“Don’t worry,” said the smiling computer sales-man. “We provide training. I live near your church. I’ll be over in a few days to see how you’re doing.”
He wasn’t. In a few days we weren’t doing anything.
If you thought “bundling” was an Amish premarital activity, you were wrong; it’s a computer industry sales technique. By including “free” programs with the computer, the manufacturer makes the whole package look like the greatest bargain since Moses got ten commandments for the price of one. But it helps if the programs work. It took us most of a week just to make the working copies of the disks that came with the little monster.
The first great communications revolution followed the invention of the printing press. The first thing they printed was the Bible. The second communications revolution was due to the computer, but the first things computed were missile trajectories. You call that progress? You think that’s “user friendly”?
Here I was, the proprietor of a machine Megatrends promised would be the liberator of the late twentieth century, and I couldn’t figure out the manuals. Oh yes, they aren’t “manuals.” They’re “documentation,” which sounds more important but really means, “If you’re confused, it’s your fault for being so backward.”
People in the industry, in a slightly self-serving way, say “the market isn’t mature yet.” Translated into street talk, that means “computers are still pretty hard to use.” If you’re willing to stay up half the night trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong, fine. You’re just the customer they love to see. But otherwise, better stick to the software that’s written for exactly what you want to do, and expect to spend some time trying to make sense of that, too.
Well, we’ve had the church computer now for a year and a half. The secretary has written a long chart of codes to remind her how to operate the word processor, and the bookkeeper has died a thousand deaths trying to recover lost numbers when the program crashed in the middle of the quarter and she didn’t have another copy of the contributions.
I think we’ll survive.
We may even learn to like it.
Meanwhile, if you decide to take the plunge into the electronic water, take your crying towel along, just in case.
– Richard L. McCandless
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Sharon, Pennsylvania
Leadership Winter 1988 p. 85
Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
