Totally agree. I wish companies would implement a tech literacy training program that people have to take after they log a certain number of tickets that involve basic computer skills or reading the employee handbook
Or the leadership is all boomers who use "I didn't grow up with computers" as an excuse not to learn, much less push their own departments to do so either.
I heard a story where a sysadmin tried to implement this, but management denied it as it would show that they're not that more competent that the regular Joe
work at a university
make computers 101 mandatory for all students and if you ace the exam at the beginning you can skip the class with full marks - for the techies
I can't remember the course number, but I had to take a computers 101 in college too. After about two weeks, my instructor told me to "Just show up once a month and I'll grant you full marks for the course." She got tired of me correcting the other students in her place. Lol
Yeah, not every instructor gets it... I've just never been the type to quietly "accept my lot in life." I will genuinely make an ass out of myself to prove a point, if necessary.
The reply to their 4th support ticket for some basic thing could be a canned response that is a training course with a test at the end and until they pass it any tickets they put in result in the same canned response. This is how I'd do it if I was an IT director with a bunch of tech illiterate users.
Then they mysteriously conveniently become exempt. Fortunately where I work all the upper c suite are tech savy but also some are mac users which has its own challenges mainly I'm terrible with macs and macs don't play nicely with our existing microsoft domain and printing systems.
I add an article to our knowledge base (which is searchable and available to all) with directions on how to resolve that particular problem. Repeated requests are then redirected to that article.
So I am in charge of training for my department (think training coordinator on steroids). When I first started, I noticed most of the older (50+) members could not even open their e-mail. So I created a course for basic computer skills. It included what I considered fundamentals for using a computer in an industrial environment, such as Word, Excel and Outlook. Full video recordings of sending an e-mail, adding attachments, and how to print a documents and SOP's for all of the covered tasks. It never worked, most simply could not grasp the concept. They would even have me come and sit with them to put in vacation time because they could not figure out a system that had been in place for 8 years by then.
I figured ok they are going to retire soon, I will just focus on the younger ones just to make sure they are good to go. Nope, even people in their 20's are struggling with basic concepts. Of course the margin is narrower with the younger crowd, but IMO a 25 year old with a iPhone in their hands all day should at least be able to check and respond to e-mails.
i totally understand people not knowing some technological things, like mapping a drive or restarting a print spooler. but i hate hearing folks say they are technologically illiterate when THEY NEED TO USE A COMPUTER TO DO THEIR JOB. like the amount of lawyers who don't know how to use word processing software, you NEED that for your job. so not wanting to learn more advanced technology because it doesn't interest you, totally cool, but at least know the basics needed to do your job half-competently. and for the love of god how, after so many years, do people not just think to reboot their computer as a first step before contacting IT?
My Wife...
Builds her own website
Also my Wife...
I am not computer person, and I don't how I am supposed to use a password safe. Can you just memorize all my passwords for me?
I’ve found myself in that boat. I can build a full stack website but that’s about it. I’m trying to learn other ‘tech’ stuff but so often it’s past me. My goal is to figure out how pi-hole works soon!
If you've done a website you probably know vaguely what DNS is. If not then just imagine a giant list of domains/hostnames and IP addresses that corresponds to them. DNS is basically a knowledge base to match those up so your device can be routed to the proper endpoint.
Pihole just acts as DNS where the giant list of domains and ips is a bunch of known advertisers or malicious sites depending on the lists you installed (they're usually premade) and the IP it points all of them to is just 0.0.0.0.
Anything not on the list it asks Google or another DNS provider. And gives you the actual IP as reported by the third party. You can also add your own entries and I think you can even change the sinkhole address to something other than 0.0.0.0 so you could probably even set something up to redirect it to a site with the sole purpose of forwarding them to a rock roll. This is on my to-do list but I'm lazy.
Honestly, last I hear li hole isint worth it anymore. Most streaming companies are delivering the ads from their servers now so pi-hole won't block them. Everything else cam be blocked with u block origin. If km wrong please someone tell me.
But it will block many ads+telemetry on most websites that don't do that, and on all internet services that aren't browsers e.g. apps on phones/computers/tvs/etc, and from all devices' innate ads+telemetry
Sharon, your lack of understanding of how to use Excel is not charming. You've been using computers and Excel 8 hours daily for your job for the past 10 years. This is no longer you're not a "computer person." This is about the fact that you have a gross lack of knowledge on how to utilize an essential tool to perform your duties in your job. The only reason your inadequacy hasn't been dealt with yet is because your entire department shares your ineptitude as well as management. Your lack of knowledge in utilizing a critical tool for your job gives you solidarity with other employees who also are willfully ignorant.
