Computers Will Take Over The World

Being that I spend all day on the phone talking to people, a great many of the people I speak to are older than myself (mid 20s). In fact, I would reason that a majority of the people I speak to are older, like 20+ years older than I.

Most of these people are not familiar wiht the internet or computers, or if they are, it is only in passing. Many of them print their emails out daily and read them, or have their secretaries do so. This practice makes very little sense to me (redundancy of effort and a waste of paper, if nothing else), but I think people get set in their ways and are reluctant to change them. Fair enough, I suppose.

Many people, even after I have established with them that I offer a service or product that they will benefit from/are interested in, are still reluctant to give me their email address. I can't tell you how many people have requested that I mail them something, or FAX it to them. At first I tried politely to indicate that this was not our SOP, but after awhile I thought to myself "Look, doofus, I'm trying to sell you a website, why don't you go on the web to see the actual thing?!" and now I'm a little more sardonic when I tell them that we're a paperless office and the best way to see a website is through the web.

It occurred to me that many people are afraid that their web address will fall into "the wrong hands". Surprise folks: your web address is no big secret, there's not much people can do with it once they have it, except send you things there; and what's the worst that happens then? You either read it or you don't. Oh no! 2 miliseconds of your life wasted on that decision. Unless you're truly indecisive, in which case it will take you longer to decide yay or nay on a random email. Plus, factor in that most email addys have Spam filters nowadays anywho, and you cut the chance even further.

This is why I think that computers will take the world over. People jsut can't keep up. They're like computers having to deal with more and more complex programs but they can't have their processors upgraded, they can't get more RAM. Thus, they get scared and act irrationally when confronted with what is essentially a very easy situation to navigate. Then again, we could always become cyborgs. Oh yeah! Resistance is futile.