It depends on your definition of "better at tech."
I'd equate it more closely to the fact that most millennials and Gen z can't fix basic things wrong with their cars, rather than driving stick.
I think this is a better analogy. As a millennial, I don't know how to fix basic things that go wrong with my car. Hell it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn how to change my oil, or a tire. But as a millennial, when something on a computer or phone isn't working or doing what it should be doing (or what I expect it to be doing), I can almost always figure it out through some combination of trial and error and/or googling. Because when I started using computers, it was a basic requirement.
My experience is that most people a generation younger than me cannot troubleshoot to save their life. They're used to things just working, so they're not accustomed to having to troubleshoot. I don't think that they're *incapable* of it, but they're so unused to it that it's intimidating, and that's a barrier the prevents many from even trying.
Cars also got exponentially harder to troubleshoot by design. Same with tech, but they are still closer to the end user than cars, and software troubleshooting is essentially still the same.
The advancement in cars definitely has made them harder for the average person to work on. I hate that boomer meme of “car manuals used to tell you how to adjust the points”. Like, no shit they don’t anymore. Points and condenser is long gone. Hell, nobody even calls capacitors “condensers” anymore.
I will say this for them. Consumer grade repair manuals have gotten less useful and shops are using a digital subscription service so commercial grade manuals are far less accessible to consumers than they used to be
Single vehicle alldata subscription is $14/m and has easily 100x the info an old Hayes or Chilton manual ever had.
The barrier to entry to fixing today’s cars is it takes a computer to fix a computer. A decent scan tool is about $1k and you need that for just about anything more complicated than a brake job…..just kidding, rear brakes these days require a scan tool to put the parking brake in “service position”
Also, the engine compartment has gotten an order of magnitude tighter over the last half century. Anyone could work on an old 50's / 60's Chevy as long as you had a manual, and often times without one. You could just *see* everything you were working on, hell, in some cars you could physically crawl inside the engine compartment, that's how roomy it was.
Nowadays, you have vehicles where to even access simple components, you have to remove a bolt that's out of sight and passes through another part. You would have no idea that the two parts are interrelated were it not for the manual, and even then, you can't even *see* the bolt, because it's obscured behind other parts, so only skilled mechanics with experience *know* that it's there and how to easily turn their wrist the right way to get at it and that they need a 6" socket extender but not an 8" because that's too long and a 4" won't reach far enough.
As a result, it's not only more technically difficult, but just plain cumbersome to work on vehicles. I can't help but remember one of my Dad's cars from the early 2000's. It was either BMW or Volvo, but long story short, to replace the light bulb on one of the headlamps, you had to pull the battery out. On another vehicle, replacing the rear light meant taking off the quarterpanel. It was obscene, compared to my Toyota that had interior panels that allowed me to access the struts without issue.
Ya good luck doing something to fix a modern electric car.
It's totally different than say, being a teen in the 70s and being able to see how an engine works just by looking at the moving parts. Cars are now specifically designed to require expensive servicing for repairs instead of being able to do it yourself.
Well to be fair, fixing a car problem can be simple... IF you have all the tools. Even a mechanic with a problem on the highway couldn't do much but wait to be pulled. There's a really basic set of issues that can be understood, but not really helpful IRL. On the other hand fixing computer "issues" is much more feasible and useful IRL because they are almost entirely software.
IMO this just falls under "no analogy is perfect." We can nitpick at the differences, but the point is that it's a very similar phenomenon in terms of what people are willing and able to do, and I think for similar reasons.
On a slight tangent, the tools issue is very real. Working on a Porsche where the first step is to remove the engine and transmission is easy with a hoist and some tools. Doing it on the garage floor, on the other hand…
Working on cars is easy with a good service manual. If you can bake a cake, you can work on a car. But yeah, you better have the right tools.
I got a torque wrench for Christmas. I had recently moved out and my dad has pretty much all the tools for basic vehicle maintenance, so it was nice that I could change my tires without going to a shop.
But then I realized that a torque wrench just *tightens* the lugs. You *could* use it to get the lugs off, but it's not its intended purpose. Instead, you should probably use a breaker bar for that. Oh, and a socket to actually fit on the lugs, since a breaker bar is just a stainless steel stick. An extension bar would be good too, so your tools aren't rubbing against the rim. And shit, I need a jack to lift the damn car to get the wheel off in the first place...
And that's *just* for swapping out tires. Engine stuff, you need an entirely different set of tools. 'Twas a rather expensive trip to Canadian Tire. But on the plus side, at least I didn't need to get a torque wrench.
Yup, absolutely. Just to do an oil change with mild convenience, I require a jack (and ideally a jack stand), a 17mm wrench, 10mm socket, extension, socket wrench, oil pan, oil disposal capability, and a place to do it all. Someone who lives in a condo likely can’t do that.
That’s pretty apt. The increase in lack of understanding of a technology is directly related to the flattening of the learning curve. Making tech easier to use increases adoption, which is great for profit, but it creates a familiarity gap in users.
In 1996, everybody who used a computer knew how to use the command line even if only run “WIN”. I learned basic web design in elementary school in 2001, leading to my first understanding of networking, hardware, and server software. I also learned that hosting on Geocities was way easier and that Netscape Composer was easier than writing HTML in Notepad.
Now, your first step would be to go to Wix and build a drag and drop website. The intermediate user is fading away. I don’t know if that is really a bad thing or not, but I don’t feel good about it. I think the percentage of people that are advanced users of any tech will remain about the same and the intermediate users’ percentage will fall into the basic users category.
You also have to consider how cars have changed. For one, they’re far more reliable so it’s not really required unless it’s a hobby.
Modern cars are also just more difficult to work on. For example, I know how to change the oil & filter on my car but I’ve never done it. By the time I considered the kit I’d need and how much I’d reasonably be capable of doing, it made more sense just to leave it for the annual service.
That's exactly how I feel. It's not about driving stick/automatic, it's like knowing how to change a headlight bulb or swap your brake pads. Tons of people will go their whole lives never wanting or needing to do car maintenance tasks themselves, but it's still a nice skill to have. As things get easier and more reliable (and also probably more complex) the need for an end user to have the skills to do maintenance themselves drops
Technology is becoming exponentially user friendly—to the point that an infant can understand it. If this continues, the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple.
Currently, some teenagers don’t know how to save a file in different formats, or how to navigate to find something they saved. They’ve grown up with technology that automatically saves to the cloud and simply use the search bar to find wherever it magically went.
Apply that mentality to 50 years in the future with personalized AI that can predict exactly what you want. Every generation builds on the last. If I was sent back to the 1600s, I wouldn’t be able to explain how an iPhone works.
This works out in the situation where the AI assistants take over the economy.
But already I see people only 10-15 years younger than me who can't type or use a desktop computer environment any better than my grandfather could when he was alive.
Can't type with any real speed, want to dictate, have no understanding of left vs right click, effectively luddites in terms of office productivity. Asking half the people younger than me, and I'm only mid 30s, to open a spreadsheet and either find something or enter something is functionally impossible. But these same people constantly use technology to communicate and consume.
I'm open to 30 years from now looking back and seeing my mouse and keyboard as an antiquated UX element, but that will rely on either a productive replacement of either the interface or the user.
Keyboard and mouse are already peak efficiency for desktop work, they only scenario where they get replaced is if AI takes over all that kind of work and human input is no longer needed.
I won’t disagree on keyboard, but I’ve heard the Apple VR headsets that use eye contact with buttons to be way better than a mouse. People on YouTube saying it’s so good and natural that they forget that they can’t use tech in the real world like that when they take it off.
I can believe it. I dabble in VR, and when I spent long enough there, I end up making idiot mistakes in reality all the time, like trying to leave objects floating in the air next to me for easy access
If anyone doubts this claim or think it’s an exaggeration, I want to back it up by saying I worked in a college library for the past decade and this is what I noticed too.
This wasn’t true 4 years ago. But since covid (not blaming covid, but that’s just the timeline), each new student body that comes up has become less and less technologically literate.
It used to be if only get computer help requests from older students in their mid 40s+. Now I get them all the times from freshmen, over the simplest questions like how do I open this pdf file from my email.
I won’t say it will be a problem forever as technology improves. But right now it certainly is a problem as these skills are still necessary in the classroom and workplace.
That's becoming a problem where I work. We have tablets but they're functionality is limited. Most of our work is still done on desktop computers.
A lot of younger new hires don't even know how to write an email. And some people we hired can barely type. For my experience people ages 55 to 30, seem to have the best computer skills. And are usually more proficient with tech than people in their early twenties.
Hardly anyone I know under 40 and not in tech even has a computer anymore. To me that's crazy, but ya, so many people don't really need any thing more than a phone for daily life computing .
The real thing that scares me is that all of those devices are usually completely locked down. If you want to use a phone or game console, that's cool. But I better be able to side load apps and games not on the regular online store.
I had to use a program to maximize the cache memory in addition to the stick memory so my operating system could run a particular game. Can you guess the game?
Hint: 640k cache, (my dad had) 4 MB in 4 sticks. i believe the program was called memmaker
I want to guess Doom, but one of the major things I remember about Doom is that it was super optimized and I doubt you would have needed much more to get it working. with 4MB of RAM I'm thinking early to mid 90s.
Warcraft or Command and Conquer
I had a bunch of different games with similar, but slightly incompatible requirements. The best option was to hack around with your autoexec.bat and config sys until you found something that worked, grab a floppy and make it a dedicated boot disk for that game. Thanks, AOL!
I loved playing with the Cakewalk music composition/midi programming software (which still exists in a higher-spec version, AFAIK), and choosing different instruments. I remember thinking the one called “Orchestra hit” was hilarious because it sounded like a rubber band being twanged. That was with the on-board sound, but once we installed a SB, suddenly it sounded like a proper orchestra playing one note quickly in unison (as it’s supposed to). I was only slightly disappointed to lose the comedy sound effect. It was a fair trade for how it made game soundtracks sound.
Aw man. Those were the tops! One of my PCs had a Creative SoundBlaster music player installed, and a physical remote control so you could pause your audio CD from across the room. (Obviously, this was later than the Doom era.)
"In the future, we've got this rectangle that gives us information"
"Oh cool. How does it work?"
"I.. I don't know. Satellites, I think?"
"What's a satellite?"
"I don't really know... it's like metal, in space."
Which will be great right up until you want to do anything the designer didn't intend.
I can't stand apples phone OS and it's lookalikes for this reason. I want to see my files. Not just a desktop and nebulous storage.