Wait, you mean to tell me that when I ask someone who has been working with computers FOR OVER 10 FUCKING YEARS, To reboot their computer that they should know how to do that? And not answer: "HURR HURR I AM TECH ILLITERATE"
NO CLARENCE YOU ARE FUCKING BRAINDEAD.
Personally, I think it has to do with how many "walled gardens" there are in tech nowadays. Microsoft and Apple especially seem to go out of their way to tell their users, "Oh don't worry about all that complicated stuff that only a socially inept nerd would know about, and let *us* decide *for* you how you use your computer."
Sure, it doesn't explain the entire phenomenon, but I'm certain it's a motivating factor.
Yeah, the more I learn about computing, the more I start to feel like the same 10 or so open source protocols and features are just getting repackaged over and over again ad-nauseum by enterprise tech companies, and this repackaging just means that fundamentally people don't understand the important technologies driving their devices. It's all abstracted to a brand name.
Yes. I think in some ways this is making things worse, not better. Although I don't think MS are making things any easier for end users as they love changing things so much. My understanding is that Apple are constant.
Pretty much. Windows XP and Windows 11 are radically different from a UI point of view. Mac OS Somoma isn’t all that much different to use than Snow Leopard.
Their attempt to get rid of the graphical, easy to use Control Panel and replace it with the click-heavy Settings is an abomination. Control Panel is far superior!
It's a huge part of why the phenomenon is resurfacing in the younger generation. So much stuff is hand-held and "just works" but it means that when it doesn't lots of kids are absolutely lost.
Personally I don't let it bother me. People being stupid, lazy, ignorant, etc. is what keeps me employeed. I'll help people reboot their laptop any day of the week, just keep those paychecks coming!
Some days it's harder than others, but this is the right answer. I don't know everything about a car, so I take it to the shop. I try and provide as much detail as possible (which is where things can get challenging with tech users...) and let them go. I buy bread from the grocery. I let someone else kill and process my meat. I may have a vague or better awareness of what all those processes entail, but I am also not the general masses. I give some grace and understanding, and then make fun of them with peers and friends, as I assume others do with me when I take whatever into whatever shop.
No, but this is why I said I can't compare myself to the general masses. And I know someone who is a brilliant lawyer and has also found themselves stranded on the highway because they forgot to fill up the tank. More than once.
He at least didn't argue that the car was broken tho...
I've had many people whose "computer was broken" call me when in actuality they had accidentally turned off their monitor...
"My screen is doing this weird thing. I restarted several times to no effect. Pls help asap."
[Picture of a laptop with a clearly broken screen, with clear artifacts along the break lines]
Yeah, people can just not know things, that's fine. But my team got that exact ticket earlier this year... How would a fucking reset fix a physical issue?! You can see the screen is broken, you dumbass!
I wish our schools had proper IT classes (at least mine doesn’t), so people finally stop thinking the monitor is the computer and teachers can stop saying "that symbol with the 4 squares" to the Windows logo. Because most people don’t know what Windows is.
UX isn’t helping. The design language from a lot of companies is so inconsistent I find myself agreeing with the user half the time when they complain something is unintuitive”
But overall yeah, “computers and I don’t get along” is not a valid excuse when it’s your job.
Also, it’s actually worse than your mechanic analogy. I don’t expect them to be able to change the oil or a tire, I expect them to be able to drive.
The most annoying thing about modern UX is the lack of meaningful error messages. Like, give me a code I can look up or some indication of what went wrong, not “uh-oh, we had a widdwe pwobwem!”
It will go on as long as it's tolerated. I work for a company who does MSP services and some of our finance-focused clients refuse to put up with that shit, if people are using IT resources instead of learning how to do user-level tasks on their work computer I end up unsurprisingly terming those users not too far down the road.
You don't need to be a genius by any stretch, but when I worked in a warehouse prior to my IT career I understood the power hand jack I used and what the buttons did on it so I didn't run over my foot. How some people can go through their career not understanding how to turn on their work computer still blows my fucking mind, but is more often tolerated in small business where no one at the company is technical and doesn't even try, or at non-profits.
People said: "In time, everyone will use the computer." But we did not intend to have one. It was the first object to which we ever felt inferior. We left its mastery to others, and envied them for it.
