On the other hand, there are plenty of things that I do or benefit from about which I have no knowledge. I drive to work 5 days a week. I hate it. I don't even have a long commute, typically it takes under 10 minutes. But I treat it as a necessary evil and I have very little knowledge of my car. It's a tool that I use every day, but I'm sure there are many more than 12 misconceptions I have about it.
Put another way, I wonder if grilling enthusiasts write articles titled "Things People Believe About Grills" targeted at folks like the author.
The car equivalent of the sort of people the author is complaining about isn't you and me, it's someone who doesn't know where the steering wheel is and refuses to learn because all they need to know is gas pedal -> go forward, and the car should figure it out from there and/or is a Magical Voodoo Machine that they can't touch.
In short: complete and willful ineptitude vs. mastery is a false dichotomy.
Why in the world would an average user need to care about when "www" should be in a url? Or even need to know when the term "download" is appropriate?
Yeah, if you work with word and double-space things a lot you should know how to do that. But I haven't encountered many people who don't know how to double space. And yeah, at this point people should know how to google things. That's a little more problematic, but I rarely run into people who don't know how to use google at this point either.
Some things on the list are important. A lot of things on the list are things that are minor annoyances that are likely similar to what my mechanic experiences when I try to describe my problem to him.
Oh boy, you wouldn't believe how serious some BBQ-ers can be. Back in college, an alumn loaned us (the Uni IEEE chapter) a very nice trailer-mounted smoker / grill setup, the kind used for serious business BBQ competitions. The owner was a great guy who had a great sense of humor, and told us all to have a good time. We didn't have a lot of money, so we bought only the necessities, you know, a dozen kegs of beer, condiments, ice, 47000 plastic cups, those cheap flimsy pre-stamped hamburger patties, hot dogs, and importantly, lighter fluid. So here we are, late on Friday night before the event (annual Uni traditional festival for no good reason), having a good time with our too-loud music, and typical responsible college student amounts of drinking. We've got a good crowd in our area. To keep the crowd enthralled, someone is shooting lighter fluid directly into the grill sending flames into the air. It was very popular with the crowd. Shortly after the flame stunt began, in rushes a troop of middle-aged BBQ dweebs with a fire extinguisher. Who immediately set about lecturing our "cooks" on how "real BBQ-ers" don't use lighter fluid because it "colors the flavor of the meat", or some such crap. We quickly confessed our thoughts that it was a likely a fruitless and unnecessary task to attempt to turn the discount-club paper-thin patties into anything resembling fine cuisine. They were unimpressed and after some more BBQ snobbery from them, and some appropriately disrespectful words from us, they retreated.
It's not the end of the world when someone confuses memory with storage or thinks that www should go in front of everything. In fact, these days I'd argue that it's not hugely important for "normal" people to know either of those things. I'd say that the most important part of this article is about learning to use Google, which is a hugely important skill at this point. Misconceptions about viruses are annoying and sometimes very problematic. And backups are important.
But I'd argue that just about everything else listed isn't hugely important. They're annoying misconceptions, sure. But that's about it. It's ok to be an unsophisticated user. Understanding that is what allows us to write good, usable software for "normal" people.
The simple fact that we frequently use car analogy to explain complex computer concepts just helps to reinforce this notion.
You will tend to find misconceptions about things very commonly amongst even people who work in IT as their livelihood. If you ask 100 mechanics how a 4 stroke engine works you're likely to get approximately the same answer. Ask 100 IT people or developers what an operating system does and you'll get 100 different ones.
An operating system represents the abstraction layer between hardware and software applications, its purpose being to provide on userlevel the APIs needed for efficient interaction with hardware. Modern operating systems also provide higher-level components or services that apps can reuse, plus bundled junk because an OS is perfect for achieving vendor lock-in and for shoving apps and services down on people's throats, being a natural monopoly that can be easily abused.
I learned the above in high-school. Of course, just like in any other profession and industry, you'll get 100 different answers because many "IT people" are simply incompetent.
I don't think the attitude that people are "incompetent" because they don't have the same definition as you is helpful.
I probably have more misconceptions about computers that I'm not even aware of.
A better matched question for the mechanic would be wide like "explain what an engine computer does. All of them. Ever."
Or a better matched question for the IT people would be narrow like "How do mice connect to computers?" aka PS/2, USB, bluetooth, maybe inport and RS232 serial if you're of a certain age...
And don't let me start on how people name files: sent you a Word file, have you received my Excel file?, gotta present you a PowerPoint... Hurts a little inside.
A) I drove here.
B) I drove here in my car.
C) I drove here in my Hyundai Accent.
If you say C (or even B) people will look at you funny because you've given them too much information. Why can't people say, "I sent you the spreadsheet" or, "I'm going to show you my presentation", or "Here is the text document"? Why when it comes to computers do otherwise smart people suddenly start spouting gibberish?
Also, you probably wouldn't look at someone funny for requesting a kleenex. All the things you mentioned have pretty strong brand-name recognition, such that e.g. even non-PowerPoint slide decks are called PowerPoints.
My parents had received a virus that originated from a web site (seedy in nature) that exploited a vulnerability in IE 6. After having to revisit them twice in a month, I replaced the shortcut with Firefox and Adblock+ (adblock was to prevent explotation of vulnerabilities in Flash Player that were happening with increasing frequency from popular ad networks).
It wasn't until last year that I flipped the icon back to Firefox when I installed their new computer. The first week I received two phone calls from my mom asking "Where's the Internet"? The second one concluded with her asking me to put the other picture back "next time I come over" because she liked it better than the red/orange icon.
http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-a...
I rest my case.
(oh, I should mention, I loved reading and will love quoting that stat, regardless)
Oh god, this.
edit: People also think CS teaches us which computer brands are good or answers to the questions like "This computer has 4gb ram, should I buy it"
True, this doesn't exactly generate new information, but it generates new pseudo-information that can look awfully convincing, and in many cases is actually correct. See HN discussion here:[2]
Finally, the author omits the number one silly thing that people (well, people in Hollywood at least) believe about computers: that they go "beep beep beep" with every bloody keystroke. I swear I want to hurl things at the screen every time I see that....
1: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html
