Easy to Use GUI Attracts Technophobes

AOL's main selling point has always been an easy to use interface. AOL was the first commercial on-line service to provide a Windows graphical front end, and "this alone has won it great popularity" (Stevenson 1994). Once the software is installed, getting on the Internet is a simple point-and-click process and most tasks like sending mail, reading news and posting articles to Usenet are also point-and-click. This allows anyone and everyone to post on Usenet and decreases the signal to noise ratio.

I recently tried AOL through their free introductory 10 hour trial period. Everything about AOL was as easy as point-and-click. The software was installed in less than five minutes and I was on the Internet within another 15 minutes. A few minutes later I was reading and posting messages to Usenet. It's somewhat scary that anyone and everyone can start posting to Usenet groups within 30 minutes of being on-line. A training period of only thirty minutes is just not a long enough to learn the intricacies of Usenet netiquette. In comparison my "first trip" to Usenet was not so smooth; I didn't have a point-and-click interface and had to learn hard to remember text commands. It was over three months of lurking before I ever posted a message on Usenet and even then I had to ask someone how to post.

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) like the Macintosh OS and Microsoft Windows OS, tend to more intuitive than command line interfaces, like DOS and UNIX. Easy to use GUIs have always attracted technophobic users because they allow users to completely circumvent arcane command sets. AOL's intuitive GUI allows even the most novice user to access the wealth of services offered on the Internet. However, not everyone, especially Usenet insiders, is happy to see the "techno-barbarians" at the gates of the Internet. People who had to learn things the hard way, using arcane UNIX commands, resent that fact others don't have to. Usenet insiders dislike the fact that AOL users cheated and took an easy route to the Information Superhighway. This pre-existing dislike tends to precipitate flame wars over trivial matters.

High-tech elitists are unnerved by any intrusion into their once exclusive domain Insiders generally hate easy to use GUIs which allow anybody, regardless of their level of computer skills, to access the Internet and they refer to this as "dumbing down" (Marriott 1995) Some will remember that this was the same argument against the Macintosh GUI, when insiders ridiculed the Mac as a mere toy. However, everyone has now embraced computer systems based on GUIs, the main example being the Windows operating system.