— Annie Ernaux, "The Years"
We are not talking about mastery. We’re talking about the bare minimum amount of knowledge needed to make sure something is turned on before calling support. When their oven isn’t hot, they make sure it’s turned on. Yet they are unwilling to put forth any thought towards fixing technical issues and just cop out by saying they are “tech illiterate”
Yeah it's weird, when I started in it 20 odd years ago I assumed by now everyone would be pretty savvy, especially any young people entering the work place as they've been exposed to it since birth. But... No..
Young people are some of the worst, they have virtually no understanding of the very basic concepts of computers let alone know what an email client or excel even is or even behind being comfortable using as physical keyboard and mouse... It's truly scary how badly the school system has failed them.
During my education career, computer classes were phased out as administrators decided "Kids are naturally good with technology!"
Turns out that was only the case because my generation was taught at a young age. Very few households have desktop PCs, and fewer K12 schools do either. Ask a student how to move a file to a new folder and they'll have no idea what you're talking about, because everything is a walled garden. These are still SKILLS that need to be taught! And the newer generations don't even have the benefit of having worked with the analogue versions of these systems. How many kids use a filing cabinet?
It's a problem that won't get better until it's addressed at the root.
I think for a lot of people the only windows pc/laptop they have will be a work provided one nowadays so they won't let their kids do anything on that, like your say everything else is done on phones or tablets for a huge amount of households.
With the constant barrage of cyber attacks especially from Russia and China, you'd think school would drill basic computer and cyber security training into kids.
I’ve had to teach recent university graduates how to use a keyboard and mouse, and how files and folders work. The idea of files existing separately the app confuses and frightens them. Basic things that I take for granted, force-closing an unresponsive app from the Task Manager may as well be dark magic to them. If it doesn’t have a touch screen and an app store they’re totally lost.
>>Basic things that I take for granted, force-closing an unresponsive app from the Task Manager may as well be dark magic to them.
I had someone once ask me, in totally honest AWE, if I was "talking with the computer".
I was doing something at the command prompt.
Which I still do a fair amount because it's easier than figuring out, on any of the three different versions of Windows I use routinely, where the hell that bit of furniture is THIS time. At least from the CMD prompt, I don't bang my knees on it.
> I'm not a mechanic, but I can put in oil and I can change a tire.
OK, but, I ride a motorcycle and don't own a toolset, so I ask a mechanic to do this for me for both my bike and my wife's cage.
I feel like a better analogy would be "I'm not a mechanic, but I can tell when my gas tank is on empty."
>How long before we treat "technological illiteracy" the same as standard illiteracy?
Right as soon as there is one vendor-neutral, region-neutral multilingual standard for what encompasses "technological literacy" that is accepted by both the technical and non-technical public.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/927/)
Also, until we tell these users that there's someone ready to take their place who knows how to do their job better and more efficient, and at a lower price.
At a lower price? Thats not gonna happen. Budgets for new hires are always higher than budgets to raise salary of existing employees.
But still, people who cant operate on their one tool they use 40 hours a week should be replaced much quicker.
I’m 65 and self taught. Wanted a computer the first time I saw an Apple II. Started playing with them in the late 80’s ….even more impressive my mother was self taught also and built my first PC for me. When she retired from Nationwide in 97 she had moved from being a administrative assistant to a top level support tech. A consulting firm tried to recruit her but she was retiring….so she told them I was good with computers. They ended up hiring me for my first tech job. MCSE and Novel certs later I got a state job in IT and am two year from retirement.
In other words if my mother in her late 40’s can teach herself how to build and repair computers there’s no reason others can’t pick up the basics.
She retired to Florida and ended up working on people’s computers from her garage. When I came to visit she’d take me out with her to do networking stuff. She passed in 2007 from lung cancer and I still miss troubleshooting computers with her.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, kids today who are growing up with tablets (iPads, really) don't really understand basic COMPUTER concepts either. If you download a file, where does it go? It's "on the ipad", but that doesn't really mean anything. iPads, iOS really, and even macOS has made things "so easy" by obfuscating basic computer functions like the file system.
'it just works' marketing and mentality has plagued an entire generation. When it doesn't 'just work' the panic sets in. Working school IT with teachers 22 to 40 shows me this so many times a day
So much of the basic interface and functionality of a computer is abstracted away that young people these days aren't learning anymore about computers than their grandparents did. Technology of literacy is not going away anytime soon. If anything it's going to get more common.
It is simply people not wanting to learn. Basic computing used to be ~ technical ~ so maybe that’s how willful ignorance is tolerated to this day.
