Somewhere in the late 1990s, I ran a across an age-old maxim that had been updated for the computer age: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to use the internet, and he won’t bother you for weeks.”
Ah, I wish that were so.
I have found the internet to be a particularly empowering tool. It enables me to do research on networks and systems that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to access, to get answers without having to make a flurry of phone calls, to compare products and services, to network with others in a variety of fields, and to stay in touch with family and friends. At the same time, this ‘wired lifestyle’ has produced a significant annoyance — in the form of online family and friends who are fully capable of searching out such resources for themselves, but who instead have decided that it’s much more efficient to just instant-message me every three seconds.
It’s true that I am a geek-girl, and I might have made a very happy life for myself as a professional researcher, but I seem to have unintentionally become some sort of (unpaid) all-hours Internet librarian and tech support representative.
Perhaps it’s my own fault for wanting to help people, and for wanting to share what I’ve learned — something I honestly enjoy. Sometimes I need help, too, and I will ask for it, but I try to do this only sparingly so as not to take unfair advantage of anyone. My mistake, of course, has been my assumption that once I show someone how to do something, that he will actually try it out on his own — that she will learn how to use the skill I’ve just taught, rather than simply depending upon me to do it for her each time. When did people decide that self-reliance was inconvenient and unnecessary?
I have several friends who are building websites, personal and professional. Some are using very basic WYSIWYG web-building software applications, while others are trying to build slightly more sophisticated websites using online utilities offered by their web hosting services. I am an admitted old-school HTML coder, having learned HTML from scratch beginning back in 1995 when self-coding was the only option, and so I always encourage people to learn even the most basic of HTML commands (which is quite easy to do), but thus far no one has taken this advice.
The problem is that these friends and relations want me to check out their new websites, after each update they’ve made — we’re talking every content revision, every new comma that is added. These are my friends, and I want to help them…. but too many of them also expect me to tell them exactly what to do to fix this problem or tweak that element, because they don’t want to learn HTML themselves and also don’t want to call their own tech support.
Still others want me to do their online research for them, from scouting out driving directions to the beach or finding out if a local restaurant serves vegetarian food, to finding complete service option listings for their local wireless phone service, comparing satellite television plans, and scrounging out system requirements for various antiquated computer operating systems. Simply taking a moment to point them in the right direction — e.g., sending a URL where they can begin their own research — rarely prompts the petitioner to take up his or her own quest. It’s no wonder that I’ve not had any time to do any real work lately.
I find great satisfaction in being able to rely upon my own ‘know-how,’ and I am genuinely surprised that others do not similarly value this in themselves. Maybe I should start charging for these services. I would feel like a real heel doing that, but it might help these folks understand how much work I’m actually doing for them and encourage them to develop their own skills — and would also help me to establish clearer boundaries. I see more and more people expecting ‘something for nothing’ here in the U.S., and people who are increasingly refusing to think independently or to decide for themselves what is important, but that’s another blog entry.