Anyone who dismisses an entire generation as lazy or stupid is, ironically, revealing their own ignorance. Even Socrates complained about the youth of his time, yet civilization kept moving forward. If every new generation were truly worse than the last, we’d have collapsed long ago. So no, you can’t generalize an entire generation as foolish—doing so only highlights your own lack of perspective.
Maybe the world runs on averages. It might take a handful of really bright people to move the world forward whilst everyone else languishes in blissful ignorance.
If that crowd represents chatGPT, then this represents gen alpha perfectly.
Right here you can see capitalism collapsing in on itself. This is the result of a society that glorifies consumption and makes work undesirable to do.
I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.
My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.
But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…
Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.
It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.
I know my way around Windows, Linux and android pretty well. I have to google any time I get asked for help with an apple device.
So, while yes things have gotten simpler, if you want to do anything beyond the basics you still need to learn the device.
It's funny. You're telling us that the technology was too complicated for some people to use, then you say we got to the point that it just works and you end with this being bad. Why do you think that?
When technology was too hard for the tech-illiterate to use, your grandma wasn't sharing stories about Haitians eating cats and dogs, and your deadbeat cousin didn't waste his life savings on Trump's cryptocurrency
In short, the complexity acted as a filter. It was a barrier to entry, which meant you had to be a bit of a nerd to get online. Back in the ‘90’s, people made fun of you for being an online nerd. But it also meant that the people who got online tended to be smarter. More educated.
The internet of the ‘90’s had a very nerdy culture. The worst debates were about Star Wars vs Star Trek. We disagreed on some things, but on the whole it was ‘us nerds’ online.
Now that we made it this easy, there’s no longer a filter: you can find anyone and everyone online. Including some folks who can’t really handle this much freedom without being assholes with it. The web also gravitated towards bigger platforms which, ironically, have much less of a community feel than the old web. In the 90’s, I knew everyone on a forum by name. But on a subreddit with a million people, there's no real ‘community’.
The web these days is also overrun with politics, which simply wasn’t a thing back in say, 1995.
It goes back to critical thinking, the struggle to learn something is the most important part.
You wouldn't download a C drive.
Don't know no C, only /dev/sda1.
*hda1 please
/dev/nvme1?
I run a Makerspace and teach technology to kids. I don't think they are getting worse, but the difference between the lowest and highest skilled is bigger than ever before.
Those who are interested, learn so fucking fast and so thoroughly, because they have things like YouTube tutorials and Discord chat groups with like-minded nerds to teach themselves. BUT at the same time, it's easier to just remain a consumer, and never gain any deeper knowledge.
I think curiosity and attention are quickly becoming the most important skills by far.
I've worked in IT for most of my career. I've seen some shit. I'm on the older side of "millennial". Not old enough to be on the cusp, but almost immediate after. I have had computers as a part of my life since I was young enough to remember, starting with a 286/386 that my dad used at home.
One thing I've noticed is that most companies shit doesn't stink. What I mean by that is that all of them, to some extent, hide, cover up, or otherwise deny that their product has any issues whatsoever. I did a lot of VMware training back in the day, there were good reasons for that, but I won't get into it .. anyways, all of their training was about how it's supposed to work. There's zero material about what to do when it doesn't work like it is supposed to... Even "troubleshooting" courses are designed to help you fix the configuration of the system using only methods sanctioned by the company, because any fault or flaw in their product must be because you aren't using it right, or you simply don't know how.
I've known so many millennials, especially in the tech space, that had to fix their own problems because the product, and the company that made it, believes that their shit doesn't stink. There's nothing wrong with their product, you either don't know how to use it, or you aren't using it correctly,
Meanwhile, here in reality, all their shit sucks to all fuck, and their product is little more than hour garbage.
Yay?
They get handed locked down chromebooks or iPads at schools. They’re only really exposed to a walled garden, and they also aren’t explicitly taught a lot of concepts that need to be taught (almost all MS/HS I’ve met have passwords which are just sliding their finger across the keyboard - it’s bewildering. I teach “correct horse battery staple.”)
You can’t learn much if you can’t install your own software. Learning is breaking things though, and most schools seem allergic to hiring competent tech teams/setting up sandboxed computer labs. Security concerns are huge - eg, if your kids school uses PowerSchool they probably got hacked this year - but when your teaching physics and can’t install MathLab or whatever…
There are still the little geeks that figure out how to get video game emulators going - Pokémon Emerald is probably more popular among middle schoolers today than it was in 2005.
My second grader's school laptop is a cheap lightweight Lenovo Windows machine. So not ideal, but better than many options. At least it's something I'd be willing to call a PC.
The password situation is just as funny though. His login and password are on a nice printed label stuck right below the keyboard. The login is typical, lastname-firstinitial-middleinitial, but the password is just his 6-digit student ID number. So not only is it the classic "post-it on the monitor" situation, but it would be pretty trivial to log in as any student.
