Kids don’t even understand file structures because modern OSs obfuscate that stuff.
That’s my biggest gripe to be honest with modern OSs. My files in my folders are organized like I organize my house. I live in and around that. I hate the idea of a “Downloads” and other stuff with “automatically in the cloud backup for this app”. Give me a file to save you stupid app.
Yeah ya stupid app!
iOS is literally designed for toddlers to be able to use it. “iPad kids” aren’t especially gifted, “iPad adults” are especially stupid.
But on the bright side, those same groups think they “know computers” because they can press large, brightly colored buttons - so they walk around with unearned confidence in their abilities and impatience/lack of appreciation for the people that actually have to fix things.
It’s also why a large swatch of these same fucking idiot, drains on humanity loudly challenge the validity of voting tech infrastructure without any factual basis to their argument - they just “feel” like they get it.
My boss very confidently proclaimed that all serious IT professionals use a Mac. Said Linux “is for programmers and nerds”
I fix my parents’ computers. I fix the computers of the super old people in the neighborhood. I fix my kid’s computer. I fix my friends’ computers.
I don’t think it’s generational.
When your car breaks down, do you fix it? At what point do you take it to a mechanic?
At what point do you call an electrician or plumber? Who biopsies their own cysts?
It’s all the same shit. We live in a society of specialists because there’s simply too much potential knowledge for everyone to be able to do everything.
And if we start arguing about what things people “ought to be able to do themselves”, we turn into a bunch of old farts lamenting about the good old days.
“DIY” is a thing because many strive to understand enough of multiple relevant basic disciplines needed as an adult to be able to cover the first 15% or so of common jobs before they see their limitations and call the specialists.
I believe the expressed frustration here is around the fact that acquiring that first 15% type skill is no longer seen as a responsibility/point of pride for folks to gain as they grow.
This actually what drives me nuts about the US. Its like everyone is expected to be a doctor, a lawyer, an investor, a mechanic, an electrician, plumber, IT, and just everything. I look at the old black and white shows where the tv repair man is called and im like. wtf happened to this country.
I fix my computers. I fix my car. I’ve done some electrical. No plumbing. And I recently biopsied a cyst that my doctor eyeballed and said was non cancerous and charged me $40 for nothing a year ago. It began annoying me a year later, and I’m stubborn and hate to go the doctor, and that guy was an ass. I’m ok with being called an old fart though. I’m also probably more optimistic about future generations. I don’t think we’re doomed, I remember being a collasal idiot, even as recently as last week, so I give other a little grace.
It’s like we just happened to grow up at the right time where everyone was raised to be a mechanic, and we wonder why our kids don’t fix their own cars.
100% agree.
I’m 50 years old and I am the IT guy for people of all ages. Not because I am part of some gifted generation that understands computers, but because I have a genuine interest and took the time to learn these things.
My 16yo son also has a keen interest in computers and I am passing on my knowledge where I can.
I somewhat feel that attributing computer knowledge to a generational thing in some way diminishes the effort and time it took to get the knowledge and experience that I do have.
You don’t have to have hung around with Henry Ford to be a car guy, or Nikola Tesla to be an electrician.
Not only that, but co-workers from my own generation also don’t know how to fix their own computers, so I’m just surrounded by people that have no idea how any of it works.
I think that’s the real crux of it. Most people don’t know. There may have been a bump in literacy, but most people don’t know, don’t care, and don’t need to. If we had better education, this kind of thing could be a core class. I had computer classes, but they mainly focused on typing and specific programs. Basically nothing about components, the command prompt, programming, different OS, etc. Granted this was many years ago, but I live in Florida. So, it’s probably worse.
It seems that those aged roughly between 30 - 50 hit the sweet spot when it comes to computer literacy.
There is an interesting text about it, albeit it is 11 years old already: Kids can’t use computers… and this is why it should worry you
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. “nom nom”. This blog post is not for you.
wow, this some next level obnoxious boomer shit.
Im suspect about 50. Im just a bit older and it was thing for nerds back then.
gen z here, can confirm. most of my peers just do not care about learning how things actually work
in my experience, younger kids either don’t know anything about computers or are obsessed with them. I don’t see a lot of the middle
Kind of. Those who were the first needed to know how computers did what they did… Because so often they didn’t …
Now your computers work without you needing to know how they do it Most are happy it simply works
Try teaching them.
“Try teaching an impatient person, who undervalues the subject matter, already missed several opportunities to learn about it in formal education settings and who you lack a teacher-student dynamic with…”
Or, in a way…
“It’s one banana, Michael - what could it cost, $10?”
I refuse to fix anything for my inlaws without them watching me. I make them watch me Google the solutions and follow the instructions. It helps reinforce the “it’s not magic and I’m not a wizard” reality I want to instill in everyone.
The weird bit is that our parent’s generation is also the one that build the damn things in the first place!
I’m glad that many kids are into PC gaming, at least. That’s still a decent vector into computer proficiency and a little hardware knowledge.
I’m not sure how many kids will be into PC gaming when a low end Nvidia gpu is currently $550. I know that everything comes pre overclocked, and the 4070s still a good card even though it’s got a low and die in it it’s just depressing in the principle of it.
Maybe things like the steam deck will push kids into Linux since the mid-range gaming desktop is like two grand now.