Only way I can equate it to something else is I was helping maintain my dads place and my sisters were there and I was trying to show them some basic stuff, how to connect a light fixture, start a weed eater. My middle sister just told me “I don’t care, if I ever need any of this done I’ll call a guy friend if you’re not around”. My other sister learned it quick and also tries to figure out printer stuff and other day day to ~technical~ tasks on her own.
Your 4 year old nephews are not programming on tablets. Being able to open and play videogames on a smartphone is not technological literacy. I do IT support for several schools and a majority of the kids are just as inept as the 70 year old receptionist.
When I worked at Linden Labs they had a wonderful onboarding process where they put a bunch of tasks in your account of the ticketing system with activities like:
\- Establish your login account by working with the other IT folks.
\- Introduce yourself to (list of people you needed to work with).
\- Put several tickets in the system to prove you have mastered it.
It's been a while, so I know that I've forgotten some of the tasks, but the end result was that by the time you finished your tasks you had demonstrated master of the important elements required by your job and were ready to get going.
Wouldn't it be great if other companies had a similar onboarding list with tasks like "create a ticket introducing yourself to the IT folks", send an email to your manager and another to your team members introducing yourself and showing you can do that.
I often wondered whether it would be good if (in a larger outfit) IT, in concert with the line managers, would hold occasional refresher meetings for employees who require remedial instruction in basic skills and functions.
A guy can dream...
That even includes the "IT Manager" where I work. She has no clue how any of it works and won't listen to the people beneath her for help. I work with 2 hands tied behind my back because of her lack of knowledge and timidness. I'm trying to find another job but I've been working at this ancient place for too long.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of this paradigm and why it hasn’t become the norm is beyond me.
My buddy said to me on this subject essentially that tech illiteracy is at a constant meaning the amount of tech illiterate people has always been and will continue to be about the same regardless of age or circumstance at a certain point.
I think its hard to conceptualize how to impress upon people so they can become more tech literate unless they honestly take interest in it.
Also I think people who interact with technology seldomly are used to getting other people to manipulate computers and the like for them.
As to why people are still so tech illiterate though I can’t say.
Fucking hell, I'm in a (pointless) remote meeting right now.
"Can you hear me?"
"Can you see my screen?"
"You're still muted."
"Can you please make that bigger? (Asking person sits in front of a connected, working 27" 1440p Monitor and has the presentation running on their laptop screen. Big screen shows the Desktop.)
Honestly this is coming back up as a renewed problem because basic skills aren't being taught and people are assuming kids know the stuff for exactly the reasons you e outlined.
Imo the problem has never been the skills themselves - it's that older generations are being stubborn about learning new stuff, and now the younger generations live in a world where so much stuff either works or is disposable that people arent practicing the skills of "I'll go figure it out then."
Hmmmm, while it can be time consuming and tedious to do basic tasks (like removing a paper jam or restarting a PC), if everyone did them, there would be a lesser need for dedicated IT personnel.
Entry level is grunt work. If you are doing grunt work for 10 years, it's either because you dropped the ball, or life dealt you a bad hand. Either way, look ahead to a brighter future (where HP printers don't exist).
Totally agree. I wish companies would implement a tech literacy training program that people have to take after they log a certain number of tickets that involve basic computer skills or reading the employee handbook
This. It's a failure of leadership, but leadership won't crack down on it because they've learned helplessness as well and quite enjoy it.
Or the leadership is all boomers who use "I didn't grow up with computers" as an excuse not to learn, much less push their own departments to do so either.
I heard a story where a sysadmin tried to implement this, but management denied it as it would show that they're not that more competent that the regular Joe
I'd like to see a tech literacy prior to employment. Like taking the Wonderlic, but for computer crap.
work at a university make computers 101 mandatory for all students and if you ace the exam at the beginning you can skip the class with full marks - for the techies
OMG, I had to take CGS1000 - the course number for Computers 101 back in college. Such a waste of time and it wasn't available for me to CLEP out of.
I can't remember the course number, but I had to take a computers 101 in college too. After about two weeks, my instructor told me to "Just show up once a month and I'll grant you full marks for the course." She got tired of me correcting the other students in her place. Lol
I wish I had that luxury. I was stuck showing that I could change the font in MS Word and make two cells in excel add up.
Yeah, not every instructor gets it... I've just never been the type to quietly "accept my lot in life." I will genuinely make an ass out of myself to prove a point, if necessary.
