hardware you’re using it on. If a Sony DVD player could only play back discs made by Sony, the format would never have caught on. This only matters, however, if you’re buying content for keeps. The big growth in the content space is now in streaming subscription services.

There’s dozens of music and video streaming services, some linked to specific platforms and some available on multiple. Netflix, for example, is available on pretty much every piece of hardware you can buy and hook up to a display. A Netflix subscription is an easy way to guarantee that you can get your content anywhere there’s an Internet connection, but Netflix doesn’t have everything. That’s where the problems start. Now that a content library has become a feature of an ecosystem, the specific content varies depending on who we’re asking to provide it. The content of different studios, networks, and production companies is accessible only through certain partnership deals, exclusive contracts, and revenue sharing agreements that make it so that you either need to buy into more than one subscription service, or illegally download anything you’re missing.

I’ve long eyed subscription streaming, at least for music, warily. With something as typically ephemeral as TV and movies, a subscription streaming service makes sense in the same way a cable TV subscription made sense in the 90s. But, for music? Why pay for something you can’t keep? Of course, I also look at music streaming with the eye of a music fan and as a collector (albeit a collector who operates increasingly in a digital world). When I get something I plan to use more than once, I expect to do it on my terms, which is why I buy music, often from iTunes. My view, it seems, is becoming the minority.

If we’re accessing music, movies, TV shows, and even books through locked-in ecosystems, how does this change the relation we have with that media? The big worry I have is that none of these services have everything. There’s a TV commercial from around 1999–2000 that predicted the ability to watch any movie at any time. This was in the days before YouTube, or even widespread access to broadband. What’s hampered the utopian vision is the tying of content to specific services and platforms. How it will shake out, I can’t say, but as long as people have to either lock themselves into an ecosystem, or find the particular subscription streaming service that has the particular content they want, frustration will win out more often than not.

What worries me isn’t lock-in via DRM. That will end in time. What worries me is that creative work that demands to be viewed on its own merits, and accessible by the largest audience possible, runs the risk of being locked to a specific piece of hardware, or a specific paid service, for eternity. Why? Because exclusivity is more valuable to the company that owns the work than the work is to either the creator or the audience. In the case of the creator, hopefully it’s lucrative enough to keep them making work, but for the audience… what good is access to a vast library if none of it is valuable?

So, it’s come out that the security apparatus of the American government knows even more about us than it’s let on, to the utter lack of shock and surprise of everyone who’s been paying the slightest bit of attention. This lack of surprise is also, however, not surprising—as is the lack of sustained outrage from those outside the technology sphere. The technological sophistication that defines the NSA’s digital spying system is mind-blowing and the scope is incredible. Unless you’re an expert in technology and security, it’s hard to grasp the full extent of what’s going on. Most people are not experts in technology and security.

PRISM, X-Keyscore, and whatever else is up the sleeves of the NSA and similar organizations, are endemic of a real divide between the understanding of technology between the people who have the power to create and implement such programs, and the people being spied upon. They’re based on the implicit understanding that the average Internet user has no real understanding about how the Internet works, where their data goes, and who can access it. To be fair, the NSA isn’t the only one benefitting from this. Google tacitly acknowledges that it’s keeping an eye on what you use it for to better serve you advertisements, but they’re not going out of their way to call attention to it. Doing so would undermine their bottom line.

What Google does for their profits, however, is fundamentally less terrible than what the apparatuses of the United States government—and very likely other governments—are doing. The worst we can say about Google is they want to make money to pay their employees and make more stuff. The NSA is collecting data with a far more sinister purpose in mind. They’ll find a way to put what they’re collecting to use to accomplish something that, to the eyes of a technologically unsophisticated populace with an equally technologically unsophisticated government, allows them to get a bigger share of tax revenues, and justify their continued existence.

Actually, the NSA and Google aren’t so far removed, after all. The difference is that Google serves some utility to most of us, while the NSA does not. The NSA serves the political interests of those who want to look tough on terrorism, crime, and the moral panic of the day. Whichever of these the NSA can use their data to justify going against, that’s all it will take for the tide to swing in their direction. Google’s PR problems are harder to solve.

This is why it’s important that we find a way to educate people about not only the extent and power of the NSA’s online domestic spying program, but also about how this affects them and the technology they use on a daily basis. We need to know the tradeoffs. I’m reminded of a worry my father had about the E-Z Pass system used to automatically pay tolls on turnpikes and bridges. The logic worked like this: if they know when you go through each toll plaza, they know how fast you were going, and can send you a speeding ticket. This hasn’t happened, probably because it’s not quite that simple. My father was aware of the potential even in the early 2000s. (He’s since started using an E-Z Pass.)

People like my father are the exception rather than the rule, when it comes to thinking about technology’s effects on our lives. We see all the positive outcomes, because that’s all we hear from the commercials and mainstream news. Technology journalism sometimes covers potential downsides, but it’s just as likely to be retreads of corporate talking points that make an ostensibly objective product review read like advertising copy. Being “informed” and “knowledgeable” about technology is more about knowing how to read spec sheets and feature comparison checklists, rather than knowing how devices work and what we can do with them.

Knowledge is power. Right now, the people with the most knowledge of how these tools and services we use can be exploited are the ones exploiting them. They have the power to see who we are, what we’re doing, and send armed men to your door because of it. Though some have sniffed out potential BS around this story, the idea that a series of innocuous Google searches might set off alarms in the bowels of some computer system makes sense. Our credit and debit cards use a similar system to prevent fraud. Buy two tanks of gas and a pair of sneakers with your card and see what happens.

The only people with the knowledge of what constitutes a red flag, or how many red flags it takes to get a visit from armed men in black SUVs are the folks running the system. It’s to their benefit that we don’t know. We need to take that power out of their hands, and the only way to do it is by learning and understanding as much as we can about the tools and the technologies we use on a daily basis—and how they can be used against us. From there, we can decide how, when, and why to use them, and prevent future abuses.