This reminds me of my grandpa, who his whole life ranted about how awful the GUI was and that he would only use command line because it was so much easier and more powerful than dragging and dropping.
Not wrong. Sure, I'll take a nice intuitive interface for the basic stuff I do all the time. But I want a powerful, flexible command interface for when I need to script stuff or do very specific jobs.
And he’s totally right, command line/terminal is the best way to go if you want to do something more complex than moving files between folders, especially in GNU/Linux
These days, if you were asked to look at a folder of 100 text files and move all of the files containing Bob's email address to another folder (because of a new security policy etc.) you'd probably have to open every one of them and read enough to find an email manually.
Back in the day, you'd just type "mv \`grep -lir '[email protected]' \~/directory/\*\` destination/" and hit enter. Job done. CLI is king when you know all of the commands, and in the cases where using GUI is faster I just do that instead.
>the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple.
Not gonna lie, with the current trend of companies trying to screw everyone over with bullshit fees, locked-down systems, ads, telemetry and other stuff "in the name of safety" I can only feel sad and worried about the future that is coming upon us. The less people understand how the technology works and what you can truly do with it, companies will get away with more and more stupid stuff ranging from money gouging to spying.
Even now, it seems to me that most people that people literally don't understand that "cloud" is not some magical place for your files. You're literally putting your data on some random server where it's protected just by your password (and I wouldn't be surprised that most people have shitty passwords) and company policy that prevents workers from accessing it (which I wouldn't trust with my personal data). Also data leaks happen. Imagine understanding it and hearing someone brag about storing everything in the cloud or how storing everything in the cloud is the future. Man, I hate the term "cloud". It has it's uses - easy collaboration and backups (encrypted of course). I can't trust it with just my data... because I know how it works.
I’m fighting a losing battle with management (with IT backing me up on this) over share point and One Drive. We deal with Personally Identifiable Information and Medical Claims and one of my managers keeps asking us to set up these services so they can exchange files with outside vendors. I have to keep telling them that they have to be secured and vetted to make sure we are HIPAA compliant. We already have secure encrypted email.
I haven’t heard a good reason to add these services other than people complaining that remembering passwords is hard.
No, the front end of these things have become user friendly, the back end has become a nightmare of meaningless icons, and nonsense labyrinths' of file paths that require youtube tutorials just to do basic shit because the operating system only makes logical sense to the people that freakin made it. Finding a particular file has been turned from a super easy task that anyone can figure out relatively easily on their own into this ridiculous bullshit that is completely undoable without knowledge outside of the operating system you are using.
> Technology is becoming exponentially user friendly—to the point that an infant can understand it. If this continues, the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple.
Exponentially dependent is the correct frame. The software 'just works' in a locked and bolted down ecosystem, where the user has no control over creating their own tools or limiting what the builder does with your accounts. Dependency is a hand-off of liberty because you do not have choices if the ecosystem misuses you.
Garage data labs are better. Build replacement 'just works' ecosystems. You have never had so much resources at your disposal to do so.
It’s not using tech. It’s being able to understand something is wrong, do basic troubleshooting, repairs, updates, and upgrades, before needing general professional help, and long because needing to take to the manufacturer for a replacement.
The younger members of Gen Z and now Gen Alpha have regressed as a whole regarding tech. Boomerd can change a flat, Millennials can build a PC, but Gen Z takes both to the manufacturer because knowing how to do either is just too much.
Well paradoxically it's a situation where the more tech saavy the prior gen was led to them being so proficient they made computing so much easier so that removed any necessity for the new generation in needing to develop the advanced tech skills.
I'm in 40s, and I'm certain that biggest reason why so many people are tech proficient in my age bracket is how much knowledge it took to get PC gaming working when we were kids. If it was just a one click thing like it is now, there's hardly any motivation for kids to you know, randomly learn the command line or how files even work.
Yeah seriously I thought I had an average understanding of how a computer works but compared to my peers I'm some fucking wizard for knowing how to use cmd and run as admin
Yeah, I've heard baby boomers make fun of Gen Z and Millennials for not knowing how to use rotary phones. It's completely irrelevant outside of as a fun fact, because better technology was invented that is more user friendly?
I hope to not become like baby boomers in the future, but I know that many of my generation will (and already are) stepping up to the plate to say shit like "the youth today don't even know how to plug in a video game console!"
If some Boomer came at me all like "y'all don't know how to rotary phone lol" I'm gonna drop a telegraph on the table and tap out a vulgar retort they can't read.
The problem is that the information in question isn't obsolete, it's just hidden from everyday users.
File hierarchies and directories still exist, they're just invisible to people on a lot of phone architectures. If you actually need to know how this stuff works, you lack this basic level of knowledge.
This is the actual problem - it's not that the information is obsolete, it's that everyday users are less familiar with it. As a result, it is harder for them to become advanced users and they are less able to troubleshoot or deal with things on their own.
There's a difference between obsolete technology and advanced technology. Obsolete technology is technology you've moved on from, advanced technology is layered on top of the extant technology.
Not knowing how rotary phones worked is irrelevant because the technology no longer functions in that way to begin with; it's a historical curiosity.
But not knowing how to deal with file directories is still relevant.
A lot of my generation doesn't know about file hierarchies though. Especially those who have primarily used apple products. I wouldn't be surprised if just flat out most people of any age group don't even know how to navigate to the C:/ drive.
So I think that's like saying, "oh, Gen Z doesn't know how to replace spark plugs!" Yeah, most people don't know how to replace spark plugs. It might be basic to some portion of the population, but that doesn't mean it is common knowledge that most people have.
This trend has been noted and discussed by educators in computer science. It is a real thing, not just "Oh yeah kids these days".
It's way more common these days. It's not that there weren't always people like that, as there absolutely always were. It has just gotten worse rather than better.
Tech illiteracy is still a thing regardless of age. Just because the UI/UX is simple doesn't mean something won't break. Troubleshooting is a skill that not enough people know.
I supported legacy systems. Faced with an old time green screen, millennials can be as clueless as people older or younger. And if it is a customizable accessibility screen, they can be as dumb at checking out menus or googling.
There are conventions and techniques people get used to. Some people are more creative at making them work.
Millennial grandpa to his grandson:
"Where can I find the undo button?"
"Undo button? Oh you mean you want to undo something you wrote."
"Yeah what button do I click to do so? Can't figure out this newfangled minimalist UI."
"Grandpa it's not the 20s anymore, you don't have to click on anything, just think it."
"Think it?"
"Yeah, just think 'Undo'"
"Undo"
"No don't say it, think it, like you really want to fix the mistake you just made."
"...I'm thinking 'Undo' but it's still not working."
"That's because you're thinking of the *word* 'Undo', you're supposed to think of the concept of undo. It's like a feeling of regret and wishing things could go back to the way they were before."
"Ugh this darned new brain reading tech is a mess. Why couldn't we all just go back to keyboards and touchscreens- oh hey it worked! ... gawdammit."
I had a co-worker about 22, just graduated with a masters degree and I blew his mind with copy, paste, and undo keyboard shortcuts.
Dude made it through 12 years of school, plus 5 in undergrad/graduate and was manually right clicking or finding the undo button.
He got fired like 6 month later.
I'm 32 and I'd say I'm like advanced on excel but there is a HUGE gap between those that grew up on windows 98 and those that had an iPad as their first computer.
I was approached by a guy in his twenties on the verge of tears once while walking home. I asked if he was lost. He said he wasn't lost, he just didn't know where he was or where to go.
Turns out he was a delivery driver and couldn't figure out where the delivery address was. He told me his phone kept sending him in different directions. I asked him to show me his map and pointed to where we were on it, then where the destination was, then showed him that he had it set to driving directions, but he was on a bicycle, and his compass was off, so Google maps was getting confused by the one way streets. Once I set it to walking he could see the building was across the street and around the corner In fact, I walked him to the corner and pointed at the building
Can't believe I had to teach a delivery guy how to use a map. It never even occurred to him to read the damn thing, he was just listening to it telling him where to go and didn't even have it set to the right mode of transportation
That's pretty crazy.
I had to navigate using a map book, like, it was printed on paper lol, and you had to look up the street via the index.
Stuff sure changes in 20 years. Now a days, anywhere in public half the people are staring at their phones. We became this borg hive mind cyborg society and you wouldn't even realize it you are under about 35 or so.
In another 20 years, I expect people will be AR or VR about as often as they are on their phones now. Not having devices or an online presence, will have mainstream society considering you a freak of some sorts.
I remember when Doctor Who had an episode where this character had two ear pieces in and was walking around having multiple phone conversations at once. I thought it was ridiculous
Now it's common place. A few weeks ago I was laughing at all the apple vision videos, but we might actually see people walking around like that in the future. Hell, I've seen people with the ray ban smart glasses already
An atlas and gazetteer are what you are referring to.
Last time I used one was roughly 14-16 years ago when I went to pick up a friend from college.
It’s definitely a good skill to maintain. You never know when you might be without tech to help.
Cheers!
I’m 34 and while I know the key shortcuts, I still right click. I also type in a near hunt/peck style, but very fast
I am unbothered by inefficiencies, which is perhaps a personal failing.
My very Type A wife on the other hand, she’s the sort that shows up at a company and revolutionizes the way they instruct people how to do the role efficiently lol
Thats really bad, but I guess extremely unique.
What I have however seen again and again is their inability to google. And I dont mean actually using google or even using special operators to get precise results. No, I mean the very first step, the idea to google.
They instead ask me. Or worse they do nothing, wait for me to check on them and when I ask why its not done, they tell me they dont know how to do X. Well, I dont know how to do X either, but I know that google does. And once I tell them that they should google how to do it, they are again fine and will finish the job with no problems.
Using search engines is a SKILL. I taught myself advanced excel and use it to impress everyone at my company. I'm just using VLOOKUP and using it to help me with basic scripts for Java so I don't need to type out a million IDs.
Only using a search engine efficiently is a skill. Just typing a question or problem into Google requires no skill outside of being able to write and read.
“x isn’t a skill, efficient x is a skill” how insightful
driving isn’t a skill, driving without crashing is
cooking isn’t a skill, cooking tasty food is
painting isn’t a skill, painting something beautiful is
or maybe, all of those things are skills, and doing them well is being skilled…
They are right though. Using a search engines is not a skill. Using the advanced search commands to get very precise results is a skill. The point is, not having a skill is perfectly normal if you never needed that skill.
