A lady in her 70s taught me the best way to explain a dead hard drive

Honestly, I was at her house in Phoenix fixing her old desktop. I told her the drive was gone and she just nodded and said, 'So it's like the book of my grandkids' pictures burned up in a fire, but the bookshelf is fine.' Ngl, that hit me. I use that line now when I have to give bad news about data loss. It makes a tech thing feel real for people. What's your go-to way to explain a big failure without scaring someone?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia59223d ago

Wow, that's a really good way to put it. Do you find older folks often have the best analogies for this stuff, since they've seen so many types of tech come and go?

zarapalmer23d ago

My grandpa still calls every game console a Nintendo... so maybe not. They've seen it all but the analogies can get pretty weird sometimes.