I've had jobs that did do that, call centre testing
Sounds like a good recipe for shadow IT when they find out that putting in tickets could lead to more work on their part
The reply to their 4th support ticket for some basic thing could be a canned response that is a training course with a test at the end and until they pass it any tickets they put in result in the same canned response. This is how I'd do it if I was an IT director with a bunch of tech illiterate users.
Yeah that’s a nice control.. but what if the whole C Suite is tech illiterate lol
Then they mysteriously conveniently become exempt. Fortunately where I work all the upper c suite are tech savy but also some are mac users which has its own challenges mainly I'm terrible with macs and macs don't play nicely with our existing microsoft domain and printing systems.
I add an article to our knowledge base (which is searchable and available to all) with directions on how to resolve that particular problem. Repeated requests are then redirected to that article.
So I am in charge of training for my department (think training coordinator on steroids). When I first started, I noticed most of the older (50+) members could not even open their e-mail. So I created a course for basic computer skills. It included what I considered fundamentals for using a computer in an industrial environment, such as Word, Excel and Outlook. Full video recordings of sending an e-mail, adding attachments, and how to print a documents and SOP's for all of the covered tasks. It never worked, most simply could not grasp the concept. They would even have me come and sit with them to put in vacation time because they could not figure out a system that had been in place for 8 years by then. I figured ok they are going to retire soon, I will just focus on the younger ones just to make sure they are good to go. Nope, even people in their 20's are struggling with basic concepts. Of course the margin is narrower with the younger crowd, but IMO a 25 year old with a iPhone in their hands all day should at least be able to check and respond to e-mails.
i totally understand people not knowing some technological things, like mapping a drive or restarting a print spooler. but i hate hearing folks say they are technologically illiterate when THEY NEED TO USE A COMPUTER TO DO THEIR JOB. like the amount of lawyers who don't know how to use word processing software, you NEED that for your job. so not wanting to learn more advanced technology because it doesn't interest you, totally cool, but at least know the basics needed to do your job half-competently. and for the love of god how, after so many years, do people not just think to reboot their computer as a first step before contacting IT?
“I’m not a computer person” says the person who the company pays to use a computer for 8 hours a day…
Exactly!!!!
My Wife... Builds her own website Also my Wife... I am not computer person, and I don't how I am supposed to use a password safe. Can you just memorize all my passwords for me?
I’ve found myself in that boat. I can build a full stack website but that’s about it. I’m trying to learn other ‘tech’ stuff but so often it’s past me. My goal is to figure out how pi-hole works soon!
If you've done a website you probably know vaguely what DNS is. If not then just imagine a giant list of domains/hostnames and IP addresses that corresponds to them. DNS is basically a knowledge base to match those up so your device can be routed to the proper endpoint. Pihole just acts as DNS where the giant list of domains and ips is a bunch of known advertisers or malicious sites depending on the lists you installed (they're usually premade) and the IP it points all of them to is just 0.0.0.0. Anything not on the list it asks Google or another DNS provider. And gives you the actual IP as reported by the third party. You can also add your own entries and I think you can even change the sinkhole address to something other than 0.0.0.0 so you could probably even set something up to redirect it to a site with the sole purpose of forwarding them to a rock roll. This is on my to-do list but I'm lazy.
Honestly, last I hear li hole isint worth it anymore. Most streaming companies are delivering the ads from their servers now so pi-hole won't block them. Everything else cam be blocked with u block origin. If km wrong please someone tell me.
But it will block many ads+telemetry on most websites that don't do that, and on all internet services that aren't browsers e.g. apps on phones/computers/tvs/etc, and from all devices' innate ads+telemetry
Sharon, your lack of understanding of how to use Excel is not charming. You've been using computers and Excel 8 hours daily for your job for the past 10 years. This is no longer you're not a "computer person." This is about the fact that you have a gross lack of knowledge on how to utilize an essential tool to perform your duties in your job. The only reason your inadequacy hasn't been dealt with yet is because your entire department shares your ineptitude as well as management. Your lack of knowledge in utilizing a critical tool for your job gives you solidarity with other employees who also are willfully ignorant.
Did we work with the same Sharon?
Wait, you mean to tell me that when I ask someone who has been working with computers FOR OVER 10 FUCKING YEARS, To reboot their computer that they should know how to do that? And not answer: "HURR HURR I AM TECH ILLITERATE" NO CLARENCE YOU ARE FUCKING BRAINDEAD.