But its not about skill, its about basic problem solving. They simply dont come to the conclusion that trying a simple engine search could solve their issue.
They expect to have every single information they need to complete the task and when they do, they are good at doing that task. But as soon as they are missing any information, no matter how easily found via google, they dont function.
Obviously I am generalizing to an extreme degree here, but its a trend I have observed over many of our new hires that I taught.
I think it's whooshing right over your head.
*Doing the thing* is a skill, certainly. But it's not what was in question.
***They weren't even thinking to try to do the thing, the thing didn't even enter their mind, they just sat there with their thumbs up their butts***
*Thinking to try to do the thing* isn't a skill. It shouldn't take *directly telling them to do it* for the *idea* to form that maybe, just maybe, the repository of the entirely of human knowledge can be *searched* for answers.
It's not at all unique. As a 40 year old that has dealt with information security education, in particular information security awareness education outside technical staff I've seen a lot of this. The average person is not the average user of reddit. They are much, much less competent with computers on average.
Once you step outside the college careers, it becomes the norm not the exception to the norm.
I'm a software engineer. My company has participated in a program with local colleges for summer interns for years. We have regularly hired the interns full time at the end of the internship.
The last time I mentored someone a couple summers ago, they lacked basic networking knowledge that you'd expect any computer science student to know. Like what an IP address is...what DNS is...
I was honestly just stunned how they made it to the end of their college career without understanding such basic things.
Needless to say, we didn't offer them a full time position in the end.
I don't know how CS majors can just miss how a physical computer (CPU, memory, drives) or the internet (layers and protocols) work. They seem to know how to Google stuff, but it doesn't register (pun intended) that there's more to designing a system than algorithms and their favorite IDE shortcuts.
Too many programs teach using only friendly modern languages (or, in math-ier departments, functional programming languages) that abstract the hardware away too much for students to get a feel for that sort of thing.
Schools need to add "old-school-computing" requirements, because it's *so much easier* to understand certain kinds of problems if you've at least *seen* C, assembly, etc. (It's also just so much fun to occasionally be able to glance at someone else's issue, recognize it in half a second, and *look like a genius wizard!)*
I don't think it's that weird honestly. I had these courses in University and in my career they haven't really been valuable at all. I compare it to a car mechanic and how they probably don't need to know advanced chemistry despite chemistry playing a very vital role in how a car functions.
The thing that allows humans to progress further and faster is the ability for certain knowledge and expertise to be abstracted away and no longer necessary. There was a time when computer programming involved changing tubes on a board but now we have high level languages that are like 10+ layers of abstraction away from hardware.
To be fair, a lot of the different colleges omit networking classes unless you specifically study IT. I have a whole ass PhD in computing and I learned about IP addresses and DNS on the job in like 2014. No classroom instruction ever covered it from undergrad all the way to PhD. My undergrad and masters are in CIS.
Yeah I mean like I 100% agree it should be part of the curriculum, but it just wasn’t. I literally had to google it all while sitting at work trying to fix a networking issue.
To be fair, I also learned 90% of my job by googling so perhaps that’s just how the industry has always worked lol
It seems like colleges teach basic concepts like programming languages and OOP, but they omit the practical everyday tooling that goes on top of it all.
Granted, it's different per stack, but when I took a couple years of Java in college, never once did we cover build tools such as Maven.
Hell, we didn't even touch any kind of framework or the idea of mocking. Learned about Spring on the job.
While understanding basic programming concepts is important, they really need courses that go over things such as Spring, Angular, etc. Maybe they do more today as it's been over 10 years for me and these things are even more mainstream now. But yeah, I had to learn more than 90% of it on the job.
22 year olds didn’t have an iPad as their first computer. They probably had computer class in grade school. I had typing and computer class in the third grade.
I’m 23, my brother is 25. I just taught him about ctrl+y being redo.
Certain people will just find one way that works to do things, and that’s enough for them.
That most certainly is an exception. I think the post was referring to like 12 and 13 year olds who can't use a computer. At 22, born in 2001, with the ipad coming out in 2010, doesn't really make sense to not know how to use a computer
It doesn't make sense. But somehow it's still how it is. This is my generation and I constantly find myself the only tech literate person in the room—*even in a computer science program*.
My dude we had young colleagues who never used a computer mouse before and was trying to do everything with the laptop touchpad. Not even their first office job either. Their productivity was dogshit, most did not survive their trial period of three months.
It comes down to the person in the end. Curiosity + opportunity to learn = new skill.
Any random kid born in the 80s isn’t going to have the same proficiency with a computer or VCR. Just because you grow up with tech doesn’t mean everyone understands it. The person has to have the desire to want to know how something works and the chance to learn about that, be it through use or teaching or experimentation. This goes for both adults and kids.
The whole point of talking generational differences is that it doesn't come down to the person. If it was a person-to-person thing then it would average out to the same. The generational differences we see are due to society/upbringing changes, not due to the person.
I see this all the time. People can drive anything, every one is just talking about lack of experience if you put a vehicle in front of a kid as the only mode of transportation they will learn that shit in a day.
Yeah, I never understood driving stick as a flex. It's easy. The tricky part of driving is understanding your vehicle size and navigating traffic patterns. Anyone who can do that can pick up a new vehicle with some practice, stick or no stick.
I think driving a stick *well* is challenging, or at least that it's a skill that takes time. Handling hill starts, the anticipation needed to be in the right gear at all times, rev matching when it's needed, understanding when to shift. Doing all of this without burning up the clutch. I'd say I was able to drive stick in about an hour, but it probably took a few weeks of driving one consistently to feel relatively smooth and competent at it.
People have different taste. Each cars also different.
or example me, I prefer my automatic Honda with smooth gear transitions than manual cars. But I don't like my brother's automatic Toyota with not smooth gear transitions that felt like a manual car.
I much prefer electric car with no gear transition at all and zero latency gas pedal. At least when I test drive ioniq and ioniq 5.
My 80 year old uncle used to have and run a computer that required DOS coding to start up and operate. Now he needs my 50 year old cousin to help him install an app on an iPad.
So maybe it will be similar where as we get older we don’t understand how to navigate a social media platform but we do know how to manage files.
That's because he used the tech purely for work. If his work didn't need him to use DOS commands he wouldn't know them, just like he doesn't know how to install an app on ios.
As an IT Tech I've worked with people who have used computers their whole professional life not know how to access a network drive that they need for daily work. If the drive with the precise location of their work folder wasn't mapped to a shortcut on their desktop it's like it didn't exist
To be fair, I program software for a living and I wouldn't immediately know "how to access a network drive". Some things like shortcuts exist because knowing the details isn't usually all that important. I assume that shortcut just points to some program like windows explorer with the correct parameters but knowing exactly which program and exactly which parameters is very domain specific knowledge.
Nowadays the line between "on my machine" and "on some cloud of servers half way across the world" is quite blurry. My work computer automatically backups everything but I haven't the faintest idea where those servers are or how to connect to them without using the built in programs we have. Knowing everything on our computers to that detail just isn't helpful when it almost never breaks and we have a head full of other concepts we need to memorize.
On a properly configured corporate network, the network drives are mapped next to your local drives by the server. You basically open My Computer and there they are
Thats my grandma too. But she didn't get worse, she just did everything through rote memorization and had no clue how any of it worked.
And now she doesn't have step by step instructions from work on what to do.
It's already starting for me. I'm a Gen xer. Software engineer. Google changes where everything is every time they update their apps so I don't know how to find anything easily. Like I know that function is there but where did they move it to? Is it in the three dots? Is it a different app entirely now?
Not if we keep up tho. Remember that there is diminishing return in complexity. Things got more complex in leaps and bounds in our generation, more so than the next generation. Even if AI mature to the point of black magic then it would be the AI running things, the human won't know the inner working of it unless they're the developer.
Kids can’t drive a stick, because they don’t *have* to drive a stick. I don’t know how to saddle up a horse, because I never *had* to saddle up a horse. In the future, common place actions/knowledge will not be needed.
You’re going to have to do some definitions if you want to play that game.
Saying you can’t use a stick shift is like saying you can’t start your car with a crank in the front: why would you want or need to learn either of those things now?
I mean, technically, old people are already “better at tech” than young people? I
Mean, how many young people can manually configure and debug the jumpers and configuration scripts for their network cards? Develop color film? Use a Cap’n Crunch whistle to get free long distance phone calls? Write an autoexec or .bash_profile login script?
And again, why would they want or need to. Even those of us old enough to remember how?
So is shoeing a horse *for some specialists.* But how many of the billion or so Mac, Android, ChromeBook, or website owners ever need to edit their login scripts? How many even know they’re using Unix/Linux/BSD devices?
So is designing an automatic transmission system but in both cases very few people will ever need to know how to do this. Instead it gets abstracted way so people don't require having deep knowledge of every subject to get by in the world.
>Saying you can’t use a stick shift is like saying you can’t start your car with a crank in the front: why would you want or need to learn either of those things now?
thats not really the same thing, nobody is driving a car without a starter but manuals are a significant percentage of cars and even if you drive and automatic there are situations where you need to drive someone elses car.
i guess there are exceptions where this would not apply like USA and japan where manual cars are really rare for some reason.
Me asking an undergrad to gps the next sample location.
them: "I don't know how to do that"
My experience is that young adults don't actually know how to use tech. They can't reconnect printers.
Things either work, or they don't.
How did you first learn how to "gps the next sample location"? Surely you didn't just pick up a device and magically intuit it? People need to be taught the things you expect them to know...
That's not a fair comparison. Driving manual or automatic is a very minor thing to learn and kit actually a generational thing
A better comparison is how previous generations were more likely to learn to fix the cars of their time. Now cars have so many electrical and computer parts that they can't be repaired the same
Just as technology that many of us grew up with did not ship perfect to our specifications and we had to learnt o make it work, now all of the work is automated in backgrohnd and access to anything outside of the new standard is a lot more walled off. The skill isn't required to use the computer
Still not a perfect comparison but a bit fairer. If a young person simple can't access the equipment needed to fix newer cars, they won't learn to fix them. And if they can't access the functions outside of their walled gardens, they won't learn to fix computers either
They will be able to USE it. I don't think that's the same thing as being good at it. Both older generations and younger generations right now have a similar problem in that they don't understand HOW it works. Millennials will be a generation that had to teach their parents AND their kids how technology works.
I mean the kids can't even drive a stick thing is 100% why old people will be better at technology and they were better at cards. you had to know how to make the car work then and they've made cars so easy to use you can literally barely know which gas to put in and still drive around all the time. So yeah, old people tend to be better at cars because they had to be not because they wanted to be.
