I read a recent article from The Verge about college students not knowing what files and folders are. As someone around the same age as these students, it was surprising to learn that people my age don’t know about something which is as familiar to me as breathing. But then I thought to myself What could be the cause of this phenomenon? What is behind this? And the answer is user-friendly software.
Software is too nice nowadays. Everything is neat and tidy. The systems we interact with work so hard to make sure everything is presented to us in a nice and easy way. Think about files and directories, as discussed in that Verge article. Behind every application we use on any phone or computer is some trail of files and folders that keeps all the necessary data stored and organized. File systems are not even complicated to navigate. You move your files where you need them to be. You make new folders and name them as you please. You know where everything is. It is something I’ve had to do ever since I began using a computer regularly in grade school.
But our software has become so friendly that it hides this away from us. It wants to shield our eyes from something so elementary because it wants us to rely on it. This is a complete reversal of how the system should run. The computer should not control you. You should control it. But each day they try and try to make every system we use simpler and give us less and less access to its inner workings all in the interest of “convenience” and “ease of use”. This is a scam. This path has led us already to a world where fresh-faced young college students, the youngest generation of adults who have lived with technology more than any previous generation, are painfully terrible at operating it. It is ironic. The same people who spent years lamenting their parents’ inability to use the most simple of modern technology and their cries for help will grow up to repeat the same mistakes as their forefathers.
This is because the prevalence of overly user-friendly technology has two distinct effects. For one, it makes us less able to interact with technology beyond a superficial level. By disincentivizing the use of lower level functions, and in many cases outright locking users out of them, we are perfectly content to go on using whatever newfangled system is presented to us. We don’t see this as something being taken from us, but instead just accept this as our new reality. Do you remember when phones had replaceable batteries? Ever seen an ancient cave painting of a headphone jack? They take and take and we thank them for it. Secondly, user-friendly technology makes us less likely to ever learn new technology. Take a look back at the previous generations. The advent of flip phones was a Herculean task for these people. And now that mobile phones have progressed at such a rapid pace, many of these people have simply given up on ever learning how to use them. Many of them use modern smartphones with the lowest possible level of literacy. An uncommon breed decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and still carry around a flip phone. Once you’ve gone long enough without having to actually learn how to use software, you never want to again. You simply expect everything to remain as it was and never have to change your ways. This is complacency, and it is akin to death in the age of information.
At the end of all this lies a simple conclusion: software should not be friendly. Software should, at worst, be an inconvenience to use for some period of time. At best, software should actively attempt to thwart your efforts to do anything productive. Using a computer should not be a walk in the park. Using a computer should be a walk through eighteen miles of barbed wire and broken glass. This conclusion is reached very quickly, as we shall examine now.
Software should be made convenient for the people creating it, not the people using it.
The systems you are using are not yours. They belong to the many talented software engineers who let you use them out of noblesse oblige. What is good for them is good for you. It simply follows that they should be allowed to cut any corner they please and create as many unnecessary hurdles as they desire so long as it is theoretically possible for their software to do what you want it to do. And you should thank them for it every day of your pathetic little life.
Software should not be easy to use.
A wise man was once asked a simple question: what is best in life? His reply was this, “To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women.” Do you think crushing your enemies is easy? No, it is not. The best things in life require determination and effort. It is obvious that the same should apply to software. The worst kind of software is one that does not challenge you each day.
Software ought to be openly user-hostile.
Take the two previous points and you will see this as the only possible path. Software should be made in the easiest way possible and should not be easy to use. The logical conclusion is that software should be purposefully designed to be unfriendly toward its users. The creators of software should be allowed to not only passively allow software to be hard to use. They should be empowered to ensure that all things they create are expressly difficult for people to operate.
This attitude would lead to two outcomes which are beneficial to all. For one, people would no longer be allowed to fall into complacency. When no software is user-friendly, people will not have the option to stop learning. Each day they will encounter a new piece of software that will challenge them anew. This will fix the problem of young people not knowing what files and folders are. And in the future those same people will not follow in the footsteps of their elders. The plague of technologically-illiterate old people will be cured. For, when you have spent your whole life being forced to use the most vile and angry pieces of software mankind can devise, learning to use anything new will be like riding a bike.
Secondly, this will prevent the coming stranglehold over society by Big Tech Support that we already see the groundwork being laid for. Because of this epidemic of user-friendliness, when people find themselves stuck they are left with only one route. They must return to the corporation that sold them their device and pay out even more to have a simple problem fixed. Every day these corporations make it against their terms of service to fix things ourselves, even going as far as to disable features of their products or void warranties should their users not return to them and beg and plead for their help like helpless infants. They want us to depend on them for things that we should know how to do on our own and would be better off handling ourselves.
With each passing day, software is made more and more friendly and this dependence grows stronger. Soon, it will be too late! Heed my warning: cast off the shackles of user-friendly software. Ensconce yourself in the wonderful frustration of user-hostility. Battle your software until you bend it to your will again and again. Or else you shall be ground to dust under the heel of Big Tech Support and find yourself left behind by the ever-changing tide of technology. Forgotten in some dusty old crypt, still trying to figure out how to open a PDF.