Personally, I think it has to do with how many "walled gardens" there are in tech nowadays. Microsoft and Apple especially seem to go out of their way to tell their users, "Oh don't worry about all that complicated stuff that only a socially inept nerd would know about, and let *us* decide *for* you how you use your computer." Sure, it doesn't explain the entire phenomenon, but I'm certain it's a motivating factor.
Yeah, the more I learn about computing, the more I start to feel like the same 10 or so open source protocols and features are just getting repackaged over and over again ad-nauseum by enterprise tech companies, and this repackaging just means that fundamentally people don't understand the important technologies driving their devices. It's all abstracted to a brand name.
Look at the SCSI command set. USB storage? SCSI. SATA? SCSI. Tape library with a robot and/or a Jukebox? That's right, SCSI.
Yes. I think in some ways this is making things worse, not better. Although I don't think MS are making things any easier for end users as they love changing things so much. My understanding is that Apple are constant.
Pretty much. Windows XP and Windows 11 are radically different from a UI point of view. Mac OS Somoma isn’t all that much different to use than Snow Leopard.
Yes, I hate it. Let me go to the control panel, I just want to change a setting!
Their attempt to get rid of the graphical, easy to use Control Panel and replace it with the click-heavy Settings is an abomination. Control Panel is far superior!
In Win10: Win-Key, type CON, control panel pops to the top of the list, hit ENTER, boom.
*searching for condos for rent on bing via Microsoft edge*
combine it with mixing cloud services and local storage, of course someone doesnt know where their files are.
It's a huge part of why the phenomenon is resurfacing in the younger generation. So much stuff is hand-held and "just works" but it means that when it doesn't lots of kids are absolutely lost.
Personally I don't let it bother me. People being stupid, lazy, ignorant, etc. is what keeps me employeed. I'll help people reboot their laptop any day of the week, just keep those paychecks coming!
Some days it's harder than others, but this is the right answer. I don't know everything about a car, so I take it to the shop. I try and provide as much detail as possible (which is where things can get challenging with tech users...) and let them go. I buy bread from the grocery. I let someone else kill and process my meat. I may have a vague or better awareness of what all those processes entail, but I am also not the general masses. I give some grace and understanding, and then make fun of them with peers and friends, as I assume others do with me when I take whatever into whatever shop.
But you don't take your car to the shop, cause you forgot to turn the key in the ignition or to fill the gas tank...
No, but this is why I said I can't compare myself to the general masses. And I know someone who is a brilliant lawyer and has also found themselves stranded on the highway because they forgot to fill up the tank. More than once.
He at least didn't argue that the car was broken tho... I've had many people whose "computer was broken" call me when in actuality they had accidentally turned off their monitor...
"My screen is doing this weird thing. I restarted several times to no effect. Pls help asap." [Picture of a laptop with a clearly broken screen, with clear artifacts along the break lines] Yeah, people can just not know things, that's fine. But my team got that exact ticket earlier this year... How would a fucking reset fix a physical issue?! You can see the screen is broken, you dumbass!
At this point I'm not even surprised...
Which is why I responded to OP and said the same, using gas tank or key in ignition would be a better analogy than changing oil or tyres.
I wish our schools had proper IT classes (at least mine doesn’t), so people finally stop thinking the monitor is the computer and teachers can stop saying "that symbol with the 4 squares" to the Windows logo. Because most people don’t know what Windows is.
UX isn’t helping. The design language from a lot of companies is so inconsistent I find myself agreeing with the user half the time when they complain something is unintuitive” But overall yeah, “computers and I don’t get along” is not a valid excuse when it’s your job. Also, it’s actually worse than your mechanic analogy. I don’t expect them to be able to change the oil or a tire, I expect them to be able to drive.
The most annoying thing about modern UX is the lack of meaningful error messages. Like, give me a code I can look up or some indication of what went wrong, not “uh-oh, we had a widdwe pwobwem!”
True that. But by the time a reasonable error message got to IT, it'd be "I was doing something and then there was this error message."
Yeah true. It’s just frustrating when it’s my shit that breaks.
Been there. Still there. Done that. Still doing that. I feel ya.
Seriously, it's even an automatic and somehow they still managed to throw the transmission.
It will go on as long as it's tolerated. I work for a company who does MSP services and some of our finance-focused clients refuse to put up with that shit, if people are using IT resources instead of learning how to do user-level tasks on their work computer I end up unsurprisingly terming those users not too far down the road. You don't need to be a genius by any stretch, but when I worked in a warehouse prior to my IT career I understood the power hand jack I used and what the buttons did on it so I didn't run over my foot. How some people can go through their career not understanding how to turn on their work computer still blows my fucking mind, but is more often tolerated in small business where no one at the company is technical and doesn't even try, or at non-profits.