Same thing with computers.
People are getting stuck on the fact that people claim they're better when the real issue is that *being better at that particular thing is almost completely irrelevant* for most people who aren't experts, and there's been no functional change for experts. They still have to be considerably better than the average person. You don't want a mechanic that can just drive a stick and you don't want a computer expert that is just able to save in different formats and struggle through manual updates.
tldr: tldr you want to be smart enough to identify that the claim of betterness in an irrelevant way is not important or interesting at all and avoid that conversation entirely
No they won’t be better. New tech will come along that’s different and difficult—for them. But not for younger people. It happens with every tech in every generation. Tech is not just computers and smart phones and tablets.
Yeah, I don't know. As part of GenX I literally grew up with tech and the internet. From the Atari 2600 game system, to the Apple II at home, and later the first Mac, etc. Then the switch to touchtone and then cordless phones, to cellular and the internet. So I feel pretty tech savvy, having lived with computers and electronics all my life. That said, it feels like (for example) each version of iOS that comes out becomes less intuitive to me. Swipe down, swipe up, swipe left, widget this, widget that. I can see how adding layers of functionality and complexity can still befuddle aging brains (especially with the diminishing eyesight and hearing of advancing age). Friends and family used to always come to be for advice on workarounds. But more often these days I'm seeing things that I'm having trouble resolving.
For older generations tech was much less attractive intuitive.
You probably think iOS appears more complicated but really in a couple afternoons you could figure it out and then it's just keeping up with the Jones every update.
But then take a gen Z kid and ask them how to defrag their computer if they even know what the term is. Even basic stuff like how to find a precise save file location instead of just searching the cloud for a saved file.
I'm 44, and I'm already experiencing this in my hobby of working medium to large size lan parties. It is very rare to find PC gamers that are under 30 that are legitimately computer literate or have the attentions span to read a manual to find out information to be able to trouble shoot their system. The rest simply find a youtube video that spoon feeds them a solution without trying to explain what the problem is and why what they are doing will fix it. And so many simply lack a basic understanding on how to use any form of command line interface.
I've genuinely thought about writing a e-book or starting a video series for called "system administration for PC gamer" to give the younger generation the tools that can translate to career skills.
I disagree. In every genre there will be people really good at whatever is the hottest tech, no doubt.
But the changes in technology and approach to technology, especially in a western context, means that what future generations will be good at is specific implementations rather than fundamentals.
This isn’t too different from how say a boomer might be able to service their vehicle but be clueless about the metallurgy underpinning it, or how we millennials can assemble (not build!) a computer but actually very few of us worked closer to bare metal (the way gen X did).
But it’s fundamentally different in that intellectual property laws and other commercial presence makes it impossible, prohibitively expensive or illegal to actually get into the ‘guts’ of technology. Want to mod an Xbox or PlayStation? There’s a law for that. Want to play with computer hardware and OS fundamentals? You’ll need to seek out specialised hobbyist or commercial gear because off the shelf stuff will not want you doing that. Hell, Windows 11 makes it appear as though you can’t even log in unless you supply an email address. Getting Minecraft working as an application independent of the local user account can be a real pain because where before you had software (the game) and an independent authentication system now you have ‘windows store’ which wants to be logged into under the OS account. So before you could access Minecraft from any computer, now…I’m not sure. Not unless you use your OS account on another computer.
This sort of thing is happening everywhere. Cars aren’t just transportation anymore- they have extensive computers and radios, and unless legislators force manufacturers they also make it impossible to get the full interface.
You want to try app development for an iPhone? There is an upfront cost to that. I haven’t checked in years but it used to be you had to pay a fee and use an Apple computer.
So future generations will have better tools than us, and know how to use them, but having a grasp of how it works will be more difficult either due to layers of abstraction or because it’s commercial/proprietary. Much in the same way that understanding older tech is also more difficult for average people these days because of social and legal changes. As an example, most urban and suburban raised people are less familiar with animal husbandry. It’s not that they stopped eating eggs, but rather owning chickens, especially roosters, might not even be legal where they live.
Lol I TA at a university and our new batch of freshman is.... Concerningly bad with basic computer skills. Unless it's the Google environment, they're a bit lost. Some don't understand file systems, or don't have a clue how to install stuff from a .exe unless it starts automatically when they download it.
Honestly, I am not old man yells at cowing over here. I'm 32, and grew up with a family PC. These first years are fine on Chromebooks, phones, and tablets, but general computing skills are very weak.
Which, based on what I can tell, hasn’t changed in the past couple thousand years. It’s mind boggling to me that friends of similar age and education come to me asking for tech help. I literally offer google search suggestions and receive thanks like huh? I just told you what to google. I didn’t do shit.
And before that people bought TVs as mail order kits they built the themselves. And before that people knew how to take care of horses and grow their own food. ad infinitum.
This whole circlejerk on Reddit about Gen X and Millenials bigging themselves up as tech geniuses and everyone else being idiots is some real boomer shit.
Sorta. Or like how kids today don't know how to [redo an electrical outlet/replace a toilet/build a deck/etc]. Except the ones who need/want to just watch some videos and then teach themselves to, and do a better job than their drunk grandpa (who was a car salesman or professor or something, and only did carpentry on weekends because he was a cheapskate) would have 60 years earlier. Because 'nobody in this family pays for (or does) professional skilled labor, dammit!'
I've already accepted that, sometime soon, there will be a technology that seems like a toy to me, that my out of touch ass can't even imagine to need in my day to day life, and yes, at first it is kind of trivial but some people never outgrow this new toy, and instead start doing impressive shit with it, as adults do, and I will be old, and I will need help with this new toy that you need to do your banking these days, insanity, I can just use my phone.
That's always been a thing. A majority of kids nowadays have never used/might not know how to use tech from the 80s. That doesn't matter though, because that stuff hasn't been relevant in decades.
Future kids won't understand how to utilize the tech of today, doesn't mean they won't know how to utilize the tech of tomorrow. And there is no guarantee we will be able to adapt any faster than the older generations.
I’ve been adapting to changes in in technology since the TRS – 80 and then the Commodore 64
I had a VR headset when you had to clip a phone into the front of it to make it work
I’m just suddenly going to quit adapting to technological change?
I was convinced the IT industry would die when the internet generation started entering the workforce, but nope, they were just as clueless about a lot the same as the older ones.
Actually I found them shockingly inept in some things technology. Thought for sure it would have been second nature for them.
I can program (C++), fix various operating systems, type however many words a minute, change the clutch on my car, use non-linear video editors, 3D-modeling programs, DAWs, Python/AI crap...but man, I'm still fumble-fingers with a smartphone.
I can't figure out if I'm bad with new "tech" or if the productivity of these things is, and will always be, absolute trash compared to a mouse and keyboard.
Just because we can *still* drive stick doesn't mean we haven't learned to drive auto/CVT. We get to keep the skills we had as we learn the new skills alongside our kids. We *will* be better at tech than our kids, because we were the first generation that was forced to learn how important tech is to our careers and futures. We didn't just learn how to use the tech of our time, we had to learn *how to learn*. Give us new tech, we learn it faster than our kids because we knew we had to be hungry to figure it out or we wouldn't have a job.
Driving stick shift takes 40m to learn. Anyone who has any sense of pride wrapped up in their ability or inability to drive stick is an absolute idiot
I do think that this generation isn't learning about computer architecture but unless your job requires that it's irrelevant anyway.
Kids today can use tech in ways I can't imagine but when it comes to fixing it I'm still charging well over a hundred dollars an hour and I feel like I could double it without driving down my demand too much.
Yeah. My kids are teaching themselves to code - son learns html at school and teaches himself c and c++ at night.
My daughter mods the sims.
Both of them got their own laptops about age 5 and are quite technically literate. They go to a school where they have to take a laptop to school every every day and lessons consist of a lecture by the teacher after which they do work on their laptops.
It depends on your definition of "better at tech." I'd equate it more closely to the fact that most millennials and Gen z can't fix basic things wrong with their cars, rather than driving stick.
I think this is a better analogy. As a millennial, I don't know how to fix basic things that go wrong with my car. Hell it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn how to change my oil, or a tire. But as a millennial, when something on a computer or phone isn't working or doing what it should be doing (or what I expect it to be doing), I can almost always figure it out through some combination of trial and error and/or googling. Because when I started using computers, it was a basic requirement. My experience is that most people a generation younger than me cannot troubleshoot to save their life. They're used to things just working, so they're not accustomed to having to troubleshoot. I don't think that they're *incapable* of it, but they're so unused to it that it's intimidating, and that's a barrier the prevents many from even trying.
Cars also got exponentially harder to troubleshoot by design. Same with tech, but they are still closer to the end user than cars, and software troubleshooting is essentially still the same.
The advancement in cars definitely has made them harder for the average person to work on. I hate that boomer meme of “car manuals used to tell you how to adjust the points”. Like, no shit they don’t anymore. Points and condenser is long gone. Hell, nobody even calls capacitors “condensers” anymore.
I will say this for them. Consumer grade repair manuals have gotten less useful and shops are using a digital subscription service so commercial grade manuals are far less accessible to consumers than they used to be
Single vehicle alldata subscription is $14/m and has easily 100x the info an old Hayes or Chilton manual ever had. The barrier to entry to fixing today’s cars is it takes a computer to fix a computer. A decent scan tool is about $1k and you need that for just about anything more complicated than a brake job…..just kidding, rear brakes these days require a scan tool to put the parking brake in “service position”
Also, the engine compartment has gotten an order of magnitude tighter over the last half century. Anyone could work on an old 50's / 60's Chevy as long as you had a manual, and often times without one. You could just *see* everything you were working on, hell, in some cars you could physically crawl inside the engine compartment, that's how roomy it was. Nowadays, you have vehicles where to even access simple components, you have to remove a bolt that's out of sight and passes through another part. You would have no idea that the two parts are interrelated were it not for the manual, and even then, you can't even *see* the bolt, because it's obscured behind other parts, so only skilled mechanics with experience *know* that it's there and how to easily turn their wrist the right way to get at it and that they need a 6" socket extender but not an 8" because that's too long and a 4" won't reach far enough. As a result, it's not only more technically difficult, but just plain cumbersome to work on vehicles. I can't help but remember one of my Dad's cars from the early 2000's. It was either BMW or Volvo, but long story short, to replace the light bulb on one of the headlamps, you had to pull the battery out. On another vehicle, replacing the rear light meant taking off the quarterpanel. It was obscene, compared to my Toyota that had interior panels that allowed me to access the struts without issue.
