Is it time we stopped having "users"?

Josh Bernoff writes:

The more I write and read about social media, the more frustrated I get with the term “users.”

When I started in the business twenty-mumble years ago, writing software manuals, people who used software were unusual (and had to be masochists). We spent a lot of time talking about users. The word user was helpful — it helped us to keep in mind that there was a poor slob on the other end of what we were building.

Those times are long gone. We know users are important now. Disappoint them and you lose. So why do we still have to call them “users,” which puts the emphasis on the technology they are using?

Josh’s point is that it makes us see the customers of the things that we do differently. If someone is a “user” they are somehow out of the ordinary. Ordinary people aren’t users, they are just people. Describing them as “users” dehumanizes them.

I’ve tried for a long time not to describe people as “users” not because of the reasons Josh is outlining (to change the way we see these people) but because I think it’s a demeaning term. The only other business with “users” is the illegal drugs industry and I don’t want to see any of my customers in that way.

Having said that, I find that it’s great shorthand that people understand. Not using it can make the documents that I write sound a bit politically correct. There is a real danger that using a different word just shifts the problem on to that word we already have this problem with words that describe people who are older or people with some form of disability/special need/etc. (you see my problem).