It's Too Damn Easy Anymore...
"Do you remember where that auto out-of-office set up is?" I hear from the office next to mine. I know he is talking to me, he is always talking to me when it comes to his computer.
"Yes, you just click File..." I respond, as I round the corner into his office. He is grumbling on and clicking way too many times to be where I was beginning to direct him.
"No, back up, get out of that menu, right there, just one click and it is on the right-hand side", I scroll through and show him the options.
"It's just too damn easy anymore..." he grumbles again.
I walked out of his office thinking about that statement. I just finished reading about Technology Bias as told by Gideon Rosenblatt on the site The Vital Edge. In this article, Rosenblatt talks about how bias structures the networks around us, essentially creating a bubble around us, as he calls it, an "echo chamber of shared bias."
What?
Ok, so let's take a look at one of the most used algorithms on the planet, Facebook. Not only are we controlling the content and newsfeed by our bias, we are essentially "training" the algorithm to dump more of our bias into our interactions on Facebook. Think about the 2016 Presidential Election (not for too long, ok?) and how your Facebook was a constant battle ground between "us" and "them." Did you delete anyone? Unfollow some people? Join Suggested Pages?
If you answer yes to any of those questions, you participated in technology bias. You have created a happy place for yourself online where what you see and who you interact with, think a lot like you do. You have made it a comfortable space for yourself.
Now, I could venture into how dangerous this ability truly is, but I want to focus on technology bias in a different way. Back to my co-worker and his " too easy" statement, I think Technology Bias can work different ways. We have the above idea of a our beliefs, ideals, prejudices, social stigma, etc. effecting how and what we allow into our "realm", or we can look at the prejudice my co-worker displayed.
He thinks technology is hard, complicated, advanced, etc. It can be whenever it is new. But, I think most of us can agree that technology's main goal is to make things easier. So why does this get lost in the corporate culture? Something as trivial as Outlook has my co-worker frustrated, and when he realizes that it is actually easier to output the results he wants, he acts even more frustrated.
I will keep beating this horse, but we have let Bank of America take over our credit card process on a company-wide level. It has really rocked the boat, let me tell you. Because now instead of collecting those film receipts in a safe ( no where is EVER safe enough to not lose at least one) anyway, safe place and then at the end of the month use an excel sheet to type out your expenses, match up with the receipt, turn into the supervisor for approval, who then passes that report onto the Accounting department to pay the card balance and file...are you lost yet? Bet if you were a receipt you would be.
So it was changed. Now you take a picture of your receipt with an app on your company phone, it uploads, a database compares card charges to the electronic scan, its approved by a click of a button and Bank of America receives its payment. Sounds so much easier, right!?
It is and they hate it. They being most of the people who carry the company credit cards. Since the implementation of this new system, I have had more receipts laid on my desk "to be scanned" than I have ever seen. I am losing my mind, and probably still some of those receipts.
So this bias about technology perpetuates this difficulty that does not actually exist. Does that make sense? No one wants to use the easier process, so they make it more difficult for one of us and then observe that the new system is "impractical and inefficient." Who is winning here? The point has been entirely missed by the group of card holders and I am curious what we could have done to change that prejudice.
When we were trained on the process--it was painstaking. There were pages and pages of instructions with power point presentations for days. I won't forget when they went through the "example" transaction and got to a screen where they just described the subsequent screens because they couldn't actually process a fake transaction to show us. What if that was the moment they lost everyone?
I have an inherent inclination to just try the site because I have grown up with technology and my thought is, "how hard can it be?"
Everyone else in that room needed to walk through that process. Not on a projector at the front of a overcrowded conference room, but in front of them, on the app, on the computer while someone walked around and helped.
I am starting to believe we leave the classroom behind too soon in life. If we treated technology like a course we are all still learning about, and unrolled new technology just like a grade-school teacher would share a new concept, maybe less and less receipts, I mean people, would get lost.
Sidebar:
I am meeting with my teammate on Saturday to go over some of the Sharepoint abilities. I can tell just from what she has accomplished and what we talk about, she can take those pages of instructions and make sense of it. I know after attempting several times to create a button on our site page, I cannot take instructions like that and get a result. I am a hands on person when it comes to complicated matters (bias here, complication is relative). Silly as it sounds, I think taking a class online that examines technology will prove to be one of the more difficult things I have ever learned online. However, I find some comfort in my need for physical human interaction. Here's to hoping my teammate can channel some grade-school teaching skills this weekend.
