Saturday, June 18, 2005
The tacit dimension of tech support
It's what I try to tell people who are trying to learn how to use computers. It's a matter of not being afraid of the thing. Playing will get you the rest.
From his wife's perspective, Phil said, it looks like he knows how to do everything. But his own, subjective experience is very different. He doesn't really have detailed procedural knowledge of most tasks. He's just very good at discovering that knowledge.
"What I'm actually doing is figuring things out on the fly," Phil said. That's what all IT adepts do, all the time. We do it in such a rapid, fluid, and automatic way that we don't seem to be constantly learning or relearning. But we are, and Phil's insight prompted me to recalibrate my thinking on this matter.
At issue here are two forms of tacit knowledge, which the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi once defined as knowing more than we can tell. For example, it's quite possible someone who uses Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) Word regularly can't tell you how to turn off Smart Quotes but can still perform the task.
From his wife's perspective, Phil said, it looks like he knows how to do everything. But his own, subjective experience is very different. He doesn't really have detailed procedural knowledge of most tasks. He's just very good at discovering that knowledge.
"What I'm actually doing is figuring things out on the fly," Phil said. That's what all IT adepts do, all the time. We do it in such a rapid, fluid, and automatic way that we don't seem to be constantly learning or relearning. But we are, and Phil's insight prompted me to recalibrate my thinking on this matter.
At issue here are two forms of tacit knowledge, which the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi once defined as knowing more than we can tell. For example, it's quite possible someone who uses Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) Word regularly can't tell you how to turn off Smart Quotes but can still perform the task.
