Many people are very uncomfortable with the degree to which their work and life depend on computer systems they do not understand. They feel vulnerable to computer problems, pressured into depending on more tech than they really want, and do not believe they have the knowledge or resources to remedy problems with it.

So when something goes wrong, they feel helpless. This is not unfounded, but it can often make the problem worse.

Depending on the person, this can lead to blaming or blame-dodging behavior. IT folks — did you ever ask someone what the error message was and they say “It’s not my fault!” or “It’s not my job to fix it, you’re the computer person!” … as if blame ever helped!

The “tech person” differs not so much in knowledge but in having a different emotional response to tech doing a weird/broken thing: when something goes wrong, they jump to curiosity. It’s not “I already know how to fix this” but “We don’t know what happened here yet, but we can find out.” Knowledge comes from exercising this curiosity.

But this is not something that everyone can do, because people who feel unsafe don’t typically go to curiosity to resolve their unsafety.