Though so far in elementary school the laptops have been a teaching tool and occasionally a remote learning tool. Somebody couldn't log in and mess with his homework or whatever.
I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.
It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse.......They couldn't grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don't go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn't have a touch screen.
And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.
To be fair: I switched to Linux 6 years ago. I'm using a tiling windowmanager, a lot of custom scripts, a different keyboardlayout with six instead of two layers (great for writing greek math, and other symbols) and an enthusiastic emacs user. I know the my System in and out. As a CS end math student, I know a fair bit about a Computer. But when A sit in front of an ordinary windows PC, I am a little bit upset. I stumble a lot of times over the thought: "You don't have a keyboard shortcut for this! You have to use the Mouse, to switch Windows or you have to click yourself trough a menu to change this setting. There are no man pages you can search with regex" I hate it!
"an enthusiastic emacs user" Well, there's your problem! (Sorry, I couldn't resist the poke)
To be serious, Windows and that mouse are just tools-- same as any Linux distro is. A means to an end. Nothing more. There is nothing to be miffed about when you need to use that tool. Be proficient with all your tools. And when you need to use a tool, don't be concerned about comparing it to the other tools. It diminishes you skills with that tool and and offers no gain to the solution.
I use Arch (btw) because it’s easy, simple, and beginner friendly
Absolutely lost in Windows, nothing ever works, and the documentation isn’t laid out well. Support is just sfc /scannow
This is why windows is here for a few games and Linux is for everything else.
I think that's being a bit unfair to Windows. Some of its keyboard shortcuts are stupid, but it does have them. When it doesn't, the problem is the application.
I haven't run into the problem of people not being able to use a mouse - but I've found that very few young people are able to tell if something is saved on their own computer or being accessed over the internet. Saving or downloading files is not something they are familiar with. (Which I suppose is because a lot of modern software makes cloud stuff so silky smooth that people don't notice it.)
92 here. My boys 10 and 8 have their own machines, they are told to Google it first before I come help.
"I'm not raising end users...get your shit together kid."
Love,
SysEngineer Dad.
fellow tech dad here. how did you strike the balance between "look up shit online" and "hiding the terrors and lies of the internet from my kids"?
Mine's still little, but knowing sooner is better.
I have the Microsoft safety shit on, and I made every site they can go to a web app. My router blocks nsfw/nonkid traffic. My phone gets notifications when they do anything at all.
And I have extensions blocking all nsfw sites just in case. And I've nuked the entry for any web browser on their start menu and task bars. Can't even scroll to find it. If you open it, it requires my admin PW, which is 14char #$@-123-ABC so good luck turds.
Steam is locked down in kid mode - also they just play Roblox or cool math games anyways lol. Steam has browser disabled.
Only things they have access to is Bing.com with their signed in kid account. And coolmathgames.com.
It took about a week on and off to setup and I just did the two laptops in tandem. Windows 11.
The family thing can be a pain, Microsoft has a lot of half baked ideas https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/how-to-set-up-parental-controls-on-a-windows-11-pc
You’re 92 and your kids are 10 and 8? Damn, and I thought I started late.
Old dusty balls still knockin around by my knees but you better be god damn sure I'm fuckin.
My kid spends a lot of time helping their friends do basic computer stuff and we have the same rants about users.
I’m so proud.
Raising them right. I have a 28 year old college grad sys admin that I work with....I had to show him where windows updates were.
He uses windows search to open settings....bachelors degree in IT.
I wouldn't be in the mood to start raising a child st 84
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of a 92 YO on Lemmy.
Most parents done feel like raising theirs either. They just stuff them on a tablet and do their thing.
"I'm not raising end users...get your shit together kid."
Quite an important thing. That's also important if you help your parents/grandparents with something. Guide the through it so you hopefully dont have to help them next time.
I'm starting to get to a point in my career where I have to turn down helping my family.
I strongly encourage the elderly to "just get an iPad" if they have an iPhone and just drop x86 devices all together. It's way less headache.
Luckily my mom's still young and proficient enough with computers and phones.
you should encourage them to use something that's not google. Startpage, SearxNG, DuckDuckGo are good alternatives.
I agree but bing.com is really what they are using because it has the parental controls that coincide with their signed in account.
When they get older and are more "free" on the Internet I'll migrate them to Linux, I'll let them choose the DE and then they can do what ever they want.
I spent so much time troubleshooting together with my dad. I found it way more educational than just googling it and owe my current level of knowledge to it. When I was living with my parents part of me was sad when I got to the point where I was able to solve any issues I had faster alone than with my dad's help. No judgement just thought you might want to know. I totally get not wanting to cross over your work life and your family life though.
I learned electronics through my Dad that way too. And my kids learn through me with this stuff. But if they ask me over and over again to do something, it's their burden to go research what they need to learn to stop asking me. And it's usually done with my guidance. I'm not actually flippant with them with their questions lol
You turn your 8 year old loose on google, explicitly and intentionally unsupervised, and hold it up as an example of good parenting.