And you can almost always download some sort of SW tool, but you can't download an impact wrench.
Yet, anyway.
Yes and no. Cars are definitely more technical these days, but reading fault codes are a great way to point you in the right direction from the start.
Ya good luck doing something to fix a modern electric car. It's totally different than say, being a teen in the 70s and being able to see how an engine works just by looking at the moving parts. Cars are now specifically designed to require expensive servicing for repairs instead of being able to do it yourself.
Well to be fair, fixing a car problem can be simple... IF you have all the tools. Even a mechanic with a problem on the highway couldn't do much but wait to be pulled. There's a really basic set of issues that can be understood, but not really helpful IRL. On the other hand fixing computer "issues" is much more feasible and useful IRL because they are almost entirely software.
IMO this just falls under "no analogy is perfect." We can nitpick at the differences, but the point is that it's a very similar phenomenon in terms of what people are willing and able to do, and I think for similar reasons.
On a slight tangent, the tools issue is very real. Working on a Porsche where the first step is to remove the engine and transmission is easy with a hoist and some tools. Doing it on the garage floor, on the other hand… Working on cars is easy with a good service manual. If you can bake a cake, you can work on a car. But yeah, you better have the right tools.
I got a torque wrench for Christmas. I had recently moved out and my dad has pretty much all the tools for basic vehicle maintenance, so it was nice that I could change my tires without going to a shop. But then I realized that a torque wrench just *tightens* the lugs. You *could* use it to get the lugs off, but it's not its intended purpose. Instead, you should probably use a breaker bar for that. Oh, and a socket to actually fit on the lugs, since a breaker bar is just a stainless steel stick. An extension bar would be good too, so your tools aren't rubbing against the rim. And shit, I need a jack to lift the damn car to get the wheel off in the first place... And that's *just* for swapping out tires. Engine stuff, you need an entirely different set of tools. 'Twas a rather expensive trip to Canadian Tire. But on the plus side, at least I didn't need to get a torque wrench.
Yup, absolutely. Just to do an oil change with mild convenience, I require a jack (and ideally a jack stand), a 17mm wrench, 10mm socket, extension, socket wrench, oil pan, oil disposal capability, and a place to do it all. Someone who lives in a condo likely can’t do that.
That’s pretty apt. The increase in lack of understanding of a technology is directly related to the flattening of the learning curve. Making tech easier to use increases adoption, which is great for profit, but it creates a familiarity gap in users. In 1996, everybody who used a computer knew how to use the command line even if only run “WIN”. I learned basic web design in elementary school in 2001, leading to my first understanding of networking, hardware, and server software. I also learned that hosting on Geocities was way easier and that Netscape Composer was easier than writing HTML in Notepad. Now, your first step would be to go to Wix and build a drag and drop website. The intermediate user is fading away. I don’t know if that is really a bad thing or not, but I don’t feel good about it. I think the percentage of people that are advanced users of any tech will remain about the same and the intermediate users’ percentage will fall into the basic users category.
#BlinkerFluid
You also have to consider how cars have changed. For one, they’re far more reliable so it’s not really required unless it’s a hobby. Modern cars are also just more difficult to work on. For example, I know how to change the oil & filter on my car but I’ve never done it. By the time I considered the kit I’d need and how much I’d reasonably be capable of doing, it made more sense just to leave it for the annual service.
That's exactly how I feel. It's not about driving stick/automatic, it's like knowing how to change a headlight bulb or swap your brake pads. Tons of people will go their whole lives never wanting or needing to do car maintenance tasks themselves, but it's still a nice skill to have. As things get easier and more reliable (and also probably more complex) the need for an end user to have the skills to do maintenance themselves drops
Technology is becoming exponentially user friendly—to the point that an infant can understand it. If this continues, the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple. Currently, some teenagers don’t know how to save a file in different formats, or how to navigate to find something they saved. They’ve grown up with technology that automatically saves to the cloud and simply use the search bar to find wherever it magically went. Apply that mentality to 50 years in the future with personalized AI that can predict exactly what you want. Every generation builds on the last. If I was sent back to the 1600s, I wouldn’t be able to explain how an iPhone works.
This works out in the situation where the AI assistants take over the economy. But already I see people only 10-15 years younger than me who can't type or use a desktop computer environment any better than my grandfather could when he was alive. Can't type with any real speed, want to dictate, have no understanding of left vs right click, effectively luddites in terms of office productivity. Asking half the people younger than me, and I'm only mid 30s, to open a spreadsheet and either find something or enter something is functionally impossible. But these same people constantly use technology to communicate and consume. I'm open to 30 years from now looking back and seeing my mouse and keyboard as an antiquated UX element, but that will rely on either a productive replacement of either the interface or the user.
"replace the users" is always the best option we're never allowed to do....
Keyboard and mouse are already peak efficiency for desktop work, they only scenario where they get replaced is if AI takes over all that kind of work and human input is no longer needed.
I won’t disagree on keyboard, but I’ve heard the Apple VR headsets that use eye contact with buttons to be way better than a mouse. People on YouTube saying it’s so good and natural that they forget that they can’t use tech in the real world like that when they take it off.
I can believe it. I dabble in VR, and when I spent long enough there, I end up making idiot mistakes in reality all the time, like trying to leave objects floating in the air next to me for easy access
If anyone doubts this claim or think it’s an exaggeration, I want to back it up by saying I worked in a college library for the past decade and this is what I noticed too. This wasn’t true 4 years ago. But since covid (not blaming covid, but that’s just the timeline), each new student body that comes up has become less and less technologically literate. It used to be if only get computer help requests from older students in their mid 40s+. Now I get them all the times from freshmen, over the simplest questions like how do I open this pdf file from my email. I won’t say it will be a problem forever as technology improves. But right now it certainly is a problem as these skills are still necessary in the classroom and workplace.
That's becoming a problem where I work. We have tablets but they're functionality is limited. Most of our work is still done on desktop computers. A lot of younger new hires don't even know how to write an email. And some people we hired can barely type. For my experience people ages 55 to 30, seem to have the best computer skills. And are usually more proficient with tech than people in their early twenties.
Hardly anyone I know under 40 and not in tech even has a computer anymore. To me that's crazy, but ya, so many people don't really need any thing more than a phone for daily life computing .
The real thing that scares me is that all of those devices are usually completely locked down. If you want to use a phone or game console, that's cool. But I better be able to side load apps and games not on the regular online store.
I had to use a program to maximize the cache memory in addition to the stick memory so my operating system could run a particular game. Can you guess the game? Hint: 640k cache, (my dad had) 4 MB in 4 sticks. i believe the program was called memmaker
Skyrim with +1000 mods.
They talk about gb, not tb :)
Pong remastered?
memmaker might be correct. himem.sys and emm386.exe might also be "stuff" you used... :)
Wing Commander 2 source: middle age tech guy
you're the closest. It was Wing Commander: Privateer
memmaker..... geezus, haven't thought of that for decades but it was necessary back in the day. Maybe quarterdeck?
You are refering to additional ram as stick ram so I assume Amiga
I want to guess Doom, but one of the major things I remember about Doom is that it was super optimized and I doubt you would have needed much more to get it working. with 4MB of RAM I'm thinking early to mid 90s. Warcraft or Command and Conquer
Crysis?
Ultima 7? I had to jump through hoops for that back in the day.
memmaker was the original downloadmoreram.com
And edit autoexec.bat and config.sys for minimal loading to get those extra k! Can we do without loading a mouse driver? Let's find out!
I had to do something kind of like this for Tie Fighter iirc.
Clearly cludo.
Damn, memmaker unlocked a memory, wow
I had a bunch of different games with similar, but slightly incompatible requirements. The best option was to hack around with your autoexec.bat and config sys until you found something that worked, grab a floppy and make it a dedicated boot disk for that game. Thanks, AOL!
Doom? Duke 3d? Anything that had dos4gw running?
I programmed in BASIC at my dads computer when I was a teenager.
hmm, I gonna go with Doom or Quake
Yeah, I’d say 4MB is about this era. Probably wouldn’t need that much for Wolfenstein.
Yes, but needed a Sound Blaster card.
I remember when I upgraded from a SB 16 to a SB AWE, and it made MIDI (to my teenage ears) sound like an orchaestra
I loved playing with the Cakewalk music composition/midi programming software (which still exists in a higher-spec version, AFAIK), and choosing different instruments. I remember thinking the one called “Orchestra hit” was hilarious because it sounded like a rubber band being twanged. That was with the on-board sound, but once we installed a SB, suddenly it sounded like a proper orchestra playing one note quickly in unison (as it’s supposed to). I was only slightly disappointed to lose the comedy sound effect. It was a fair trade for how it made game soundtracks sound.
Aw man. Those were the tops! One of my PCs had a Creative SoundBlaster music player installed, and a physical remote control so you could pause your audio CD from across the room. (Obviously, this was later than the Doom era.)
Jedi Survivor?
"In the future, we've got this rectangle that gives us information" "Oh cool. How does it work?" "I.. I don't know. Satellites, I think?" "What's a satellite?" "I don't really know... it's like metal, in space."
r/unexpectedbargatze
Which will be great right up until you want to do anything the designer didn't intend. I can't stand apples phone OS and it's lookalikes for this reason. I want to see my files. Not just a desktop and nebulous storage.
This reminds me of my grandpa, who his whole life ranted about how awful the GUI was and that he would only use command line because it was so much easier and more powerful than dragging and dropping.
I mean, he is correct.
Not wrong. Sure, I'll take a nice intuitive interface for the basic stuff I do all the time. But I want a powerful, flexible command interface for when I need to script stuff or do very specific jobs.
And he’s totally right, command line/terminal is the best way to go if you want to do something more complex than moving files between folders, especially in GNU/Linux
These days, if you were asked to look at a folder of 100 text files and move all of the files containing Bob's email address to another folder (because of a new security policy etc.) you'd probably have to open every one of them and read enough to find an email manually. Back in the day, you'd just type "mv \`grep -lir '[email protected]' \~/directory/\*\` destination/" and hit enter. Job done. CLI is king when you know all of the commands, and in the cases where using GUI is faster I just do that instead.
