The Narcissist’s Dilemma

Complacent documentation is no substitute for common sense

I recently bought myself an almost-latest-version smartphone. It was intended to celebrate my 62nd birthday; replace my present, obsolete portable phone; and be reliable and not too expensive.

Well, its “Quick Reference Guide” consists of 34 pages, three of which are blank, five give generic, useless information, and 12 give instructions such as, “Don’t copy this leaflet unless authorized”; “Don’t put stickers on this product”; “Don’t bite or inhale the device or the battery”; “Keep the device dry”; “Don’t use the device except as specified”; “Don’t use the device in a storm”; and so on, and so on.

Just one basic instruction was left out: If you are an idiot, don’t buy this device.

Now, 34 pages minus (3, 5, and 12) gives 14 pages to read so that I may use a device totally new to me. I should add that the pages are 6.3 cm × 10.5 cm (2.48 in. × 4.13 in.) in size.

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Comments

The Truth is Out There - - Take a Look

I’m that gopher guy living out here in the boonies at Jerry Brong’s place. And, I gotta agree with insights shared by Umberto Tunesi.

I’m in the USA, a rural area in central Washington, and we’ve got the same problems of "documentation" and "faulty instructions" in so much of everything. Buy something and then get confused because of goofy, useless, non-applicable, but required by someone somewhere instructions.

As a gopher guy I get to stick my head up and look around so I can see reality. Having buddies like Umberto helps me get my stuff done with a grin on my face.

++ ARCHIE ++

Phones and Younger People

As someone who's probably even older than Umberto, I had to laugh at a lot of his comments...in my own case, my phone came with a 60-page booklet, but it contained less information than Umberto's. It had the same useless set of safety guidelines and basic schematics printed in around 12 languages. As someone who never reads the manual anyway, I didn't miss it much...anymore, you can usually find out much more online than in the user's manuals.

The amazing thing to me, though, is what happened when my kids got their new smartphones. They just threw the boxes and manuals away, and within an hour, had taken and facebooked numerous photos, downloaded any number of free games and apps (and had tried each of the apps at least once...my son was walking around the kitchen reading bar codes off the canned goods and boxes). They had all their contacts and personal info in, had ringtones and email set up, had access to all their music on the cloud, and were able to help me when I had questions about doing a little of that with mine. My son had figured out how to use the navigation app on his phone, and steered us to a new restaurant. Eventually, I figured out most of that stuff, too. What amazed me was that they both just seemed to do it all without any discernible trial and error or looking up any references...they just picked them up and started using them.

I saw this same sort of thing happen when I was doing some customer observation work for a telecomm company. While observing customers in a retail shop, I saw child after child (I'm talking 4-5 years old and up) just walk up to each of several sample phones and almost immediately find the games and start playing, texting freinds, etc. There was just no discernible learning curve. So I'm not sure that our lack of documentation is doing much real harm to the next generation.