You assumed absolutely wayyy to much based on a single sentence and virtue signal your superiority based on your own fantasy of what's going on with inconclusive data. Move along.
Computer natives are millennials. In due time, millennials will be what cobol programmers are in the coding world.
"On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you."GenX. We started with nothing and went from there.
I still know my way around autoexec.bat and config.sys
I had my hard earned ZX81 thankyouverymuch.
Well, now that I think about it you're right, before that there was absolutely utterly nothing at all.
Finally some gen X representation!
On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you.
aka what we've already been doing to relatives
Late GenX (really, between X and Millennial): we expected everyone after us to understand tech. Nope.
Digital safety seems to have disappeared
The internet is a scary place, you should treat it like a scary place
Nah fam, post with your real name, your real face, all your personal details, and then write your racist opinions next to them.
I'm sure nothing will go wrong with that.
Its a watered down and minimalist scary place. at least the Design language and UI of the conspiracy theorist websites are clean and sanitized today.
In the 90s and much of the 2000s, That Web 1.0 style of webpages, even Granny's Knitting website looked terrifying.
... And I loved web 1.0
Generation Oregon Trail or Xennial, depending on your life choices.
I have an 'intern` I'm working with on a project, kid doesn't know how to read docs. Maybe doesn't know how to read? 🤷 Thing is we are doing devOps and using powershell or terminal or whatever. So it's literally all reading, all day long every single day. I don't know what to do honestly.
I can read docs and would be interested in an internship... Paid ideally, but would love to have a mentor to learn devops. I also know multiple programming languages and am comfortable in a terminal
Cut your losses and get a new intern, it's gonna take ten times longer to teach this kid to read than if you just do the project solo.
I'd say that technologically millennials really have it best over everyone else.
Us millennials had to figure out the technology as it evolved into what it is today we know how bad it really was before it got really good.
I remember back in high school around 2002 we got cable internet for the first time we had all of three megabytes download. That was tremendously fast.
Movies were in divx format and could be dled from peer to peer networks. Morpheus, zazaa, Ares.
Dang those were the days.
Gen-X here. We had to figure out acoustic modems and we didn't have internet, we had local BBSes.
We also had to figure out the C-64.
LOAD "$",8,1
LIST
LOAD "WHATEVER",8
RUNO ya... Then you had to sit there and watch a trippy light show for three days before it actually loaded the game! 🤣
I’d say that technologically millennials really have it best over everyone else.
You misspelled gen x.
I had a meeting with a young person who had to have the concept of a directory structure explained to them for a half hour...and they're in charge of designing a file browser. 🤦♂️
I don't think the exercise was even successful.
how do people with no skills even get hired? I cant even get interview for job I fit perfectly for every thing they are asking for.
I'm pretty sure the people who do interviews are not the ones who have to train them. Also, if you use chat gpt for writing your cover letter, structuring your CV, running interview prep etc etc. You don't even really need to be literate to come across as pretty put together.
Yeah, smartphones don't teach kids file structure at all.
Gen Z/A are good at using tech, but they don't really know anything about how it works. I work in IT support and it can honestly be a tossup sometimes if the person who doesnt know how to clear their cache is a boomer or not.
if a 3 year old can use a smart phone it's not because that child is a genius it's because the phones designer was.
Oh no, does this mean Gen X are going to be the wisened graybeards that holds arcane knowledge and seemly executes feats of magic when related to technology?
Going to be? We already are, along with older millenials.
Only the 10% or so that paid attention to "nerd stuff".
All the rest are, at best boomer level, at worst smug about being at boomer level.
More like Millennials. Gen X may have been around for the duration of the silicon boom, but it was largely niche "nerd shit" when they were kids, and only became widely accessible/acceptable to them with the same changes that have left Gen A lacking basic computer skills. Millennials, though, grew up through the full development of PCs and the Internet and had to learn how to navigate them at their early stages, as well as keep up with the rapid changes. It of course still isn't universal knowledge there, either, but anyone that used a computer regularly through the early 2000s is going to be levels above most people getting into it now.
"Going to be .."?
I feel like I've been that graybeard for at least 10 lifetimes. No beginning. No end. Only servitude.
Yes.
It’s honestly a toss up whether sysadmins know what the fuck they’re doing. I’m working on a deal now that’s hampered by the fact that a Linux sysadmin for a huge finserv company doesn’t know how to administer a Linux system.
This is why the humanities are important: So you learn how to think about a problem and not just rely on someone writing down every goddamn keystroke for you.
Gen Z are good at using tech, gen A are still learning how to use tech
You in NYC area? I’m hiring.
I'm 2-3 hours from NYC depending on traffic, so... kinda? But I'm pretty happy with my job honestly. I support a niche cloud product that my organization is almost entirely dependent on. Its a union position with good pay and benefits. It can be stressful sometimes and my boss can sometimes be... overbearing, but on the whole it feels like I've found a unicorn.
