Tech Support

I'm always amazed at how much of my life is basic tech support. I feel like I have a slightly better-than-average grasp on technology, but it never ceases to amaze me that 1) I work somewhere that requires me to constantly show people how to use a computer, and 2) I know how to show them, mostly because their answers are incredibly basic.

Generally, I understand that not everyone gets how our printer works. It's no problem - it's so easy to do, and I love how amazed some patrons look when I show them how to release a print job. However, some tech problems require me to step back and really think about how natural technology has become to me, and how unnatural it is for some people. For example:

1. Twice in the last week, I've helped people who couldn't figure out how to sign into their yahoo.com account. It turned out that it wasn't working because they were trying to sign in on hotmail.com. 
2. I've had at least 2 girls who were within 5 years of my own age who had no idea how to use an external hard drive. One was actually younger than I am. How does one avoid learning how to use a thumb drive until they're 18 these days? 
3. I had to explain to a man the other night that even though you have to use an email account to sign in to amazon.com, your email account is not automatically connected to your hotmail account - i.e. amazon doesn't know what your hotmail password is, so it won't automatically sign you in with that password until you've set up an account with them. He was very confused - as was I after awhile, because I didn't actually know how to explain that your login is individual on every website (unless it's a google-related website, but let's not go there) and you have to set it up for each new site. (This gentleman also told me that the hand-eye coordination of a computer was difficult for him, and he didn't know how to make it all work together. He hasn't had a lot of experience, clearly, but it was jarring all the same.)
4. I was trying to figure out how to help a lady get into her hotmail account, but hotmail didn't recognize her username. At that point, all I could do was explain to her that ther was no way for me to recover her password if I didn't have her username. There is no list of usernames for you to peruse to see what yours is. Because there are millions and millions of usernames.
5. Yesterday, I taught a man how to move something up a line - using the Backspace key. He said, "Ah! I learned something new today!" 

It's fascinating to try to disconnect myself from what I feel is common knowledge and try to approach problems from their perspective. Everything is like a foreign language to them, and they're trying to use a tool they aren't familiar with to do something they don't actually understand the theory behind. It's like helping my parents with my computer, except that from years of living with their kids and from having jobs that involve computers my parents have picked up things like what programs will take them to the internet and what a word processor is. (I tried to explain word to a woman in her 80s the other day. I told her it was like using a typewriter except you could edit your work without retyping everything.)

Public libraries, you are a brave new world.