Free software scares normal people

Over the years I've gotten really tired of this obsession with "normal people" and not just because I'm one of the so called power users. This is really part of a growing effort to hide the computer away as an implementation detail.

https://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/

That's what "UX" is all about. "Scripting the users", minimizing and channeling their interactions within the system. Providing one button that does exactly what they want. No need to "scare" them with magical computer technology. No need for them to have access to any of it.

It's something that should be resisted, not encouraged. Otherwise you get generations of technologically illiterate people who don't know what a directory is. Most importantly, this is how corporations justify locking us out of our own devices.

> We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for “experiences,” for the questionable comfort of “natural interaction.” But there is no natural interaction, and there are no invisible computers, there only hidden ones.

> Every victory of experience design: a new product “telling the story,” or an interface meeting the “exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother” widens the gap in between a person and a personal computer.

> The morning after “experience design:” interface-less, desposible hardware, personal hard disc shredders, primitive customization via mechanical means, rewiring, reassembling, making holes into hard disks, in order to to delete, to logout, to “view offline.”

Most people don't need computer (full feature power, full power of choice) to solve their task, as could be seen with the smartphones, which are designed as appliances more or less.

I don't want most of consumer electronics to act like a computer, it is a deficiency for me. I chose "dumb" Linux-based eBook reader instead of Android-based, because I want it to read books, full stop.

Some people just like to eat food, they don't want to learn how to cook it. You or I may think that's a tragedy, but I don't think e.g a dentist has an obligation to become fluent in the things that I'm competent in.

I'm no dentist, I go to dentists. I let them work, and try not to be too annoying. I learn the minimum that I need to know to follow the directions that they deliberately make very simple for me.

This will result in generations of generally dentistry ignorant people, but I am not troubled by this.

As technologically competent people, one of our desires should be to help people maintain the ignorance level that they prefer, and at every level steer them to a good outcome. Let them manage their own time. If they want privacy and control, let's make sure they can have it, rather than lecturing them about it. My grandmother is in her 90s and she doesn't want people reading her emails, listening to her calls or tracking her face. She is not prepared to deal with more than a couple of buttons, and they should be large and hopefully have pictures on them that explain what they do. It's my job to square that circle.

This quickly falls apart when you need to do stuff and be productive. Reading as a pass time is a different thing.

The problem is nobody makes this distinction for some reason. In my mind there's two types of software - the kind for doing things, and the kind for mostly consuming. As the wise Britney Spears once said, "there's only two types of people in the world: those that entertain, and the ones that observe"

It makes no sense for your CAD program you're building a company out from to be dumbed down.

Oh, this e-reader has lots of productivity features. You can highlight words (which are later stored in a separate folder), make bookmarks, easily translate words, use screen reader, etc.

I use it mostly for work and academic papers, not for amusement.

Most of the regular simple pdf viewers on the PC don't have this kind of productivity functionality in mind. They might have some, but in general they are not designed to work with read-only text.

Normal people are the problem.

Always have been.

We could argue about the exact value of N, but in the present universe nearly anything that scares at least 1 out of N normies into coming back to their senses is literally a heroic act.

EDIT: You linked a great post btw. Consider: "Rich User Experience" as the experience of being a rich person who uses. It's all right there in the etymology, after all words are also designed artifacts. "You wanna be rich? You gotta be our customer."