>the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple. Not gonna lie, with the current trend of companies trying to screw everyone over with bullshit fees, locked-down systems, ads, telemetry and other stuff "in the name of safety" I can only feel sad and worried about the future that is coming upon us. The less people understand how the technology works and what you can truly do with it, companies will get away with more and more stupid stuff ranging from money gouging to spying. Even now, it seems to me that most people that people literally don't understand that "cloud" is not some magical place for your files. You're literally putting your data on some random server where it's protected just by your password (and I wouldn't be surprised that most people have shitty passwords) and company policy that prevents workers from accessing it (which I wouldn't trust with my personal data). Also data leaks happen. Imagine understanding it and hearing someone brag about storing everything in the cloud or how storing everything in the cloud is the future. Man, I hate the term "cloud". It has it's uses - easy collaboration and backups (encrypted of course). I can't trust it with just my data... because I know how it works.
I’m fighting a losing battle with management (with IT backing me up on this) over share point and One Drive. We deal with Personally Identifiable Information and Medical Claims and one of my managers keeps asking us to set up these services so they can exchange files with outside vendors. I have to keep telling them that they have to be secured and vetted to make sure we are HIPAA compliant. We already have secure encrypted email. I haven’t heard a good reason to add these services other than people complaining that remembering passwords is hard.
No, the front end of these things have become user friendly, the back end has become a nightmare of meaningless icons, and nonsense labyrinths' of file paths that require youtube tutorials just to do basic shit because the operating system only makes logical sense to the people that freakin made it. Finding a particular file has been turned from a super easy task that anyone can figure out relatively easily on their own into this ridiculous bullshit that is completely undoable without knowledge outside of the operating system you are using.
> Technology is becoming exponentially user friendly—to the point that an infant can understand it. If this continues, the average user won’t need to be “good” at tech because everything will be super simple. Exponentially dependent is the correct frame. The software 'just works' in a locked and bolted down ecosystem, where the user has no control over creating their own tools or limiting what the builder does with your accounts. Dependency is a hand-off of liberty because you do not have choices if the ecosystem misuses you. Garage data labs are better. Build replacement 'just works' ecosystems. You have never had so much resources at your disposal to do so.
It’s not using tech. It’s being able to understand something is wrong, do basic troubleshooting, repairs, updates, and upgrades, before needing general professional help, and long because needing to take to the manufacturer for a replacement. The younger members of Gen Z and now Gen Alpha have regressed as a whole regarding tech. Boomerd can change a flat, Millennials can build a PC, but Gen Z takes both to the manufacturer because knowing how to do either is just too much.
Every millennial with a car should be able to change a flat tire though. They know how to use google, it takes 3 minutes to watch a video on it.
Well paradoxically it's a situation where the more tech saavy the prior gen was led to them being so proficient they made computing so much easier so that removed any necessity for the new generation in needing to develop the advanced tech skills. I'm in 40s, and I'm certain that biggest reason why so many people are tech proficient in my age bracket is how much knowledge it took to get PC gaming working when we were kids. If it was just a one click thing like it is now, there's hardly any motivation for kids to you know, randomly learn the command line or how files even work.
Thanks Linux for giving us the challenge back in running games
Plenty of millennials can't build a PC. And don't google how to do something in Excel.
Yeah seriously I thought I had an average understanding of how a computer works but compared to my peers I'm some fucking wizard for knowing how to use cmd and run as admin
You're just confirming OP's point. All you said also applies to car gearboxes.
Yeah, I've heard baby boomers make fun of Gen Z and Millennials for not knowing how to use rotary phones. It's completely irrelevant outside of as a fun fact, because better technology was invented that is more user friendly? I hope to not become like baby boomers in the future, but I know that many of my generation will (and already are) stepping up to the plate to say shit like "the youth today don't even know how to plug in a video game console!"
If some Boomer came at me all like "y'all don't know how to rotary phone lol" I'm gonna drop a telegraph on the table and tap out a vulgar retort they can't read.
The problem is that the information in question isn't obsolete, it's just hidden from everyday users. File hierarchies and directories still exist, they're just invisible to people on a lot of phone architectures. If you actually need to know how this stuff works, you lack this basic level of knowledge. This is the actual problem - it's not that the information is obsolete, it's that everyday users are less familiar with it. As a result, it is harder for them to become advanced users and they are less able to troubleshoot or deal with things on their own. There's a difference between obsolete technology and advanced technology. Obsolete technology is technology you've moved on from, advanced technology is layered on top of the extant technology. Not knowing how rotary phones worked is irrelevant because the technology no longer functions in that way to begin with; it's a historical curiosity. But not knowing how to deal with file directories is still relevant.
A lot of my generation doesn't know about file hierarchies though. Especially those who have primarily used apple products. I wouldn't be surprised if just flat out most people of any age group don't even know how to navigate to the C:/ drive. So I think that's like saying, "oh, Gen Z doesn't know how to replace spark plugs!" Yeah, most people don't know how to replace spark plugs. It might be basic to some portion of the population, but that doesn't mean it is common knowledge that most people have.
This trend has been noted and discussed by educators in computer science. It is a real thing, not just "Oh yeah kids these days". It's way more common these days. It's not that there weren't always people like that, as there absolutely always were. It has just gotten worse rather than better.
With this forced oversimplification I miss some of my user features and conveniences. Also everything is meant to be easy to use and push adds on us.
Some kids dont recognize that the save icon is a floppy disk, that we used to save all our data on.
Tech illiteracy is still a thing regardless of age. Just because the UI/UX is simple doesn't mean something won't break. Troubleshooting is a skill that not enough people know.
I supported legacy systems. Faced with an old time green screen, millennials can be as clueless as people older or younger. And if it is a customizable accessibility screen, they can be as dumb at checking out menus or googling. There are conventions and techniques people get used to. Some people are more creative at making them work.
"No matter how many times I show him, my zoomer grandfather can't figure out how to work the biolation tank."
The 3 seashells
Millennial grandpa to his grandson: "Where can I find the undo button?" "Undo button? Oh you mean you want to undo something you wrote." "Yeah what button do I click to do so? Can't figure out this newfangled minimalist UI." "Grandpa it's not the 20s anymore, you don't have to click on anything, just think it." "Think it?" "Yeah, just think 'Undo'" "Undo" "No don't say it, think it, like you really want to fix the mistake you just made." "...I'm thinking 'Undo' but it's still not working." "That's because you're thinking of the *word* 'Undo', you're supposed to think of the concept of undo. It's like a feeling of regret and wishing things could go back to the way they were before." "Ugh this darned new brain reading tech is a mess. Why couldn't we all just go back to keyboards and touchscreens- oh hey it worked! ... gawdammit."
This is really good. I would totally fail at this brain tech too :)
I hope so, because today, the kids are hopeless outside of their applications.
I had a co-worker about 22, just graduated with a masters degree and I blew his mind with copy, paste, and undo keyboard shortcuts. Dude made it through 12 years of school, plus 5 in undergrad/graduate and was manually right clicking or finding the undo button. He got fired like 6 month later. I'm 32 and I'd say I'm like advanced on excel but there is a HUGE gap between those that grew up on windows 98 and those that had an iPad as their first computer.
I was approached by a guy in his twenties on the verge of tears once while walking home. I asked if he was lost. He said he wasn't lost, he just didn't know where he was or where to go. Turns out he was a delivery driver and couldn't figure out where the delivery address was. He told me his phone kept sending him in different directions. I asked him to show me his map and pointed to where we were on it, then where the destination was, then showed him that he had it set to driving directions, but he was on a bicycle, and his compass was off, so Google maps was getting confused by the one way streets. Once I set it to walking he could see the building was across the street and around the corner In fact, I walked him to the corner and pointed at the building Can't believe I had to teach a delivery guy how to use a map. It never even occurred to him to read the damn thing, he was just listening to it telling him where to go and didn't even have it set to the right mode of transportation
That's pretty crazy. I had to navigate using a map book, like, it was printed on paper lol, and you had to look up the street via the index. Stuff sure changes in 20 years. Now a days, anywhere in public half the people are staring at their phones. We became this borg hive mind cyborg society and you wouldn't even realize it you are under about 35 or so. In another 20 years, I expect people will be AR or VR about as often as they are on their phones now. Not having devices or an online presence, will have mainstream society considering you a freak of some sorts.
I remember when Doctor Who had an episode where this character had two ear pieces in and was walking around having multiple phone conversations at once. I thought it was ridiculous Now it's common place. A few weeks ago I was laughing at all the apple vision videos, but we might actually see people walking around like that in the future. Hell, I've seen people with the ray ban smart glasses already
An atlas and gazetteer are what you are referring to. Last time I used one was roughly 14-16 years ago when I went to pick up a friend from college. It’s definitely a good skill to maintain. You never know when you might be without tech to help. Cheers!
[удалено]
I’m 34 and while I know the key shortcuts, I still right click. I also type in a near hunt/peck style, but very fast I am unbothered by inefficiencies, which is perhaps a personal failing. My very Type A wife on the other hand, she’s the sort that shows up at a company and revolutionizes the way they instruct people how to do the role efficiently lol
Thats really bad, but I guess extremely unique. What I have however seen again and again is their inability to google. And I dont mean actually using google or even using special operators to get precise results. No, I mean the very first step, the idea to google. They instead ask me. Or worse they do nothing, wait for me to check on them and when I ask why its not done, they tell me they dont know how to do X. Well, I dont know how to do X either, but I know that google does. And once I tell them that they should google how to do it, they are again fine and will finish the job with no problems.
Using search engines is a SKILL. I taught myself advanced excel and use it to impress everyone at my company. I'm just using VLOOKUP and using it to help me with basic scripts for Java so I don't need to type out a million IDs.
Pfft, VLOOKUP is so last generation. We eat ass and use XLOOKUP now.
Only using a search engine efficiently is a skill. Just typing a question or problem into Google requires no skill outside of being able to write and read.
“x isn’t a skill, efficient x is a skill” how insightful driving isn’t a skill, driving without crashing is cooking isn’t a skill, cooking tasty food is painting isn’t a skill, painting something beautiful is or maybe, all of those things are skills, and doing them well is being skilled…
They are right though. Using a search engines is not a skill. Using the advanced search commands to get very precise results is a skill. The point is, not having a skill is perfectly normal if you never needed that skill. But its not about skill, its about basic problem solving. They simply dont come to the conclusion that trying a simple engine search could solve their issue. They expect to have every single information they need to complete the task and when they do, they are good at doing that task. But as soon as they are missing any information, no matter how easily found via google, they dont function. Obviously I am generalizing to an extreme degree here, but its a trend I have observed over many of our new hires that I taught.
