Beware technology religion
This is one of the most difficult problems to deal with – when people get religion – in other words when people get extremely strong views on technology because that’s what the entrails of the chicken told them.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not equating strong views with a belief in voodoo, it is actually much more complicated than that. There are plenty of people with strong views who have detailed reasoning for those views. The issue is those views that are more religion than science.
For example, there are plenty of Windows avoiders out there. But there is a real difference between those that avoid Windows because they see them as the evil empire and those that avoid them because they understand just what a disaster the Windows registry is.
So whenever I encounter any strong views I have to dig down to see if there is reasoning behind it to separate it from religion. On the surface the distinction is not obvious. Occasionally I find that the strong views are based on an intuitive understanding of the issues that can’t easily be put into words. In these cases the process of digging down can sometimes lead to a switch from religion to science (a deconversion?).
The reason this bothers me so much is because I generally find that those for whom this is religion, can unpredictably change their views and worst of all, I don’t think they really understand technology.
At the same time I’m slightly concerned when I meet people who have been working in IT for several years and yet don’t have strong views. We all come across so much rubbish that anyone who fails to be polarised by it is probably not paying attention.