Ji Lee
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2009–2025
2:33 · 1.4M views · Apr 30, 2009
Street interviews of over 50 passersby in Times Square, asked what a browser is. Many answers show people confuse browsers with search engines or the internet.
Cited as evidence that ordinary users often don't understand basic technology like browsers, as a reminder for designers and developers.
20 comments from Hacker News
Your strengths and weaknesses have curves, troughs, peaks and spaghetti complexity. Personally I completely accept that I'm pretty mediocre as a "developer", but honestly I don't really care because I don't personally consider myself a developer, I just look at myself as someone who simply likes to explore, learn and play with web based technologies. This way I don't get sucked into the pigeon hole psychology of the professional world. If someone else wants to look at me in that light that's fine , but I keep an invisible boundary between myself and that kind of thing. I also like to occasionally and inadvertently ask inane questions at stackoverflow which get down voted at machine gun intervals. It's good for the 'soul'. I have a mentor that has been programming since the 70's , I once lived in a place where an extremely smart Belgian software engineer was staying who helped me while programming, and I currently met a really smart engineer near where I live who has been gradually throwing me suggestions coupled with some pseudo mentorship. All of these people are very smart,very empathetic and willing to share. Being around people like that in my view is absolutely needed for your sanity. You've probably seen this video. It's the one where Google attempts to explain what a web browser is to random people on the street. Watch it if you haven't. It will lend perspective. this video Ok that's all.
It's old now (and I wonder how much it's changed) - but there is this great video of Google employees asking people in Times Square what the difference is between a browser and a search engine: this video Most people conflate the two. IIRC the video was used internally as a tool to press the notion that they _had_ to build a browser or risk losing their search engine dominance.
Good for you. I've been doing tech support since 1988. I've seen many many PCs with hundreds of apps, some maybe heading into thousands, sometimes with custom hackery to get different versions running in parallel and stuff. Yes this is a thing. It is common. And the typical user does not know what an "app" is, or what OS they are using. I've lost count of the number of people that told me their computer was running Word or Office (not Windows), or who think they access the Web via Google because they don't know what a web browser is. Here is some proof, in case you don't believe me. this video If you can name the 20 apps you use the most often, you are the elite of the elite, the top 1% of 1% of computer users. Normal people are not like that. They don't know what they use or what it's called or what OS they run or what an "OS" is, and they outnumber us by approximately a million to one.
I didn't take that as an anti-intellectualism slight. People who write tech pieces on the web, be it on blogs or tech publications, are more computer savvy than the the majority of computer users. If you don't believe this, go watch the Google on-the-street video asking people what a browser is ( this video ). I was one of those power users who hated the ribbon when it was introduced in Office 2007. But my wife and kids - they loved it. [Edit - since I can't reply to thread below (why is that?)] I sell an Excel add-in, so I have a different perspective than most power users. The ribbon is a pain to program compared to the old command bars, making me dislike it at first. I've learned to appreciate it, though, because it's a lot easier to convey the add-in's features via the ribbon than it is using 16x16 icons on a command bar.
> This is a conscious decision that the user has made to use Chrome and send their URLs to Google Not to pick on this one point, but I want to add that I doubt many users are really conscious of it. People on HN are in a bubble; go to the local mall and ask people what they know. Ask them what a web browser is. this video That's why people in the IT field have a responsibility to provide safe products to the public. It's like someone on Wall Street saying that a typical person is making a 'conscious decision' to accept all the complex risks of a sophisticated financial instrument, or that I'm making a 'conscious decision' to accept all the risks of an airplane when I get on it - I have little idea how the plane works; it's up to the manufacturer, airline and goverment to ensure it's safe.