IQ Tests, Statistics, Gadgets, and Posers

Settling in for a day of blogging.

The MSNBC tech IQ test is one of the stupidest things I've seen in a long time. Before I launch right in, I got the link from D4D, who got it from somebody else, who got it...

To be obnoxious and brat-like, I object.

First thing's first. The "How Do You Rank?" is completely meaningless. There is no way the results from this test could be considered even remotely useful. It's an online test for tech IQ. Somewhat similar to polling readers of untranslated Kafke on whether they know how to ask for milk with their coffee in a German café. Idiots. Incompetents. Over two thirds of people that took this test got in the top two marking bands. Colour me stunned.

I hate statistics. I hate it when people are so blatantly stupid that it makes even me think in terms of statistics.

I also don't like the implication that being tech requires gadgets. Gadgets require money. Gadgets often also require a certain poser lifestyle. *cowers* Ok, so not so much a poser lifestyle, but certainly a specific lifestyle of some kind, and gadgetry does seem to be the latest poser accessory. I'm sick of guys that seem to think that just because they have PDAs I should be fetching them coffee and leaning over in a low-cut top just to get a glimpse of their shiny 6 inches of the latest technology.

I'm sorry, survey-writing arseholes, but I smell inadequacies. There's just something about a tinsy screen displaying meaningless obsessive information that fails to compensate in even the slightest for whatever else you may be lacking.

Gadget-lovers are not, of course, always posers. Posers are not always gadget-lovers either. Sometimes they have cars. Others use hair gel. Having enough money to fritter away on the latest developments that won't be worth 10% of their original price in only two years time does not automatically make someone tech. It most certainly shouldn't be the dominating factor in an IQ test.

I didn't do very well in this test. I'm not bitter, I've been saying for a while that I really am a bit of a disaster at tech. Apart from my crowning acheivement of being able to accurately set my video recorder, I'm really rather clueless. It took me two years to work out how to txt on my mobile phone. It took me another two years before I worked out predictive txt, and I still handle CDs like they might break if the wrong side were to come into contact with anything other than the player/drive or the case.

I still get nervous when a computer I'm on in the library slows down just a little, as there's a small part of me that clings to the terror that I might still possess the ability to crash a network of over a hundred machines just by walking in the room.

I'm no tech guru, in any field, but I don't need to be in order to identify this quiz as almost entirely worthless. *twitches* Ok, rant over.