Outsourcing thought.

I was reading the comments posted to a friend's blog, where I came across a post where someone was complaining about how people would come to her and ask questions to which the anwsers were already posted elsewhere. (The example was a county office in Texas regarding birth certificate applications.) I was about to respond as to why people do this (It's not because they don't look for the information, that's the result.) when I realized that I may be onto something larger...

Many of you may have been in this situation: Someone comes up to you and asks a question, like on how to do something. You may be annoyed at this, because you know full well that the anwsers they seek are already public knowledge somewhere and they simply don't feel like looking it up. In my line of work, this happens often. Someone may come to me asking how to burn a CD, and when I question what steps they've taken so far, they haven't even fired up the CD burning utility. No searches on a help file, not so much as a google query.

What is happening here? Certainly they could good look it up themselves. I might even be tempted to call them lazy. But I also know that were I to send them back to go look it up, it will take them much longer to do so than if I simply instructed them. I am familiar with the material, and have already synthsized the information from having read it and done it already.
One might reply to my previous paragraph with the old saying "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Certainly, there's a benefit to them learning it themselves. However, continuing with my example, learning about computers is not their primary job function. The hour or so they're learning how to burn a CD is an hour they could have been proofreading a document or auditing that months' finances. In short, by asking someone else to teach you on something that they can do quicker had you taught yourself, you are saving time and money.

The other aspect, is that if we are to believe that "the past of least resistance" holds true for all things, then it may also be easier to simply ask someone else, rather than look it up yourself. Not everyone is juggling time and work, and sometimes people are simply "lazy" if you'd like to call it that. But it's natural for us to make things easier for ourselves, and finding information easier is a driving force in this age. People want info faster, more accurate, and more pertainant to what they're looking for.

Going back to our CD example, the person in question can pull up a help document, type in a query, and maybe browse through 3-4 pages really quick before finding the instructions on how to burn her CD. Some of the steps may be unnecessary, and some of the information may be too much for what they want. The help document may return information on burning an audio CD, data, mixed mode, VideoCD, ISO, etc.

Contrast that with the question posed to me. Instantly I knew what program they were likely to be using, what type of CD they were likely to be burning, a quick assessment of their technical level, attitude, and a ton of other bits of information that I know simply because I am a person and I am familar with this person. I can produce far more relavant information regarding this subject and the person it pertains to than any computer ever could. Even the girl at the county office could narrow down what the person wanted far more quickly and accurately despite not having met them before.

This entry of mine is not ment to be a blanket excuse for every one person who comes to you with a question they couldn't bother to try and anwser for themselves. But it is meant to illustrate two things:

1. People outsource thinking. This is especially true in the service sector. As I also function as a help desk in my position, I find that this sums up what I do alot of the time. (It is a little known fact that we sysadmins do not have anwsers as to why your PC broke 90% of the time. We simply are paid to troubleshoot and figure it out while you work on something else, and we happen to be quite skilled at it.)

2. Technology has yet to catch up with people when it comes to sharing information. This is a broad statement; and pertains to portrayal of information as a whole. Books, papers, posters, forms, all convey information just like a computer does, and they do this more or less effectivally depending on the setting. Yet no device or medium can yet match the quickness and accuracy of asking a question to a knowledgable individual. This is the challenge for information technology specialists to solve, so that we can all have this access to a "knowledgable person" anytime, anywhere, without having to actually bother someone else...=)