I'm a Computer Genius?

May be it’s just the Holiday season, but everyone seems to irritate the hell out of me lately. At least everyone that is older and uneducated. Like, for example, last night I attended a focus group for web developers and web designers at Lebowitz Research. There were 6 of us in the room; I was categorized as being a ‘hobbyist’ for web development because it is not my primary income. Anyway, they asked us all kinds of questions about how we developed web sites and what programs we used. Most of the people were over the age of 40, except for this girl straight out of college and me. The older people in the crowd seemed to have problems integrating or realizing how to use other programs to get the results they were expecting for pictures and text. The younger crowd (little Ms. Education and I) were more about functionality and program integration across different platforms and different media. Well, we sat there and answered all kinds of questions for two hours, pretty basic questions too. Finally, our host (who reminded me of an annoying car salesman) pushed his product from Microsoft, pre-made web templates for the general public to make Personal Web Sites, Club Sites, eCommerce and a Time Tracker Site. Basically, three features that enable the general public with the capabilities of doing something that they should be paying someone else for.

Anyway, getting back to my main point; the people in the group, they didn’t know anything about computers. They seemed like sheep just following a herder. 90% of the group used internet and word processing, but knew nothing about Torrent downloads Pirating music and movies, programming, or information management. Maybe I am supposed to just teach people how to use their computers. I could teach them what their machines can really do, but people want something done for free and fast and effortlessly. Talking about the stupidity of mankind just makes me so frustrated and disappointed.