Why New Tech Can’t Please Everyone
Why it’s nearly impossible to design new tech that will please everyone

Jul 15, 2014 |By David Pogue

• David Pogue is the anchor columnist for Yahoo Tech and host of several NOVA miniseries on PBS.

At a recent party, a man was telling me about something that had happened at his nine-year-old’s elementary school. Apparently the teacher was having trouble getting his laptop to work with a projector. In the end, a kid—a kid, mind you—stood up, walked to the front of the classroom and solved the problem.

“Can you believe it?” this guy concluded. “We’ve reached the point where the students know more than the teachers!”

I laughed politely, but I thought it was one of the dumbest anecdotes I had heard in years. The young knowing more about tech than their parents? Who hasn’t heard that old trope a trillion times? This is surprising?

I forgot all about that exchange until I posted a how-to article recently, a step-by-step guide to PC hard-drive maintenance (defragmenting, cleaning, and so on). In the comments for the article, scorn and ridicule rained down. “I’ve only been doing that since Windows XP,” said one commenter (that is, 2001). “What kind of moron needs an article to show him how?”

A lot of morons, it would seem; it was our most shared article of the week.

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