Vote For Those Who Will See To It That We Can Make Change
informationweek.com
snips:
If the Net is truly to become the ubiquitous "meta" presence that is foretold, the DoCoMo product is going to be the device that carries the Net from easy access to constant access. Part Palm Pilot, part wireless phone, part data-entry and-access device, the DoCoMo is a phenomenon in Japan, and it will be a matter of months before it becomes so in North America.
The size of a cell phone, the DoCoMo device is capable of allowing users to telephone, access and create E-mails, listen to music, play games, and generally do everything a pretty highly powered telephone/notebook combination would. It's a colossally high-powered, fully functional Net appliance in a formidably powerful form factor that's selling to the tune of 50,000 units a day in Japan. And my limited experience in fiddling with one demonstrated that it works as advertised.
So here we have what will perhaps be THE breakthrough device that will make the Internet truly ubiquitous, low-cost, and accessible to all, fulfilling the mission--for now--of the Internet. What could be wrong?
Merely the fact that there is afoot in the commercial world a significant percentage of people who don't have the slightest clue as to how to use such a device. Need proof? Herewith a small, admittedly anecdotal example.
Two Sundays ago, while on a shopping mission in the company of my bride, a visit was paid to a well-known women's clothing store that doesn't deal with discounted items. To complete a blessedly modest purchase, two $20 bills were handed over, and change of $9.43 was due.
I had wandered to a display counter adjacent to the cash register (a quaint term, that) and had full view of the computer display handling the transaction. After the store employee entered the amount of cash tendered against the purchase price, a window containing the following information appeared:
Cash in $40.00
Change: $9.43
Given To Customer:
Five Dollars 1
One Dollar 4
Quarters 1
Dimes 1
Nickels 1
Pennies 3
So here we are possessed of the metanet, and the people we hire to handle the simplest of cash transactions require, in at least enough cases to make it feasible, cheat sheets to make change for simple retail transactions. Bully for the technology economy and all who have led us to this point.
Of what possible good is technology if people aren't equipped with sufficient basic education to use it? Where do economies--indeed nations--stand if making change for a purchase is too daunting for individuals to handle unprompted? Are we as peoples ahead of the abacus or woefully behind its time?
From this perspective, it's utterly and completely horrifying to see that even some of the fruits of the educational system are so woefully equipped for life that not only must the amount of change for a purchase must be specified, but that how that change ought be constituted must also be specified. Woe unto the shopkeeper if the drawer containing $5 bills is empty and five singles must be substituted.
Never has technology been applied in a more generally depressing way than that which I witnessed in that store.
--end snips |