Out of curiosity though, do you have a job posting you're willing to share? I like to keep my ear to the ground.
Gen Z/A are good at using tech, but they don’t really know anything about how it works.
Millennials don't, either. A tiny fraction of a fraction had technical literacy 20 years ago and now they think they're top shit because they can write simple CMD commands.
All this jerking one another off is crazy. I work in the industry and I'm surrounded by people my own age who don't know what Active Directory is much less Linux.
Same as it ever was. The only thing that has changed is accessibility. All these discussions seem to miss that. Most people have not, do not, and will not ever care.
I guess I'm one of the fractions of a fraction. I remember back in the late 90s when that catastrophe of an OS called Windows ME was plaguing our society. Having to manually change registry keys just to make the damn thing recognize a sound card.
It makes me sound old but, kids these days have no idea the kind of hell we went through. If/when I have kids I'm going to start them off with DOS 6 and gradually move them up to current OSes. They need to know the pain we went through.
This has been a worrying trend in education. Parents assumed kids just knew how tech worked so they stopped teaching things like typing, office, or how to use the basics. Now we have people graduating who know how to use iPads and Xboxes, but have no idea how to manage a file structure (many honestly just use "recent"), or make a PowerPoint, and a lot don't know typing.
Typing is irrelevant. Office software is irrelevant. There is one thing, and one thing only, that determines whether a person is computer-literate or not: whether the person can put together a custom workflow to solve a novel problem.
I don't mean "programming," per se, and I don't mean "scripting," per se, and I don't mean "piping together commands on a text command-line," per se. But I do mean being able to (a) understand the task you want to accomplish, (b) break it down into its component steps, and (c) instruct the machine to perform those steps, while potentially (d) reading documentation and/or exploring the UI to discover how to do said instructing if necessary.
A computer-literate person can be sat down in front of a computer running an OS and/or other software they've never used before and (eventually) figure out how to use it via trial-and-error, web-searching for tutorials, RTFM, or whatever, without shutting their brain off and giving up or demanding that some other person spoon-feed a list of steps to memorize by rote.
I need to store my emails for later reference, so I print them out.
But I don't want to keep stacks of printed emails around, so I scan the prints and save them as pictures because that's what the scanner does automatically.
But I need to search through the emails, so I found a browser plugin that can scan a picture for text and give me a summary in a new file.
But my company computer won't let me install browser plugins so I email the scanned pictures to my personal address and then open them on my phone and use the app version of the browser plugin to make the summaries and then I email those back to my company address.
But now I want to search through the summaries, which are Word documents, but Office takes forEHver to load on my shitty company computer so I don't want to use the search in it, so I right-click -> Print the summary files and then choose "Print to PDF" and then open them in Adobe Reader so I can search for the information I want that way. I usually have 200 tabs of PDFs open in Reader so I can cross-reference information.
I have a great custom workflow. I'm the most computer literate person in my office.
It's shocking how few people know things I consider using a PC like organizing, customizing, automating tasks etc.
I always have to hold myself back and think I am not going to tell you how exactly to do this.
And expecting a list they can work off instead of thinking? Infuriating! These people are not old, it's a mentality.
I wish this were the case, and in a world where software was perfectly documented and there was clearly one (or maybe 3) ways to accomplish a task I could see this being the case. Unfortunately there really is an intuition that needs to be built up over years of the underlying logic of how the most prominent software packages work and how to efficiently accomplish some basic workflows. There is no chance that someone with zero prior knowledge of excel is going to reach the same level of competency on their own as someone with 5 years of supervised experience.
I hate that Microsoft products are the de-facto standard in every workplace, but what I hate more is that they have shaped how we expect software to operate: the underlying logic (or lack thereof), where to look for tools, what keystrokes/operations result in what actions, etc. In this way they've also monopolised software design in a way that prevents innovation, since we all already understand how to use Microsoft's products (at least to some extent) it makes breaking that mould a really dangerous proposition for competitors. It also means that someone with a really deep knowledge of the M$ suite is going to be far more valuable to most businesses than someone with less experience but a better grasp of how to acquire knowledge.
I think knowing something like office software helps since that novel problem. Knowing how to do a pivot table can get you an outcome you need in a fraction of the time if you don't know how to do one. You need to know how to use the tools to create a solution.
To be fair, file structure navigation became more of a pain in the ass when Microsoft decided to rework their start menu to feed into their fucking store/web browser. It's not a hard fix but tablet natives wouldn't know any better. At work I still end up accidently searching the web sometimes when im searching for a file that wasn't important enough to pin. I know basic file structure the modern UIs are just trash and not designed for local users.
Granted, but the inability to learn what isn't "intuitive" is staggering.
On iOS for example it’s also hard. Every app has its own silo of files and then there’s a shared file system. The file manager app is far less capable than Finder on macOS.
