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The Top Ten Reasons People Hate Technology!by My friend, Steve Anders, is a very funny fellow. A few years ago, I asked him to help me develop a David Letterman style "Top Ten List" of reasons people hate technology. I gave him all my wonderful insights gleaned from 12 years of work as the Nation's TechnoMotivator™, speaking to groups about technology throughout the country. I came across this list the other day and thought it was time to revisit the concepts behind these Top Ten Reasons, and see what we have learned. #10 Well Rhonda is not the only one in jeopardy now. YOU might be next. If you haven't realized it yet, your very best "job insurance" is to become very facile using new technology. I am not just talking about being able to crunch out numbers or documents on your normal computer system. I am talking about changing your "business processes" and the way you "think" about knowledge. It is no longer an issue of whether or not you will use technology; it's a matter of how WELL you use technology to gain a competitive advantage. By the way, you need not let Rhonda go. This stuff is not really the rocket science it appears to be. Rhonda doesn't have to know how the machines work. She doesn't need to program them or fix them. She just needs to know how to use them. And, with the much simpler "user interfaces" built into new software systems, nearly anyone of average intelligence today can be taught to use them effectively. #9 Maybe not. Voice and handwriting recognition systems are becoming more and more effective. You should seriously check them out if you really feel this is a barrier. I have the world's worst handwriting, yet the computer can read mine. Ok, so I have to write in my best penmanship. My "best" is most people's worst, but it still can be "read" by my computer. Voice recognition is still far from perfect, but it is being used more and more everyday. And if you still feel that you need to master the keyboard, the typing programs you can get to learn to type on a computer are truly excellent. But the real bottom line is that you do not need to be an excellent typist to write the short emails that can connect you to the rest of the world. So get over it, Bunky, and plunk away. My own hunt and peck system is aggravating, prone to error, and tiring, still I write a great deal just laboring away with my own method. Works for me! #8 What do your customers really want? They want to be treated like they are special. They want you to know what they want without even asking. They want everything they need, when they want it, where they want it, and at the price they want. Other than that they are easy consumers to satisfy. Do they want to see your smiling face and feel that warm handshake? No doubt, yes! But you had better have the CRM - Customer Relationship Management software and services set up to provide them with the level of service they are coming to expect. E-commerce sites gather information that can predict which books you will like to read, bring you the news YOU want to see, suggest music you want to hear, all that - because the computer is learning about you. It used to be that, when you competed against some nerdy guy with a computer, you could win because you had the people skills and he did not. Now your real competition - other folks, just like you, who never used technology before - have a new toolbox full of digital services to offer customers ALONG WITH that winning smile and handshake. Watch out, Bunky, your buddy just went digital! #7 Have you seen it? You know, that beautiful computer you have picked out to buy. When you go to the store to drool over it, you hear music of angels and there seems to be an aura around the machine. You are in love. You are ready to buy. But you haven't yet. What are you waiting for? Of course, for the price to fall and the new model with the faster, more powerful, make-your-breakfast-for-you to come out. Get over this, Bunky. You can't win the "Obsolescence War." There will always be a better computer and the price will always fall. That is the wrong way to view this challenge. The key is not the cost but the return-on-investment - ROI. By the way you don't get a better return on investment by throwing more money at technology. You get it by improving people and their skills, knowledge, and attitude toward technology. Then you work to find the killer application that you will do on your new machine that you could not do before that makes the investment worth it. If you can't find that killer app, maybe you just shouldn't but it! #6 Technology used to seem intimidating. Now, for many people who have continued to resist, it seems impossible. The mountain they feel they have to climb to get up to speed is so daunting they don't even try. Well, there is good news here. You don't have to learn all the old stuff that other people are now complaining about having to unlearn. Oooh, that sounds good. Maybe I can just wait a little longer and there will be more stuff I don't have to unlearn! Well, while that is true to some extent, you will also fall so far behind that one day it truly will be impossible to catch up because you are out on the street with your pink slip and briefcase without a job. I hate to use old sayings, but the ole' "you eat the elephant one bite at a time" adage is very true here. Learning about technology has a cumulative effect. The more you learn the more you can apply that knowledge to new problems. It is a progressive curve of learning that works in your favor. And new technology makes it possible to never have to learn alone. Create your own learning network of fellow travelers who share your journey and ideas online through email, forums, chats, and other resources.
