Wagahai’s corner

There are people that I’ve encountered that have a mental block when anything with “technology” comes up. This block has nothing to do with people’s financial class or exposure to technology. I’ve seen this in people who are near genius level and in the “average joe”.

Most of the time I encounter these blocks when working on people’s computers with them. Telling someone with a technology block to point at a square on a screen results in a blank stare. Any computer or technology related discussion needs to be repeated a number of times using different explanations each time before the person with the block can understand, regardless of how simple the concept is. To continue with the previous example, ask one of these people with the technology block to point at a square on a piece of paper and they might even be insulted by being asked to do a trivial task. The same task when on a computer screen becomes an incredibly difficult task.

I would love to know if there’s a term for this problem. I’ve encountered it for a long time and I think this may only get worse as technology gets forced into more and more areas of people’s lives.

Recent events reminded me about this because of an issue where someone in a position of authority was not flexible or willing to take advice when making decisions of a technical nature even though they had no information from which to base a decision. To make items worse, they also have the technology block, so they found it frustrating to listen and digest any information given to them.