Uli on learning

Uli Kusterer: They’ll die out eventually…:

Just like people in the original Mac days thought users would not understand keyboards, I hear people today saying that users will never understand multi-tasking, will never understand what an “application” or an “app” or a “web site” are, and how they differ and how they are the same.

Worth remembering: people learn. Think how fast the web was adopted. Think how fast cell phones went from nothing to everywhere. Very young children know how to install apps from the App Store.

As a species, humans are incredibly resourcesful and adaptable — that’s the key to our success. And today most of our problems come from way too much success. Which is a good problem to have (better than the alternative, at least).

So anyone who’s worried that people won’t be able to learn new things should just stop worrying. For humans in general, learning new things is as natural and happy-making as sunlight.