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#5 It's gonna be pretty lonely at the coffee maker. Over 50% of the population is online now. The growth numbers on the Net are unlike anything we have ever seen before. It took radio 38 years to get to 50 million listeners. It took television 13 years to get 50 million viewers. It took the Internet 4 years to connect 50 million people. We have over 200 million people now on the web. We expect there to be over 500 million people on the web by 2003. When I am preparing to speak people often say to me, "Well, our people aren't there, yet when it comes to the Net." Well, who the devil are those 200 million people? Where are those 500 million people gonna come from? Mars? Look, Bunky, ya don't want to be the only one sitting outside the coffee house looking in the window. Come on in and have a cup of Joe at your local Internet Coffee House. Someone will show you around. #4 I've got 3 kids. One is only 18 months old. When I look at the world they are growing up in today with gang violence, guns in the streets and playgrounds, drugs, sex, and, yes, even Internet addiction - I shudder and wish they could at least have my old neighborhood. Of course, in my old neighborhood, my Aunt Terry, an excellent female athlete, was relegated to a wheel chair for most of her adult life because of polio. And in my era over 6 million people were wiped off the face of the earth by a madman. And in my time they lynched some people in the south cause they didn't have the right color skin. In my mind, I always want to escape back to a simpler time. Because when I remember the past, I remember the good stuff more than the bad. Those of us with some years under our ever-widening belt cannot dare to abdicate our role of leadership with technology in this new era. Much of the technology we have today is created by frighteningly young people. This is powerful stuff. Are you really going to leave that it in the hands of people too young to understand how it could affect our future because they don't understand our past? Whether or not we use technology wisely in the future is truly up to YOU more than it is the young people who developed it. We need your input! Don't fail us now. It's just getting good! #3 So get one! I got to be good with technology because of David Kammeyer, a 12year-old that went to my church. He built my first computer. I paid him $20 an hour from the time he was 12. Why do you think I paid him so much? Because he wouldn't work for less! And every penny was well spent. I have a new career today partly because of a 12 year-old. Scary thought isn't it? Well, not as scary as the thought of not having a career at all! Go out. Find a TechnoMentor™ from your local school, church, or civic group. They are out there. They can help. Pay them as well as you can. Both of you will be the better for it and the world will be better for your intergenerational sharing! #2 How long has it been since you really looked at new technology, Bunky! Being able to slip a business card into a scanner that, not only creates an image in my computer, but also turns that image into text, then sorts that into a database, so that with the touch of a button I can drop it into my contact manager, makes using a computer a very different animal! Being able to call someone on the phone using my internet connection, show them a problem I am having on my computer, and having them fix it right from their home across the country on something called Webex, fundamentally changes communication. Here is a hint. If you checked out some technology 6 months to a year ago and thought it was just not really that cool or useful yet, you better take a new look. Think of technology time as "Dog Years." It's been 7 years. Better go back and take another look! #1 None of this journey into the TechnoShift™ of the 21st century will be easy. It will be painful, time consuming, and costly. Get over it. The journey will, in fact, be worth it. And if you don't take the journey, then all you will have is regret, as you sit on the outside of our cultural divide of the techno-haves and have-nots. You must close the door to retreat. It is much like our country facing the horrors of World War II. Before we entered the war, our country was torn apart with dissention over the war. Should we enter the war? Could we win? Can we afford not to enter the fight? How can we let out boys fight and die on foreign soil? How could we afford to fight a war? It's the Depression you know! Then on December 7th bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor and the entire country in lock step stepped through that door and shut it behind them.
Step into the 21st century. Close the door to retreat from technology. Enter the most exciting era on our planet and some day you can say, "I was there at the beginning of a new era in humanity, and I was part of it!"
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