Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Like me, Phil [...] is often called upon to deliver spousal tech support. From his wife's perspective, Phil said, it looks like he knows how to do everything. But his own subjective experience is very different. He doesn't really have detailed procedural knowledge of most tasks. He's just very good at discovering that knowledge.

"'What I'm actually doing is figuring things out on the fly,' Phil said. That's what all IT adepts do, all the time. We do it in such a rapid, fluid, and automatic way that we don't seem to be constantly learning or relearning. [...]

"The clash of these cognitive styles -- knowing how to do things versus knowing how to find out how to do things -- is a source of friction between IT folk and our clientele. From our perspective, it's annoying to be asked constantly to write down detailed step-by-step procedures. If we don't rely on them, why should anyone else need to?

"From the prespective of the folks we support, on the other hand, it's equally annoying to have to figure things out. Why aren't things like turning off Smart Quotes just obvious? [...]"

-- Jon Udell, "Tacit Tech Support" ("Strategic Developer" column), InfoWorld, vol. 27, no. 25 (2005-06-20), p. 26