Fuck Microsoft. I'm out on my build coming up.
i've said it time and time again, the second you simplify an interface, it lessens the bar for entry, we've only done this over the last 20 years in tech, it should be no surprise that people who never have to use C drives, don't know what the fuck a C drive is.
Graduating? These people have been in the workforce for years now. Many of them are teachers.
I blame the education system, not the parents. Most parents can hardly work a computer themselves, much less teach it to a kid who will ask 20,000 questions
Calm down they're like 16yrs old
Pathetic, what have they been doing with their lives?
My ssd is sda (with a sda1 boot partition and an encrypted root partition). I may be in Gen Z but I also have Autism, granted I didnt grow up with a lot of technology but I always squeezed every ounce out of them. When I was 13 I installed Linux, by 16 I already knew how to use a terminal (and manage the entire system with it), today I would say im relatively good at basic IT and basic network management (although im struggling greatly at installing coreboot).
Conclusion: Gen Z/Alpha probrally wont be great at computers but there will probrally be many individuals who will be significantly more advanced at computers. I was watching YouTube and a found a video of a 15 year old installing Arch manually in less than 10 minutes on a Chromebook. So tbh I wouldn't be worried tbh (at least about this specifically).
My ssd is sda (with a sda1 boot partition and an encrypted root partition).
That's because is a SATA SSD.
Conclusion: Gen Z/Alpha probrally wont be great at computers but there will probrally be many individuals who will be significantly more advanced at computers.
Yeah, I'm Gen Z as well and watching people use Google without knowing what to put in the search box drives me nuts, but that's why they pay for me so...
I remember telling my dad "Computers aren't that hard. You just need to read what is the thing saying" and most people won't even read, let alone comprehend.
Thats because is a SATA SSD
Correct :3
I remember telling my dad "Computers aren't that hard. You just need to read what is the thing saying"
The problem is more and more systems these days won't let you read what they're saying, systems like ChromeOS, Android (AOSP is better but only if you're a dev), IOS, IpadOS, MacOS, and Windows are going out of their way to hide "power user" features. At this point the only real choice of operating systems for people who want full control over their computer are Linux distributions.
but I also have Autism,
I rest my case your honor.
Yes ik that gives me a massive advantage but anyone can hyperfixate on technology :3
I think... Idk I dont know what its like to be neurotypical
I can use the internet to look at all types of buttholes.
I expect nothing less from Satan's maggoty cum fart.
I'm a xennial. I was so excited by computers, and later the internet. It completely absorbed me to the point that I would get up an hour early for school so I could mess around with the computer before catching the bus. A beautiful (ugly) Compaq with a 200n megabyte hard drive, 2 megs of ram. 86 architecture. I was about 11 years old.
I played a few games, but I spent much more time messing around the system in DOS. Making batch files, then working with qbasic. Of course I played Nintendo games as well. After we got internet I used a 28.8kbps modem to upload my own webpage via FTP.
I remember thinking, even as a child/teenager, that the kids of the future were going to be incredible, being born into the digital internet age. I was so wrong. My classmates struggled with computers because they weren't amazed by them like I was. Touch typing class had nothing on ICQ.
I think there are a lot of xennials on Lemmy. It was crushing to see that the generations before and after us can't comprehend the basics of computers. Then smartphones happened and everything got so much worse.
You were a nerd interested in computers. They still exist in younger generations. Just became way less common because the necessity disappeared for most people. Most prefer computers (or any device or tech really) that "just works". Some are interested in how things work. 90% of Lemmy is the latter, from all generations but many in their 30s and 40s because that was peak computer learning age: rather cheap hardware, software still needed to be hacked together somewhat, clear rewards when doing so (for example messing with game settings IRQ etc to get it running).
I've met people born late 90s early 00s doing PhD in computer science who barely seem to know basic general computer stuff... All they know is that one extremely niche thingy they're into. They never needed to learn general basics that much, stuff just worked out of the box.
Yeah it's wild. I don't think it's good but I'm not doing a great job teaching. One of my gen Z nephews expressed an interest so I gave him my old PC, took it apart with him and put it back together, explained everything.
He rearranged his room and told me when he hooked everything back up his games were super slow. Every time I touch his PC I clean it up from scam shit spyware etc. I pretend not to notice where all this stuff came from.
But this time was different. He'd plugged his monitor into the motherboard instead of the graphics card. He recently redid his room again and got it right this time! Small victories.
Gen Z here and I can agree. I used to mess with computers, especially when I got older, so I could play games. Later I kind of slipped into the open source and tech bubbles. If there is a problem that annoys me enough to overcome my laziness I will fix it. I have no problems with writing scripts so I don't have to do stuff manually each time. And then I look left and right and realise that most people in my age dont even have a computer and only use iPads and such stuff. They have zero fucking clue what happens behind the scenes.
