via Memex 1.1, this link to AT&T's 1920s' training film, 'How to use a dial telephone'. John Naughton writes about how 'technologies which once seemed strange can become so commonplace as to be invisible. It’s impossible to imagine a child growing up nowadays in Western society who did not instinctively know how to use a phone.'
But tonight, shopping for some drain clearing agent for our kitchen, I was struck by another aspect of consumer training: how informal some instructions (here dealing with a reasonably powerful corrosive) have become.
Household corrosives haven't become "invisible": they're too dangerous for that. There's something else here — a shift (and it has quite a history) in how much consumers can be assumed to know, how much they can, simply, be trusted and treated as (near) equals. (Democratisation at work, legal caveats permitting.)
And it also makes 'Buster' sound … well, cool. Instructions that advertise, even as they instruct …
