Terrified of technology? In my experience it's the Desk jockeys and the bean-counters who are "terrified" of us common folk being let loose on modern tech. ;-)

I didn't think I would ever manage to drag our water/ waste-water system into the computer age back in the early ninety's. No problem with the operators. We know that technology actually makes our work easier (if intelligently implemented).

It was management and IT who had that same prejudice you seem to have against the blue collar workers and question our intelligence. I don't know your location but where I'm from if you don't have at least basic computer skills and some grasp of the "technology" involved in the process you won't last long in this field.

The biggest problem we had was SCADA programmers and engineers who could not quite grasp the "technology" of the water/ waste-water system unless you slow down, use simple words and then draw a diagram to explain it.

Of course the bean counters were reluctant to spend any money on any projects that wouldn't mean more votes for the local leadership. And of course upper-management afraid of letting us neanderthals loose on a bunch of expensive new computer systems.

Don't get me wrong. I've met a lot of fine folk in IT, management, government and the many outside companies we deal with and enjoy my career choice. I'll actual miss it when I retire in a few years. Yep I'm one of those "grumpy ol' geezers" (g) and a proud High-tech redneck!

You just can't categorize all of us operators by the ones you've met.

BTW to the topic at hand, I managed to talk our boss into not putting our SCADA on the net with one compromise. Read-only access to select areas so the department director can log on and see the current status of the system.

I found the reference to usability studies on office.microsoft.com watch the video. Caution! it crashed Firefox and Safari repeatedly. Opera took forever to load it, but IE worked splendidly! Wonder why?