I'm Sticking with Web 2.0 Is Easy to Use

I seem to have struck a chord the other day in my post about the useability of Web 2.0 tools here. A few thoughts as I stand (or actually right now sit) my ground on this. The comments were made by people who provide support to nonprofit folks who need help using the new technology tools (and I know this to be the case with these particular folks who are working very hard and doing a great job providing much needed support.) But here’s the problem. If you spend all day helping people who are having trouble using tools, then it looks and feels like an overwhelming number of people are having trouble using them (and, please remember, I’m talking about Web 2.0 tools like cell phones and blogs, not software applications like Excel which are incredibly difficult to use because the Empire wants to keep it that way.) But there is a much larger universe of people who aren’t having trouble, particularly younger people.  I stick with the statement that an overwhelming number of people find these tools easy to use and that’s why they have spread to quickly and widely.

I have the luxury of looking at the social change world from the vantage of what I hope it will become in the future. For people who spend every day dealing with how it is now, a much more difficult and wearing task, it can be difficult to see where it is all going.   I respect how hard the day-to-day struggles can be for some folks, but I also know that the explosion in the use of social media tools is no accident — it’s because they’re so easy to use for millions of people — and the future is very  bright for their growing use and expansion as children growing up fluent in the use of social media become older.

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