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The Next RRE Project: The situation of the beginner

``` People using computers for the first time often feel pain. Something about the technical design and cultural meanings of the technology has the power to reduce otherwise confident people to saying things like "I'm really dumb about computer stuff". But then other people get along just fine, including many of the people you'd least expect. Some of us can still remember what it was like as a beginner, and others of us interact with beginners all the time. If we could make things easier for them, then more people would benefit from the technology.

Let's think about the situation of the beginner. Send me a story and some brief reflections about beginners' experiences with computers. On June 14th I'll package what everyone sends me and mail it out to the whole list. Define the topic as broadly as you like: talk about your own experiences or others, about classrooms or workplaces or homes or libraries, about buying computers or installing them or fixing them or putting them in the closet, about getting help or making mistakes or figuring out what they're good for, about things that happened this morning or twenty years ago, about children or grown-ups, about thoughts or feelings, money or time or relationships or addictions or jargon or cluelessness or power, interface design or social support, technical standards or gender identity, happiness or sadness or anger or horror and fascination, hype or rumors or personality stuff or social issues, lessons you learned or problems you can't overcome or patterns you keep seeing -- whatever is the one thing you'd like to share with the world about the situation of the beginner.

Just a brief reminder how we do this. Keep it to a few paragraphs because people on on the Internet tune out if it's any longer. Focus on concrete experience, not abstractions and generalizations. I'll reserve the right to omit messages for any reason, but I rarely do this and you needn't worry that I'm imposing some obscure agenda that I haven't told you about. You can't be anonymous -- it's too much trouble. The whole package will go out with a notice roughly like this: Each message in this file is copyright 1996 by its author; the file may be transmitted and stored in electronic form, in its entirety only, for any non-commercial purpose; any other use of the messages will require permission from each author.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Phil ```

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