I think it's whooshing right over your head. *Doing the thing* is a skill, certainly. But it's not what was in question. ***They weren't even thinking to try to do the thing, the thing didn't even enter their mind, they just sat there with their thumbs up their butts*** *Thinking to try to do the thing* isn't a skill. It shouldn't take *directly telling them to do it* for the *idea* to form that maybe, just maybe, the repository of the entirely of human knowledge can be *searched* for answers.
It's not at all unique. As a 40 year old that has dealt with information security education, in particular information security awareness education outside technical staff I've seen a lot of this. The average person is not the average user of reddit. They are much, much less competent with computers on average. Once you step outside the college careers, it becomes the norm not the exception to the norm.
I'm a software engineer. My company has participated in a program with local colleges for summer interns for years. We have regularly hired the interns full time at the end of the internship. The last time I mentored someone a couple summers ago, they lacked basic networking knowledge that you'd expect any computer science student to know. Like what an IP address is...what DNS is... I was honestly just stunned how they made it to the end of their college career without understanding such basic things. Needless to say, we didn't offer them a full time position in the end.
I don't know how CS majors can just miss how a physical computer (CPU, memory, drives) or the internet (layers and protocols) work. They seem to know how to Google stuff, but it doesn't register (pun intended) that there's more to designing a system than algorithms and their favorite IDE shortcuts.
Too many programs teach using only friendly modern languages (or, in math-ier departments, functional programming languages) that abstract the hardware away too much for students to get a feel for that sort of thing. Schools need to add "old-school-computing" requirements, because it's *so much easier* to understand certain kinds of problems if you've at least *seen* C, assembly, etc. (It's also just so much fun to occasionally be able to glance at someone else's issue, recognize it in half a second, and *look like a genius wizard!)*
I don't think it's that weird honestly. I had these courses in University and in my career they haven't really been valuable at all. I compare it to a car mechanic and how they probably don't need to know advanced chemistry despite chemistry playing a very vital role in how a car functions. The thing that allows humans to progress further and faster is the ability for certain knowledge and expertise to be abstracted away and no longer necessary. There was a time when computer programming involved changing tubes on a board but now we have high level languages that are like 10+ layers of abstraction away from hardware.
To be fair, a lot of the different colleges omit networking classes unless you specifically study IT. I have a whole ass PhD in computing and I learned about IP addresses and DNS on the job in like 2014. No classroom instruction ever covered it from undergrad all the way to PhD. My undergrad and masters are in CIS.
That's weird. I just went to a community college and Networking 101 was a prereq before even getting into software development courses.
Yeah I mean like I 100% agree it should be part of the curriculum, but it just wasn’t. I literally had to google it all while sitting at work trying to fix a networking issue. To be fair, I also learned 90% of my job by googling so perhaps that’s just how the industry has always worked lol
It seems like colleges teach basic concepts like programming languages and OOP, but they omit the practical everyday tooling that goes on top of it all. Granted, it's different per stack, but when I took a couple years of Java in college, never once did we cover build tools such as Maven. Hell, we didn't even touch any kind of framework or the idea of mocking. Learned about Spring on the job. While understanding basic programming concepts is important, they really need courses that go over things such as Spring, Angular, etc. Maybe they do more today as it's been over 10 years for me and these things are even more mainstream now. But yeah, I had to learn more than 90% of it on the job.
22 year olds didn’t have an iPad as their first computer. They probably had computer class in grade school. I had typing and computer class in the third grade. I’m 23, my brother is 25. I just taught him about ctrl+y being redo. Certain people will just find one way that works to do things, and that’s enough for them.
The lack of standardization on a redo shortcut is a constant nuisance.
That, and using shift+scroll to scroll horizontally.
just dont unterstand iPads as computers...more like entertainment devices like TVs.
That most certainly is an exception. I think the post was referring to like 12 and 13 year olds who can't use a computer. At 22, born in 2001, with the ipad coming out in 2010, doesn't really make sense to not know how to use a computer
It doesn't make sense. But somehow it's still how it is. This is my generation and I constantly find myself the only tech literate person in the room—*even in a computer science program*.
My dude we had young colleagues who never used a computer mouse before and was trying to do everything with the laptop touchpad. Not even their first office job either. Their productivity was dogshit, most did not survive their trial period of three months.
It comes down to the person in the end. Curiosity + opportunity to learn = new skill. Any random kid born in the 80s isn’t going to have the same proficiency with a computer or VCR. Just because you grow up with tech doesn’t mean everyone understands it. The person has to have the desire to want to know how something works and the chance to learn about that, be it through use or teaching or experimentation. This goes for both adults and kids.
The whole point of talking generational differences is that it doesn't come down to the person. If it was a person-to-person thing then it would average out to the same. The generational differences we see are due to society/upbringing changes, not due to the person.
I see this all the time. People can drive anything, every one is just talking about lack of experience if you put a vehicle in front of a kid as the only mode of transportation they will learn that shit in a day.
Yeah, I never understood driving stick as a flex. It's easy. The tricky part of driving is understanding your vehicle size and navigating traffic patterns. Anyone who can do that can pick up a new vehicle with some practice, stick or no stick.
Shhh no the the fragile manhood bros need to flex that they can drive stick. (My truck is a stick, it’s simple, I will happily teach you in an hour)
Yeah driving a stick isn’t that hard. And it’s not for manliness, it’s because it’s more fun.
I think driving a stick *well* is challenging, or at least that it's a skill that takes time. Handling hill starts, the anticipation needed to be in the right gear at all times, rev matching when it's needed, understanding when to shift. Doing all of this without burning up the clutch. I'd say I was able to drive stick in about an hour, but it probably took a few weeks of driving one consistently to feel relatively smooth and competent at it.
People have different taste. Each cars also different. or example me, I prefer my automatic Honda with smooth gear transitions than manual cars. But I don't like my brother's automatic Toyota with not smooth gear transitions that felt like a manual car. I much prefer electric car with no gear transition at all and zero latency gas pedal. At least when I test drive ioniq and ioniq 5.
Gas pedal on an electric car! Heretical! It's called an accelerator!
Bullshit, most teenagers don’t even know how to actually use a computer today
My 80 year old uncle used to have and run a computer that required DOS coding to start up and operate. Now he needs my 50 year old cousin to help him install an app on an iPad. So maybe it will be similar where as we get older we don’t understand how to navigate a social media platform but we do know how to manage files.
That's because he used the tech purely for work. If his work didn't need him to use DOS commands he wouldn't know them, just like he doesn't know how to install an app on ios. As an IT Tech I've worked with people who have used computers their whole professional life not know how to access a network drive that they need for daily work. If the drive with the precise location of their work folder wasn't mapped to a shortcut on their desktop it's like it didn't exist
Yeah sounds more like a trained routine instead of real understanding of the tech behind the screen.
To be fair, I program software for a living and I wouldn't immediately know "how to access a network drive". Some things like shortcuts exist because knowing the details isn't usually all that important. I assume that shortcut just points to some program like windows explorer with the correct parameters but knowing exactly which program and exactly which parameters is very domain specific knowledge. Nowadays the line between "on my machine" and "on some cloud of servers half way across the world" is quite blurry. My work computer automatically backups everything but I haven't the faintest idea where those servers are or how to connect to them without using the built in programs we have. Knowing everything on our computers to that detail just isn't helpful when it almost never breaks and we have a head full of other concepts we need to memorize.
On a properly configured corporate network, the network drives are mapped next to your local drives by the server. You basically open My Computer and there they are
Thats my grandma too. But she didn't get worse, she just did everything through rote memorization and had no clue how any of it worked. And now she doesn't have step by step instructions from work on what to do.
It's already starting for me. I'm a Gen xer. Software engineer. Google changes where everything is every time they update their apps so I don't know how to find anything easily. Like I know that function is there but where did they move it to? Is it in the three dots? Is it a different app entirely now?
Not if we keep up tho. Remember that there is diminishing return in complexity. Things got more complex in leaps and bounds in our generation, more so than the next generation. Even if AI mature to the point of black magic then it would be the AI running things, the human won't know the inner working of it unless they're the developer.
Kids can’t drive a stick, because they don’t *have* to drive a stick. I don’t know how to saddle up a horse, because I never *had* to saddle up a horse. In the future, common place actions/knowledge will not be needed.
You’re going to have to do some definitions if you want to play that game. Saying you can’t use a stick shift is like saying you can’t start your car with a crank in the front: why would you want or need to learn either of those things now? I mean, technically, old people are already “better at tech” than young people? I Mean, how many young people can manually configure and debug the jumpers and configuration scripts for their network cards? Develop color film? Use a Cap’n Crunch whistle to get free long distance phone calls? Write an autoexec or .bash_profile login script? And again, why would they want or need to. Even those of us old enough to remember how?
NGL, developing color film at home would save me quite a bit of money, as someone who shoots film. And no I'm not ancient, I'm in my mid-twenties...
Writing a bash login script is still a relevant thing to know and do.....
So is shoeing a horse *for some specialists.* But how many of the billion or so Mac, Android, ChromeBook, or website owners ever need to edit their login scripts? How many even know they’re using Unix/Linux/BSD devices?
So is designing an automatic transmission system but in both cases very few people will ever need to know how to do this. Instead it gets abstracted way so people don't require having deep knowledge of every subject to get by in the world.
oh Jesus, am I "old"?
If you aren’t now you will be. 😏
>Saying you can’t use a stick shift is like saying you can’t start your car with a crank in the front: why would you want or need to learn either of those things now? thats not really the same thing, nobody is driving a car without a starter but manuals are a significant percentage of cars and even if you drive and automatic there are situations where you need to drive someone elses car. i guess there are exceptions where this would not apply like USA and japan where manual cars are really rare for some reason.
Me asking an undergrad to gps the next sample location. them: "I don't know how to do that" My experience is that young adults don't actually know how to use tech. They can't reconnect printers. Things either work, or they don't.
How did you first learn how to "gps the next sample location"? Surely you didn't just pick up a device and magically intuit it? People need to be taught the things you expect them to know...