Rosenblatt, Gideon. (2016) Machined Prejudice: Three Sources of Technology Bias
retreived from http://www.the-vital-edge.com/technology-bias/
"Yes, you just click File..." I respond, as I round the corner into his office. He is grumbling on and clicking way too many times to be where I was beginning to direct him.
"No, back up, get out of that menu, right there, just one click and it is on the right-hand side", I scroll through and show him the options.
"It's just too damn easy anymore..." he grumbles again.
I walked out of his office thinking about that statement. I just finished reading about Technology Bias as told by Gideon Rosenblatt on the site The Vital Edge. In this article, Rosenblatt talks about how bias structures the networks around us, essentially creating a bubble around us, as he calls it, an "echo chamber of shared bias."
What?
Ok, so let's take a look at one of the most used algorithms on the planet, Facebook. Not only are we controlling the content and newsfeed by our bias, we are essentially "training" the algorithm to dump more of our bias into our interactions on Facebook. Think about the 2016 Presidential Election (not for too long, ok?) and how your Facebook was a constant battle ground between "us" and "them." Did you delete anyone? Unfollow some people? Join Suggested Pages?
If you answer yes to any of those questions, you participated in technology bias. You have created a happy place for yourself online where what you see and who you interact with, think a lot like you do. You have made it a comfortable space for yourself.
Now, I could venture into how dangerous this ability truly is, but I want to focus on technology bias in a different way. Back to my co-worker and his " too easy" statement, I think Technology Bias can work different ways. We have the above idea of a our beliefs, ideals, prejudices, social stigma, etc. effecting how and what we allow into our "realm", or we can look at the prejudice my co-worker displayed.
He thinks technology is hard, complicated, advanced, etc. It can be whenever it is new. But, I think most of us can agree that technology's main goal is to make things easier. So why does this get lost in the corporate culture? Something as trivial as Outlook has my co-worker frustrated, and when he realizes that it is actually easier to output the results he wants, he acts even more frustrated.
I will keep beating this horse, but we have let Bank of America take over our credit card process on a company-wide level. It has really rocked the boat, let me tell you. Because now instead of collecting those film receipts in a safe ( no where is EVER safe enough to not lose at least one) anyway, safe place and then at the end of the month use an excel sheet to type out your expenses, match up with the receipt, turn into the supervisor for approval, who then passes that report onto the Accounting department to pay the card balance and file...are you lost yet? Bet if you were a receipt you would be.
So it was changed. Now you take a picture of your receipt with an app on your company phone, it uploads, a database compares card charges to the electronic scan, its approved by a click of a button and Bank of America receives its payment. Sounds so much easier, right!?
It is and they hate it. They being most of the people who carry the company credit cards. Since the implementation of this new system, I have had more receipts laid on my desk "to be scanned" than I have ever seen. I am losing my mind, and probably still some of those receipts.
So this bias about technology perpetuates this difficulty that does not actually exist. Does that make sense? No one wants to use the easier process, so they make it more difficult for one of us and then observe that the new system is "impractical and inefficient." Who is winning here? The point has been entirely missed by the group of card holders and I am curious what we could have done to change that prejudice.
When we were trained on the process--it was painstaking. There were pages and pages of instructions with power point presentations for days. I won't forget when they went through the "example" transaction and got to a screen where they just described the subsequent screens because they couldn't actually process a fake transaction to show us. What if that was the moment they lost everyone?
I have an inherent inclination to just try the site because I have grown up with technology and my thought is, "how hard can it be?"
Everyone else in that room needed to walk through that process. Not on a projector at the front of a overcrowded conference room, but in front of them, on the app, on the computer while someone walked around and helped.
I am starting to believe we leave the classroom behind too soon in life. If we treated technology like a course we are all still learning about, and unrolled new technology just like a grade-school teacher would share a new concept, maybe less and less receipts, I mean people, would get lost.
Sidebar:
I am meeting with my teammate on Saturday to go over some of the Sharepoint abilities. I can tell just from what she has accomplished and what we talk about, she can take those pages of instructions and make sense of it. I know after attempting several times to create a button on our site page, I cannot take instructions like that and get a result. I am a hands on person when it comes to complicated matters (bias here, complication is relative). Silly as it sounds, I think taking a class online that examines technology will prove to be one of the more difficult things I have ever learned online. However, I find some comfort in my need for physical human interaction. Here's to hoping my teammate can channel some grade-school teaching skills this weekend.
Rosenblatt, Gideon. (2016) Machined Prejudice: Three Sources of Technology Bias
retreived from http://www.the-vital-edge.com/technology-bias/
Comments
Post a Comment