I think the real cross-generational parallel here going back is Boomers and cars. Their parents before WWII had the equivalent of bare bones stuff, but Boomer era cars were more complicated, but also meant status and were a hobby.
Looking forward, the Gen Z and A kids are just utterly abused by the social media that we xennials/millennial told them was a safe new requirement for life. It wasn't. It was our leaded gasoline and secondhand smoke. However, their opportunity environment is that they don't behave like we did as consumers. Their expectation that all media should be free and immediately available is where the world needs to bend to them. As Boomers loose their grip on the economy, open source everything is going to be the world they created for us.
We don't need to expect everyone to learn like we did because it was a unique moment in time where tinkering got us somewhere in that specific area. But can you fix a carburetor float? No, and Boomers see your lack of awareness there the same as you see deficiencies in others.
CD drives were too big so drives were developed that only took half a CD, which is shaped like a C.
I wonder: Has this happened with anything else?
Where an older generation struggled to understand at all, a middle generation adapted to it early enough to witness all of the quirks, and then a later generation was born into an already-smoothed out system — and they all lived simultaneously?
Seems like a uniquely modern thing, but then again agriculture and clothing and currency have all had periods of rapid change in the past.
Like were there Generation F dudes out there like “omg we’re the only ones who understand knitting frames smh”?
Ford Model T came with a complete manual for disassembly, maintenance, and repair. It made a generation of Americans fluent in mechanics who then went on to win World War II, to the Moon, and higher up skyscrapers than ever.
“Learn this as a child:”
“Do this as an adult:”
Never again. Right to repair doesn't do much when the manual is so expensive only brand-dedicated repair shops can afford it.
Re-Legalize Right To Repair and pirates will take care of the rest
The old cars were also designed in such a way that you had to understand how the thing was constructed and functioned in order to make it work. Nowadays, I only barely understand how shifting gears works mechanically and drive an automatic. Modern cars do much of the work for you, much like modern computers.
Cars also used to be a lot less reliable. Knowing how to change a spark plug for example used to be common knowledge.
Never thought of it this way, but you could be right
This happened with the shift from manual to automatic transmissions. I used to frequently hear/read people complaining that no one knows how to drive a stick anymore.
Landline telephones.
Original ones you rotated a hand crank to talk to an operator.
Then came rotary phones, that knowledge is slowly going away and old farts are like 'young people are stupid because they can't use a rotary phone'.
Now we have touch tone phones.Yes, but not as widespread.
Multiple toolmaking skills has been lost and had to be rediscovered. Metalworking, mechanical computers (clockworks), etc.
Secrecy in trades and lack of documentation used to be the main cause. Now the cause is lack of interest...
I'm also really curious. I feel like this has to have happened, but I wonder if the level of change from a technical and societal perspective in such a short time frame has happened. As the world becomes more global, the speed that technology impacts other aspects of society also becomes quicker.
I assume it's happened with pretty much every technology at some point.
You start with a product that isn't very reliable or user friendly. You need good knowledge of how it works to even use it, and the manual process it replaced. It breaks often enough that maintenance is done yourself. Entire manuals will be provided that tell you everything about how it works.
Then as it gets reliable, the need for the user to poke around falls away. You can still do that, but you don't need to in order to just use it.
Eventually, they realise the reason they're still getting failures is that people are poking around and breaking it, so they make it harder to do that.
And then you end up with an opaque black box. It just works (until it doesn't), and people don't concern themselves with how it works. When it breaks they get a new one, or take it to a master of the old ways.
Looking back, I don't know why people are so surprised it happened to computers as well.
Yeah, pretty much.
The whole thing about guys not stoping to ask for directions and never reading instructions for assembling things all comes out of that generation where you never left home unless you knew where you were going, and everyone had basic level carpentry, plumbing, and electrical skills because had built a barn or assembled a kit house or installed a sink before.
Hand someone from that generation a manual of a swedish amorphic blob giving you a thumbs up to assemble an IKEA end table and they're like "yeah I don't need that". It's not about the end goal of having a table. It's about having the knowledge to assemble the table. What is this part? How is it used? What would it do if I put it here vs there?
They're about as well prepared to deal with computers as people who had a teddy bear when they were children are prepared to be a veterinary.
There exists a generation of people today that do not know that the save icon shows a floppy disk. They have no idea what a floppy disk even was.
I feel old now and will go back into my cave and weep quietly.
Amiga user: "Everyone knows the floppy save, but how do you save to the hard drive?"
Save to folder:
iOS users: "What the hell is a 'Folder'?!?”
I was still using floppy disks in 2014.... for work.
Thank you for your service.
I tell younglings this fact all the time
I completely blame schools adopting ChromeOS for this generational failure.
At least give them a functional OS god damn. People out here not knowing you can do more than access like 5 websites and apps with literally anything that has a microprocessor in it.
My school actually had Linux mint set up for everything. It even resetted every time you boot it, so you couldn't do any real damage. The only reason we had this was, because one of our CS teachers was very good and actually cared. He is also the one who managed the entire IT infrastructure.
