Creatures of Necessity
by Mitch Stone, the Accidental Expert
Everybody always asks me how to become an accidental expert.
Well, to tell the truth, hardly anyone ever asks, but it's the columnist's prerogative to make grand assumptions about what people really need to know.
You may think of accidental expertise as being the same as a "hobby." Not hardly.
Unlike stamp collecting or other pastimes driven primarily by curiosity and affinity, cultivating an accidental expertise is mainly a product of a more basic human instinct: self preservation. As such, it's nearly always self-taught -- a characteristic distinguishing accidental expertise from professional expertise.
In fact, if you've ever been faced with some daunting and unwelcomed problem, and threw your entire being into solving it, you're probably an accidental expert and don't even know it.
Most of the time, developing an accidental expertise is unconscious effort. But pursuing one for the wrong reasons can be a formula for frustration at best, and disaster at worst. I should know.
Years ago I decided that if I was going to be utterly dependent on cars, I really ought to acquire some basic automobile repair skills. With that in mind, I bought myself a 1961 Mercedes Benz sedan.
The Mercedes not only looked pretty darn cool, but had a simple four-banger carbureted motor, a roomy engine compartment and a four speed manual transmission. I figured that if I was going to learn auto repair, this was just the car for it.
So, what did I learn? I learned that I was a lousy auto mechanic -- competent on theory, but a genuine menace with a wrench in my hand. The old Mercedes suffered mightily under my care, and revenged my shabby treatment by stranding me in some pretty interesting places. Eventually the poor beast ended up stored in the backyard, where it quickly became a vine-covered monument to my automotive ineptitude.
Coming to my senses took some time and ego displacement, but I eventually threw in the grease rag, and bought my first new car. Whenever I risk a peek under the hood of my car, something I do rarely now for fear of breaking something, I'm stunned by its complexity.
I don't even have a respectable theory about what half the weird-looking stuff in there does, and I suspect the manufacturer greased the outside of the engine block to make all that junk fit. As if to complete my surrender to modern automotive technology, I don't even change my own oil anymore.
The miraculous mechanical mystery of my car, I've decided, is just fine with me, because the net result of its bewildering design is safe, comfortable and reliable forward propulsion. Unlike the old Mercedes, my complicated cars have never left me leaning over a hot fender on a steamy roadside near Buellton.
This happy ending was made possible by the ingenuity of the automotive engineers. They've succeeded in making a complex product so reliable and easy to use, the average driver will almost never come face to face with the labyrinth under the hood.
Put your backside on the seat, turn the key, and go. Expertise not required. Hallelujah!
So, have you programmed your VCR lately?
My totally unscientific survey of flashing "12:00s" tells me that VCR-proficient adults are roughly as numerous in the population as Ross Perot voters. It's that simple.
Well, it isn't simple, and that's the problem. Twenty-five years of VCR evolution, and these maddening little boxes still dare us to comprehend their most basic functions. It's human engineering gone on holiday. Permanently.
If you're one of the select few who are comfortable programming your VCR, then congratulations -- you're an accidental expert.
Now consider the personal computer. Everyone tells tales of flogging their PC into submission these days, don't they?
The fact is, we spend an inordinate amount of time making our computers operate as advertised. Without ever meaning to, we acquire the expert skills required to nurture these devices along, even when we have no special curiosity or affinity for the process. We just want to make the darn things work.
Why do we sop up all this superfluous knowledge, and carry it around it our heads? Why do we tolerate this forced march into accidental expertise?
I personally suspect it has something to do with our attitudes towards technology -- if it's high tech, it ought to require specialized skills.
I say phooey to that.
If my experience with cars is of any value, we're forced to hack out clearings amid thickets of dysfunctional technology simply because the product designers are indifferent to our needs, or simply lazy. A VCR or a computer shouldn't be any more difficult to operate then a car, and without question, they should be as reliable.
So don't let any company stoking away a billion dollars of your money every month tell you it can't be done. And don't let them tell you that it can, and then not deliver on the promise. Tell 'em you want to replace all this accidental expertise with skills of your own choosing. Who knows, someday it might even happen.
And when that day comes, you might even find time for a hobby.
01 March 1999 |
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