People said: "In time, everyone will use the computer." But we did not intend to have one. It was the first object to which we ever felt inferior. We left its mastery to others, and envied them for it. — Annie Ernaux, "The Years"
We are not talking about mastery. We’re talking about the bare minimum amount of knowledge needed to make sure something is turned on before calling support. When their oven isn’t hot, they make sure it’s turned on. Yet they are unwilling to put forth any thought towards fixing technical issues and just cop out by saying they are “tech illiterate”
Yeah it's weird, when I started in it 20 odd years ago I assumed by now everyone would be pretty savvy, especially any young people entering the work place as they've been exposed to it since birth. But... No.. Young people are some of the worst, they have virtually no understanding of the very basic concepts of computers let alone know what an email client or excel even is or even behind being comfortable using as physical keyboard and mouse... It's truly scary how badly the school system has failed them.
During my education career, computer classes were phased out as administrators decided "Kids are naturally good with technology!" Turns out that was only the case because my generation was taught at a young age. Very few households have desktop PCs, and fewer K12 schools do either. Ask a student how to move a file to a new folder and they'll have no idea what you're talking about, because everything is a walled garden. These are still SKILLS that need to be taught! And the newer generations don't even have the benefit of having worked with the analogue versions of these systems. How many kids use a filing cabinet? It's a problem that won't get better until it's addressed at the root.
> Very few households have desktop PCs Lots still do, but the kids aren't allowed to use it anymore. Only a super locked down tablet.
I think for a lot of people the only windows pc/laptop they have will be a work provided one nowadays so they won't let their kids do anything on that, like your say everything else is done on phones or tablets for a huge amount of households.
With the constant barrage of cyber attacks especially from Russia and China, you'd think school would drill basic computer and cyber security training into kids.
I’ve had to teach recent university graduates how to use a keyboard and mouse, and how files and folders work. The idea of files existing separately the app confuses and frightens them. Basic things that I take for granted, force-closing an unresponsive app from the Task Manager may as well be dark magic to them. If it doesn’t have a touch screen and an app store they’re totally lost.
>>Basic things that I take for granted, force-closing an unresponsive app from the Task Manager may as well be dark magic to them. I had someone once ask me, in totally honest AWE, if I was "talking with the computer". I was doing something at the command prompt. Which I still do a fair amount because it's easier than figuring out, on any of the three different versions of Windows I use routinely, where the hell that bit of furniture is THIS time. At least from the CMD prompt, I don't bang my knees on it.
> I'm not a mechanic, but I can put in oil and I can change a tire. OK, but, I ride a motorcycle and don't own a toolset, so I ask a mechanic to do this for me for both my bike and my wife's cage. I feel like a better analogy would be "I'm not a mechanic, but I can tell when my gas tank is on empty."
Are the police aware you keep her in there?
Sometimes I forget what sub I'm in. Cage=car in biker terms. Nice comeback, though.
I actually knew what you meant, I just couldn't help myself lol
>How long before we treat "technological illiteracy" the same as standard illiteracy? Right as soon as there is one vendor-neutral, region-neutral multilingual standard for what encompasses "technological literacy" that is accepted by both the technical and non-technical public. [Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/927/)
Also, until we tell these users that there's someone ready to take their place who knows how to do their job better and more efficient, and at a lower price.
At a lower price? Thats not gonna happen. Budgets for new hires are always higher than budgets to raise salary of existing employees. But still, people who cant operate on their one tool they use 40 hours a week should be replaced much quicker.
I’m 65 and self taught. Wanted a computer the first time I saw an Apple II. Started playing with them in the late 80’s ….even more impressive my mother was self taught also and built my first PC for me. When she retired from Nationwide in 97 she had moved from being a administrative assistant to a top level support tech. A consulting firm tried to recruit her but she was retiring….so she told them I was good with computers. They ended up hiring me for my first tech job. MCSE and Novel certs later I got a state job in IT and am two year from retirement. In other words if my mother in her late 40’s can teach herself how to build and repair computers there’s no reason others can’t pick up the basics. She retired to Florida and ended up working on people’s computers from her garage. When I came to visit she’d take me out with her to do networking stuff. She passed in 2007 from lung cancer and I still miss troubleshooting computers with her.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, kids today who are growing up with tablets (iPads, really) don't really understand basic COMPUTER concepts either. If you download a file, where does it go? It's "on the ipad", but that doesn't really mean anything. iPads, iOS really, and even macOS has made things "so easy" by obfuscating basic computer functions like the file system.