I can't find the photo I took, which is annoying, but I was working in schools a couple of years back and in the IT room there was a huge display on the wall with the title "Amazing Things We Can Do With Computers" and the list was, literally, this:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Amazon
- Spotify
- FaceTime
FWIW, Chromebooks can be used as more than just web browser devices. The real problem is who is setting - and teaching - the curriculum. Some other schools had amazing curriculums but they usually had one, single, solitary, clued-up teacher.
My municipality also bought all students Chromebooks. Then they proceeded to block Google Drive on all government and school WiFi, because for some reason they thought OneDrive was the only safe and therefore allowed cloud storage. Fucking hilarious.
As if the average schoolteacher knows how to properly teach how to use a full OS to kids. Many millennials lack basic IT skills as well.
I know a bunch of people who got into webdesign cuz of MySpace.
I love that Gen Alpha won't even get this reference because the movie came out 30 years before they were born.
Charlie Chaplain was dead long before I was born but yet I've still seen The Great Dictator.
Not part of Gen A (I think this whole generation thing is a bit pointless anyway), but what is the movie?
The original star trek released 40 years before I was born yet I still absolutely love it :3
Shame they never invented anything to store such treasures on for later generations. Nobody but people alive in the 80s will ever see this classic gem.
At a recent gaming expo one of the tables was showing a new game for pc. 50% of the kids that approached the table didn’t know how to use mouse and keyboard. The next day they added Xbox controller support and more than half of the people that didn’t know before then were able to figure out how to play.
I think this boils down to not education but poverty. Entry level computers cost way more than an entry level console. Sure you can buy a piece of crap laptop for $250 but it won’t be able to play ANYTHING. A $250 Xbox does everything you need and more. Most games today are not made to be played on $250 computers.
you can buy a piece of crap laptop for $250 but it won’t be able to play ANYTHING
a thinkpad t490 can't play anything new but it can play quite a bit. I play emulators on mine.
True, but most modern games are focused on online play and very few are cross platform. So if a kid's friends are playing one particular console they're going to want one too.
Me who grew up with old thinkpad from my dad's work's ewaste box:
And they haven't heard of used or sailing the high seas.
Gen Z: Where is my file and what is a directory?
I would say that this is not just to blame on the Generation, but to large extents of how stuff is designed these days. It has been becoming harder and harder to control where stuff is stored, and to find it outside of the intended app, and this, IMHO is by design, to wrestle the control of your own device from your hands. Just look at how aggressively Microsoft is pushing one drive in its office suite, they want control over those documents so they can lock you into a subscription model.
Of course it’s not the fault of the generation. It’s the school system who still doesn’t teach proper basic IT skills. Schools should have never touched Chromebooks or even MS products. A Windows like Linux distro and Libreoffice would teach kids the basic IT skills that are transferable across different OSs. Would have been cheaper as well. Bet if you follow the money that somebody in the school system with executive decision on IT matters gets massive kickbacks from Google or MS
"We set our sights and spent our nights waiting
For you
You, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad, you were barely two
And it did all the things we designed it to do"
Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet (2021)
This. The fundamentals of things computers do is so heavily abstracted now days, all kids know how to do is work with those abstractions.
Holy crap, this meme is on point! Both in the Indy movie grab and the base message.
What's a computer?
I introduced my kids to video games (the "good ones" 😁) and they have always had a PC+old consoles, so now they know at least the basics, and mods gta5 and minecraft, etc and are generally at ease with things.
Still prefers mobile apps to photoshop though 😔 you can only bring the horse to the water, you can't make him drink.
QUICK INDOCTRINATE THEM INTO THE LINUX MASTERRACE!!
Trying my best in the Makerspace for kids I help run. They actually love it!
I get discarded ThinkPads from local companies, and the only way to make them useful is to slap some Linux on there, and then basic stuff like Blender, PrusaSlicer and Godot. It's been a huge success, especially when we do a Capture-the-Flag tournament, where they have to hide and seek memes using SSH. The feeling of being "a real hacker" seems to be very motivational for the youngsters.
yeah pretty much this, linux just cooks. You gotta let it in the kitchen first.
Also, you might want to consider openscad if you have some adventurous students, it's quite intuitive if you understand programming syntaxing, and relatively clean and minimal. I've long been put off from learning something like freecad because the UI is just an utter mess and has no clear utility to it, but something like openscad is MUCH more accessible to me, even though it may be more restrictive in the long run, having the ability to use it is probably beneficial.
Like i've said before, and like i'll continue to say until people like you and me make a significant dent in this problem, you need to teach kids how to use the things you want them to use, if you don't teach them linux, they won't know linux, if you do teach them linux, they will know linux, it's literally as simple as that, and why anybody is surprised by this baffles me, it should've been obvious frankly.
