Idiocracy
I remember a scene in the movie Idiocracy.
It was in the triage section of the emergency department of a hospital.
There was a girl in front of a full graphical patient classification interface.
It had pictures of red marks on a picture of a body and she would select which one that most matched the problem described.
It had all the complexity of the classic game operation without the requirements for good hand eye co-ordination. The icon pictures were rather large.
I have worked in support for many point of sale companies.
I have seen the evolution of this type of software on a daily basis. I have heard comments from the owners of more than one business that they wanted software that someone who was not very good at reading to be able to use.
Users get stupider and stupider because they are allowed to by companies that want to sell to the stupidest people they can find because these are the ones that will pay the most for software no matter how many issues it has.
The demands on software are increasing every day not just by the increasing complexity of our operating environment but by the requirements that stupider and stupider people need to be able to use it safely and profitably.
The problems of allocating blame for software that fails to meet requirements is a difficult one because it is the responsibility of everyone that contributes to its development, design, testing, marketing, use, selling, purchasing, training, legislating, securing, compliance, etc etc etc ad infinitum.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