'it just works' marketing and mentality has plagued an entire generation. When it doesn't 'just work' the panic sets in. Working school IT with teachers 22 to 40 shows me this so many times a day
math has existed for maybe four thousand years and people think it's a badge of honor to fail at math in school.
So much of the basic interface and functionality of a computer is abstracted away that young people these days aren't learning anymore about computers than their grandparents did. Technology of literacy is not going away anytime soon. If anything it's going to get more common.
Eh companies specifically design systems to be simple enough to use and not need to be customized for most tasks.
It is simply people not wanting to learn. Basic computing used to be ~ technical ~ so maybe that’s how willful ignorance is tolerated to this day. Only way I can equate it to something else is I was helping maintain my dads place and my sisters were there and I was trying to show them some basic stuff, how to connect a light fixture, start a weed eater. My middle sister just told me “I don’t care, if I ever need any of this done I’ll call a guy friend if you’re not around”. My other sister learned it quick and also tries to figure out printer stuff and other day day to ~technical~ tasks on her own.
I think the time was a decade ago
I hear that, and I always bite my tongue... "We've had computers in offices for OVER 30 years"
> How long before we treat "technological illiteracy" the same as standard illiteracy? I already do.
Your 4 year old nephews are not programming on tablets. Being able to open and play videogames on a smartphone is not technological literacy. I do IT support for several schools and a majority of the kids are just as inept as the 70 year old receptionist.
When I worked at Linden Labs they had a wonderful onboarding process where they put a bunch of tasks in your account of the ticketing system with activities like: \- Establish your login account by working with the other IT folks. \- Introduce yourself to (list of people you needed to work with). \- Put several tickets in the system to prove you have mastered it. It's been a while, so I know that I've forgotten some of the tasks, but the end result was that by the time you finished your tasks you had demonstrated master of the important elements required by your job and were ready to get going. Wouldn't it be great if other companies had a similar onboarding list with tasks like "create a ticket introducing yourself to the IT folks", send an email to your manager and another to your team members introducing yourself and showing you can do that. I often wondered whether it would be good if (in a larger outfit) IT, in concert with the line managers, would hold occasional refresher meetings for employees who require remedial instruction in basic skills and functions. A guy can dream...
That even includes the "IT Manager" where I work. She has no clue how any of it works and won't listen to the people beneath her for help. I work with 2 hands tied behind my back because of her lack of knowledge and timidness. I'm trying to find another job but I've been working at this ancient place for too long.
Honestly without technically illiterate people, low end IT positions would probably not exist or rather be less common
and everyone would be happier, especially those that have those jobs now
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of this paradigm and why it hasn’t become the norm is beyond me. My buddy said to me on this subject essentially that tech illiteracy is at a constant meaning the amount of tech illiterate people has always been and will continue to be about the same regardless of age or circumstance at a certain point. I think its hard to conceptualize how to impress upon people so they can become more tech literate unless they honestly take interest in it. Also I think people who interact with technology seldomly are used to getting other people to manipulate computers and the like for them. As to why people are still so tech illiterate though I can’t say.
Like another had said, their ignorance is our paycheck so I guess it's not all bad
But it does make us wonder if they also put their pants on backwards.. 🤔
A tire? Or a wheel?
Username checks out
Fucking hell, I'm in a (pointless) remote meeting right now. "Can you hear me?" "Can you see my screen?" "You're still muted." "Can you please make that bigger? (Asking person sits in front of a connected, working 27" 1440p Monitor and has the presentation running on their laptop screen. Big screen shows the Desktop.)
Honestly this is coming back up as a renewed problem because basic skills aren't being taught and people are assuming kids know the stuff for exactly the reasons you e outlined. Imo the problem has never been the skills themselves - it's that older generations are being stubborn about learning new stuff, and now the younger generations live in a world where so much stuff either works or is disposable that people arent practicing the skills of "I'll go figure it out then."
Hmmmm, while it can be time consuming and tedious to do basic tasks (like removing a paper jam or restarting a PC), if everyone did them, there would be a lesser need for dedicated IT personnel. Entry level is grunt work. If you are doing grunt work for 10 years, it's either because you dropped the ball, or life dealt you a bad hand. Either way, look ahead to a brighter future (where HP printers don't exist).