The feeling of being “a real hacker” seems to be very motivational for the youngsters.
kids love to learn, they are literally built for it, they have a high level of neuroplasticity, you just need to give them the tools, the resources, and the ability to do so, and they will do it.
They didn't have to learn what irq is the hard way and I am so thankful for the ability to read and edit bootloaders and ini files with no guardrails and error diode manual pages for giving me barely enough clues to learn from the ground up
Nothing like having an config.sys/autoexec.bat menu to make sure you have the right TSRs and XMS or EMS configuration to run this game or the other. The ecosystem forced you to learn things you may have never been inclined to learn to get at the experience you actually wanted.
Fortunately my kid is always going to have his own Linux desktop at home. Even though the hardware is older than he is, the PC still runs better than most Windows machines I've used recently.
I commented elsewhere that his school laptop (for 2nd grade, 8 years old) is at least a lightweight Windows PC. And while Windows is much more relevant to the PC & professional world than chromebooks or iPads, it's still important to not get pigeonholed into that one proprietary thing.
Wasn't Indy knowingly bluffing in this scene?
Me today with a co-worker, discussing Kingdom Come 1. They were impressed with the game's attention to detail but one thing stood out, the save-game potion label/icon "doesn't look quite right"...
Well, it's a floppy disk!
"Huh?"
You're right, my bad, it's Total Commander smh
There's any number of those kinda skeuomorphic icons that don't have a connection to anyone past, say, a 2000 birth date. Save, Phone, Voicemail, even Email and Camera to an extent. They just know them as a pictogram that means that thing
Phone cameras at least still partially resemble point-and-click cameras. I don't think there's any way to develop out of the need for optical lenses, so that will always be recognizable. That said, I was at a wedding recently and it was hilarious to watch children run around with disposable cameras and get confused that they had to wind them between shots and couldn't see the photos immediately, hah.
As someone that is currently going through KC1 and is old enough to have used floppy disks, this hurts me so deep.
Skipped gen z, but I know my gen z folk are barely a step above alpha but and below millennials
At least us earlier gen z grew up without smartphones being the thing. If I wanted anything done I had to use a computer. Smartphones only became as prevalent as they are now when I was about 12-14 (at least that's what it feels like).
It's gonna be really funny when all us millenials die and the tech infrastructure evaporates.
What age do we think they'll be set back to? Pre industrial? Bronze?
My prediction seems extreme but don't forget that while books continue to exist, the average adult born after 2000 would rather die than read one.
It won't evaporate, there are plenty of IT folks among youth.
It doesn't make sense to characterize users by age brackets - it's not that millenials are predominantly well-versed.
I'm responding to the premise of the thread. I agree it doesn't make sense to characterise people based on age brackets, however I am noting a pattern I've observed in reality, not speculating a fictional scenario. It's also true my view is anecdotal, backed up by memes and other anecdotes and not by science or extensive research.
However I'd like to point out that we are in a group called "memes" and the thread is about "used to consume not produce", the OP's meme image is specifically talking about the pattern where younger people don't understand fundamentals of tech and just consume it. As an IT professional of nearly 20 years I have observed the same phenomenon and so I wrote a funny reply based on that.
You're right IT probably won't entirely evaporate that's crazy. As crazy as picking apart a funny comment to wag your finger at a well meaning stranger.
I was always fascinated by the Middle Ages... The idea that you could live in the ruins of a civilization more advanced than your own is really interesting.
"They know every smartphone"
Why was it called C and not A or 1 or something
Cuz mass storage was a quirky extra, not something essential to your system, like your A: floppy drive was.
Well there you go, thankyou kind stranger
How to tell if someone was born after 1998:
Lucky i was born in 92 and don't have feelings or I'd be offended lol
And on top of that, I feel myself losing skills too. So if other millenialsare like me, it won't be just gen alpha.
I sort of feel that way. I don't think I'm losing skill so much as not wanting to spend more than 3 minutes thinking about a problem.
Lmao
Or they stopped using Windows and only use Unix for development.
Let's not make the inevitable mistake of assuming what was an essential skill for one generation is going to matter fuck all for most of the next generation.
Old people still think it's outageous if you can write a check, read an analog clock, read/write cursive... All things that most millennials might "need" to do less than once a year.
True, the skills needed to troubleshoot a a Windows 95 computer are not all relevant today, but the fact that computers had a lot of issues when I was growing up in the ninties and twothousands, means that I developed a pretty solid grasp of general computer troubleshooting, something that the kids that grew up with it-just-works (TM) technology are missing, this is obviously a skill that can be learned, and over time we will see computer troubleshooting become more and more academic.
How is reading a clock something you do less than once a year
I know how to read an analogue clock but never once in my life has it been easier/ more convenient to read one than it is to pull out my magic light box I always have on me and look at the big bright numbers in the centre of the screen.
read an analog clock
Fuck them kids, it's job security as far as I'm concerned.
Haha youth bad hate youth
Why?
That's the joke