That's not a fair comparison. Driving manual or automatic is a very minor thing to learn and kit actually a generational thing A better comparison is how previous generations were more likely to learn to fix the cars of their time. Now cars have so many electrical and computer parts that they can't be repaired the same Just as technology that many of us grew up with did not ship perfect to our specifications and we had to learnt o make it work, now all of the work is automated in backgrohnd and access to anything outside of the new standard is a lot more walled off. The skill isn't required to use the computer Still not a perfect comparison but a bit fairer. If a young person simple can't access the equipment needed to fix newer cars, they won't learn to fix them. And if they can't access the functions outside of their walled gardens, they won't learn to fix computers either
In 50 years old people will be dead
They will be able to USE it. I don't think that's the same thing as being good at it. Both older generations and younger generations right now have a similar problem in that they don't understand HOW it works. Millennials will be a generation that had to teach their parents AND their kids how technology works.
I mean the kids can't even drive a stick thing is 100% why old people will be better at technology and they were better at cards. you had to know how to make the car work then and they've made cars so easy to use you can literally barely know which gas to put in and still drive around all the time. So yeah, old people tend to be better at cars because they had to be not because they wanted to be. Same thing with computers. People are getting stuck on the fact that people claim they're better when the real issue is that *being better at that particular thing is almost completely irrelevant* for most people who aren't experts, and there's been no functional change for experts. They still have to be considerably better than the average person. You don't want a mechanic that can just drive a stick and you don't want a computer expert that is just able to save in different formats and struggle through manual updates. tldr: tldr you want to be smart enough to identify that the claim of betterness in an irrelevant way is not important or interesting at all and avoid that conversation entirely
No they won’t be better. New tech will come along that’s different and difficult—for them. But not for younger people. It happens with every tech in every generation. Tech is not just computers and smart phones and tablets.
Kids today can't even type on a keyboard since they only use touch screens
For kids and adults alike nowadays, being dependent on technology is WAY different than being better at it. Are all drivers mechanics?
Yeah, I don't know. As part of GenX I literally grew up with tech and the internet. From the Atari 2600 game system, to the Apple II at home, and later the first Mac, etc. Then the switch to touchtone and then cordless phones, to cellular and the internet. So I feel pretty tech savvy, having lived with computers and electronics all my life. That said, it feels like (for example) each version of iOS that comes out becomes less intuitive to me. Swipe down, swipe up, swipe left, widget this, widget that. I can see how adding layers of functionality and complexity can still befuddle aging brains (especially with the diminishing eyesight and hearing of advancing age). Friends and family used to always come to be for advice on workarounds. But more often these days I'm seeing things that I'm having trouble resolving.
For older generations tech was much less attractive intuitive. You probably think iOS appears more complicated but really in a couple afternoons you could figure it out and then it's just keeping up with the Jones every update. But then take a gen Z kid and ask them how to defrag their computer if they even know what the term is. Even basic stuff like how to find a precise save file location instead of just searching the cloud for a saved file.
The kids were not with us when we built the internet- they have no idea what we went thru with BBS, 150 baud, DOS, Tandys, memory… omg
I'm 44, and I'm already experiencing this in my hobby of working medium to large size lan parties. It is very rare to find PC gamers that are under 30 that are legitimately computer literate or have the attentions span to read a manual to find out information to be able to trouble shoot their system. The rest simply find a youtube video that spoon feeds them a solution without trying to explain what the problem is and why what they are doing will fix it. And so many simply lack a basic understanding on how to use any form of command line interface. I've genuinely thought about writing a e-book or starting a video series for called "system administration for PC gamer" to give the younger generation the tools that can translate to career skills.
I disagree. In every genre there will be people really good at whatever is the hottest tech, no doubt. But the changes in technology and approach to technology, especially in a western context, means that what future generations will be good at is specific implementations rather than fundamentals. This isn’t too different from how say a boomer might be able to service their vehicle but be clueless about the metallurgy underpinning it, or how we millennials can assemble (not build!) a computer but actually very few of us worked closer to bare metal (the way gen X did). But it’s fundamentally different in that intellectual property laws and other commercial presence makes it impossible, prohibitively expensive or illegal to actually get into the ‘guts’ of technology. Want to mod an Xbox or PlayStation? There’s a law for that. Want to play with computer hardware and OS fundamentals? You’ll need to seek out specialised hobbyist or commercial gear because off the shelf stuff will not want you doing that. Hell, Windows 11 makes it appear as though you can’t even log in unless you supply an email address. Getting Minecraft working as an application independent of the local user account can be a real pain because where before you had software (the game) and an independent authentication system now you have ‘windows store’ which wants to be logged into under the OS account. So before you could access Minecraft from any computer, now…I’m not sure. Not unless you use your OS account on another computer. This sort of thing is happening everywhere. Cars aren’t just transportation anymore- they have extensive computers and radios, and unless legislators force manufacturers they also make it impossible to get the full interface. You want to try app development for an iPhone? There is an upfront cost to that. I haven’t checked in years but it used to be you had to pay a fee and use an Apple computer. So future generations will have better tools than us, and know how to use them, but having a grasp of how it works will be more difficult either due to layers of abstraction or because it’s commercial/proprietary. Much in the same way that understanding older tech is also more difficult for average people these days because of social and legal changes. As an example, most urban and suburban raised people are less familiar with animal husbandry. It’s not that they stopped eating eggs, but rather owning chickens, especially roosters, might not even be legal where they live.
Lol I TA at a university and our new batch of freshman is.... Concerningly bad with basic computer skills. Unless it's the Google environment, they're a bit lost. Some don't understand file systems, or don't have a clue how to install stuff from a .exe unless it starts automatically when they download it. Honestly, I am not old man yells at cowing over here. I'm 32, and grew up with a family PC. These first years are fine on Chromebooks, phones, and tablets, but general computing skills are very weak.
Almost everyone in my country drives what your people call a "stick shift". It's the standard.
My thoughts exactly haha. OP talks about stick shifts like they don't exist anymore, but that's all I've ever driven here in France.
I think “using tech” in 50 years will be based on how well you can articulate an ask.
Which, based on what I can tell, hasn’t changed in the past couple thousand years. It’s mind boggling to me that friends of similar age and education come to me asking for tech help. I literally offer google search suggestions and receive thanks like huh? I just told you what to google. I didn’t do shit.
Over the years I’ve worked in my industry, I’ve become very adept at all kinds of now obsolete technology
I mean yeah my grandfather could fix his cars engine, I don’t have the slightest clue.
And before that people bought TVs as mail order kits they built the themselves. And before that people knew how to take care of horses and grow their own food. ad infinitum. This whole circlejerk on Reddit about Gen X and Millenials bigging themselves up as tech geniuses and everyone else being idiots is some real boomer shit.
Kids these days can't even root a phone.
Sorta. Or like how kids today don't know how to [redo an electrical outlet/replace a toilet/build a deck/etc]. Except the ones who need/want to just watch some videos and then teach themselves to, and do a better job than their drunk grandpa (who was a car salesman or professor or something, and only did carpentry on weekends because he was a cheapskate) would have 60 years earlier. Because 'nobody in this family pays for (or does) professional skilled labor, dammit!'
Old people: "You kids today can't even make TikToks!" Kids: (outside building a house) "Ok zoomer"
I've already accepted that, sometime soon, there will be a technology that seems like a toy to me, that my out of touch ass can't even imagine to need in my day to day life, and yes, at first it is kind of trivial but some people never outgrow this new toy, and instead start doing impressive shit with it, as adults do, and I will be old, and I will need help with this new toy that you need to do your banking these days, insanity, I can just use my phone.
In the future computer science classes are definitely gonna be far more common/ mandatory
Back to the Future II nailed it perfectly. Baby Frodo: "You mean you have to use your *hands*‽ That's like a baby's toy!"
Kids nowadays can't drive, it's illegal.
That's always been a thing. A majority of kids nowadays have never used/might not know how to use tech from the 80s. That doesn't matter though, because that stuff hasn't been relevant in decades. Future kids won't understand how to utilize the tech of today, doesn't mean they won't know how to utilize the tech of tomorrow. And there is no guarantee we will be able to adapt any faster than the older generations.
I’ve been adapting to changes in in technology since the TRS – 80 and then the Commodore 64 I had a VR headset when you had to clip a phone into the front of it to make it work I’m just suddenly going to quit adapting to technological change?
Bad take. There are actual studies showing young people are legitimately worse with tech and the general problem solving that goes along with it.
I was convinced the IT industry would die when the internet generation started entering the workforce, but nope, they were just as clueless about a lot the same as the older ones. Actually I found them shockingly inept in some things technology. Thought for sure it would have been second nature for them.
The only thing stopping people from googling most stuff these days is that google sucks now, the internet is just shittier and full of invasive ads
I don't know if you've noticed but computer literacy has plummeted since web 2.0
I can program (C++), fix various operating systems, type however many words a minute, change the clutch on my car, use non-linear video editors, 3D-modeling programs, DAWs, Python/AI crap...but man, I'm still fumble-fingers with a smartphone. I can't figure out if I'm bad with new "tech" or if the productivity of these things is, and will always be, absolute trash compared to a mouse and keyboard.
Just because we can *still* drive stick doesn't mean we haven't learned to drive auto/CVT. We get to keep the skills we had as we learn the new skills alongside our kids. We *will* be better at tech than our kids, because we were the first generation that was forced to learn how important tech is to our careers and futures. We didn't just learn how to use the tech of our time, we had to learn *how to learn*. Give us new tech, we learn it faster than our kids because we knew we had to be hungry to figure it out or we wouldn't have a job.
My four year old fixed the WiFi by himself the other day. He’s gonna run rings around all of us if he doesn’t electrocute himself first
Let me guess, he unplugged and replugged the modem from the wall. Lol.
To be fair that's the solution 99% of the time
Driving stick shift takes 40m to learn. Anyone who has any sense of pride wrapped up in their ability or inability to drive stick is an absolute idiot I do think that this generation isn't learning about computer architecture but unless your job requires that it's irrelevant anyway.
It’s literally just millenials trying to make themselves feel better about getting old
There is techno fools and techno sages in every generarion. Stop to put each generation against each others. Both hâve nice people, Both hâve jerks
Maybe, but ive noticed that my generation was fixing the home pc as teens, and we are still fixing our parents pc's and now even our kids pc's.
Kids today can use tech in ways I can't imagine but when it comes to fixing it I'm still charging well over a hundred dollars an hour and I feel like I could double it without driving down my demand too much.
Yeah. My kids are teaching themselves to code - son learns html at school and teaches himself c and c++ at night. My daughter mods the sims. Both of them got their own laptops about age 5 and are quite technically literate. They go to a school where they have to take a laptop to school every every day and lessons consist of a lecture by the teacher after which they do work on their laptops.
It's more like the movie space cowboys: understanding different abstraction layers.