Computer Rage: The Latest Mental Health Issue
From WashingtonPost.com: As people grow more and more dependent on technology in their day-to-day lives, the loss of data, computer crashes and freezes can be devastating. Support technicians are being trained to not only fix the problems, but to also deal with the psyches of their affected customers.
"There’s this frustration that you are really dependent on these things that you don’t understand and that you have no idea how to fix," said Kent L. Norman, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Automation Psychology and Decision Processes. "We place so much trust in computers that it gets a little scary."
This brings in a new aspect to the once-impersonal I.T. industry: caring.
This story takes me back, years ago, when myself, a computer newbie bought her first PC (a lemon from Gateway). The computer constantly crashed to the BSOD point. I had numerous walk-throughs on the phone with the help of the support technicians on how to re-install Windows. The frustration I felt back then was bad enough, but I had not amassed collections of photos and mp3s (what were mp3s?) that were lost forever. I cannot even fathom the rage and sick-to-the-stomach feeling that your average PC user faces when dealing with a crashed PC. It must be terrifying, enraging, horrible. I feel lucky that I now know enough about computers to keep mine relatively safe. Still nothing beats a good backup plan. Mine: 2 hard drives of data and 1 for the OS. My OS can crash and my stuff is safe…including my 80 GB mp3 collection.
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You are a breath of fresh air. I can relate to the nights that i have stayed up frustrated at the failure from trying to fix hardware issues. If PC were a llttle more structured liked Mac’s then half our headaches would only be a memory.
To bad that fantasy is off about another 50 years.
I am trying to set up a blog site that does nothing but answer and solve every common pc hardware/software problem know to man. I have about 1,000. Utilities that can win half the battle. Good luck with your backup and storage solutions, that in itself is another story for another day.
That post reminded me of that Sex and the City episode where Carrie’s computer crashed and Adain bought her a new one but she didn’t want it.
Wow, you’re only one geek level away from setting up a RAID array to backup your MP3s across multiple hard drives. Good luck with that.
I’ve been there and it still makes me cringe. I lost my gateway desktop after the kids somehow downloaded a virus several years ago, despite having nortons installed, updated, scanned, etc etc etc.
you’re so right about the psychological impact this has on a person!