Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [70]
Windows PCs are constantly vulnerable to Internet viruses, which pose a constant risk to everything on the user's computer: e-mail, documents, photos, everything. (Microsoft Outlook is particularly vulnerable to viruses, in part because it's such a widespread tool.) In fact, studies have shown that an unprotected PC on the Internet today will be infected by a virus, on average, within fifteen minutes.55 In contrast, Macs have very little risk of catching an Internet virus. Fewer viruses are written for Macs, and as stated above, OSX is more stable than Windows and thus less susceptible.
Finally, note that many Macs today can also run Windows, identical to any Windows PC, via software called BootCamp. This can be valuable for users who want to work on a Mac but occasionally have to use a Windows application.
Except for large corporations that are saddled with Windows-based enterprise software, I recommend that companies and individuals standardize on Macintosh computers. They are slightly more expensive in the initial purchase price, but in the long term the combination of Macs and bit literacy training pays a tremendously high return in productivity gains. For a case study, I offer my own company, Creative Good, a ten-year-old consulting firm that issues Macs to all employees. Almost all of our clients are Windows-based companies, but we have no trouble sharing files and executing detailed projects. The Mac allows the team to practice bit literacy in e-mail and todo management, file formats, and file management; doing so in Windows would be possible, but more difficult.
The Good Easy
At Creative Good, we never use Macs as they arrive in the box. Before we hand a new Mac to a new employee, we outfit it with something we call the "Good Easy."56 This is our in-house version of bit literacy, our own particular blend of tools, features, and settings that we use to optimize our computers for the consulting work we do.57 To any experienced employee at Creative Good, an out-of-the-box Macintosh is painfully inefficient compared to what it becomes after the Good Easy setup.
Separately, whenever we hire a new employee, we set aside time for several sessions of "Good Easy training." This includes many of the methods described in this book, but it's customized to our consulting work and internal processes. (Indeed, any company would have to customize its bit literacy training to its own processes, deciding which skills to focus on and which exceptions to allow.) Whether it's the Good Easy or some other in-house blend, the important thing is to have both a training program and a supporting technology environment to ensure that users can learn and practice bit literacy as a long-term discipline.
Afterword by Phil Terry
Bit literacy may bring about the biggest productivity jump in the global economy over the next twenty years. Millions of people today are overwhelmed and frustrated by the gap between the promise of technology and what they are actually able to achieve using it. There is tremendous opportunity for improvement: most companies ignore the fact that their managers, employees, and customers have no idea how to manage digital information. I commonly witness executives, even at technology firms, flail in their attempts to accomplish simple tasks, like finding documents they have previously created. Inboxes with thousands of e-mails, file structures that make no sense, and other inefficient practices described in this book are common throughout the corporate world.
For the past twenty years, the PC and the Internet have brought dramatic productivity enhancements, helping to keep inflation low, increase corporate profits, and raise wages in some industries. But these technologies have generated more bits, making people more and more overwhelmed. The paradox is that the early success of digital technology in improving productivity is now leading to less productivity.
The productivity problem is becoming visible. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the productivity rates