I built a decent rig at the time 2 years ago for a 10 year old for less than 600€. Sure, some parts were used and it’s obviously no monster but he’s still using it daily. He’s learning how to upgrade it every time I have money for it, too.
You don’t have to buy all new Nvidia GPUs for $550 a piece to play games, ya know?
I made sure our kids got introduced to PC gaming. It sort of worked, they are more adept with windows then thier peers, but 0/3 have used thier shell accounts. They were into the persistent Minecraft server for a minute, but barely learned any console commands.
We are the bridge generation.
We know and saw a world without the internet and we experienced it when it first came to be.
We saw the first mass produced computers and computer devices which broke often, didn’t work the way we wanted them to, they weren’t fast and they didn’t have much memory in any way. We were the first generation to see all this. Our parents were too old and busy to figure it out but we were young enough to be curious about it all. We also kept wanting to have the newest fastest hardware and software so we had no choice but to either buy, beg or steal these things to get them. We learned to swap parts, add parts, remove parts, install an OS, uninstall the OS, run backups, store data and learn it all on our own because there was no easy internet social media community to help you. Software was constantly changing and we had to keep up by either buying expensive titles or we learned about Linux and open source software or we became digital pirates or both.
Now the digital landscape has changed. Younger generations prefer handheld devices so to them everything is solid state … they never can imagine changing the RAM, HDD, SSD, CPU, GPU or the PSU or even bothering to learn what those things are. Because everything is built in and no one (or very few) people bother with fixing or tinkering with anything. There are fewer people who learn about software and about how or where to find it, install it, configure it and run it. To new generations who only know the digital world through locked devices, there was less incentive to learn or even have access to know how these things worked.
We are the bridge generation. We got to see the world without the internet and the world with one. No one before us got to see what we saw, no one after us will experience what we went through. Our civilization dramatically changed during our lifetime and we got a front row seat.
The comp for an older generation is cars. Cars saw similar growth and adoption in the 50s-80s. And they had similar growing pains, reliability and maintenance issues were common place. So being able to perform maintenance and having an understanding of how they work was far more wide spread than just hobbyist and professionals.
As cars advanced the need to perform field maintenance and ad hoc repairs became less required so future generations (on average) became less knowledgeable and skilled at various car repair (and modification) activities, because cars just work now so there’s really no need to worry about learning how to fix minor issues, because they’re just not a common problem.
You also can’t wrench on a car anymore in the way you used to. It’s all computerized and you need special software to access and configure parts.
I can’t replace my airbags without special pairing software that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It’s unlikely that I’ll learn by performing the repair because the tools are no longer available.
We got to live in the most interesting times in history, so far. Most of us are depressed for it.
My 13 y o niece had no idea how to uninstall a program on a PC. I was a little stunned.
I’m reasonably certain that all four of my housemates, (58 y/o +) don’t have any idea how to close a program either on their laptops, or their phones. Thankfully I’m the only desktop guardian.
The PSU is the only thing you can change easily. I love that everything is USB-C and that I can plug in everything, everywhere.
But I’m kind of happy everyone uses handhelds, I got really tired fixing everything for my entire family and friends.
“My printer seems to be defectiv…”
Entschuldige, ich kann kein Englisch. Muss weg, keine Zeit. Bye!
It’s like all the old geezers who cum into carbeurators but like, shouldn’t they be happy that fuel-injection is a million times better and more reliable? I work on my own car and I can handle that shit in my driveway easy but these people seem to want more work to do. Yes, Fred, carbs make more sense for dirtbikes but oh my god otherwise shut up.
As for printers yea what the fuck. They all work differently even within the same company when all they need to do is take the exact same control module, maybe two versions of it, and slap it onto different bodies. But, instead, it’s just a giant fucking mess.
I work in Tech and this is my mantra: printers are Of the Devil.
My buddy worked tech support for a fairly large facility. They got tired of getting calls for a busted printer, only to walk all the way across the facility to discover it was out of paper. It got to the point that if someone called about a printer, they would wait an hour before responding. If nobody else called within that hour, they assumed the issue was resolved on its own.
In healthcare IT there’s often a person who specializes in just printers. My friend makes a lot of money doing that.
I’m sure they got to us because they were too evil for hell and the devil itself got tired of them.
The part that royally pisses me off is that a roommate used to work for Lexmark. One day he brings home an “all in one” printer, fax, scanner, and something else I am forgetting. Best scanner I have ever seen. No light bar. The thing worked by taking four pictures and digitally meshing them together. When you scanned a document, there was a series of 4 rapid flashes. One Magenta, one Cyan, one Yellow, one White.
The damn thing was absolutely perfect at digitizing anything you put onto the unit’s scanning glass, but it did have a design issue where the scanning glass wasn’t parallel to the floor, and was instead tilted like a desktop picture frame.
According to my roommate, that particular design flaw is why they decided to kill the printer, never releasing it to the public. AFAIK they never even tried that scanning tech in any other printer.
Very eloquently put.
Great write up
I’m not sure what the generation breakdown is. I’m in my 50’s and fix PCs. My brother in law is in his 70’s and fixes PCs. One of his 3 daughters (40) fixes her own PC.
It seems like it’s everyone between 40-80.
I think your family are tinkerers, and they are a rare breed. A group of people who just love taking things apart, bringing them back together and doing all sorts of other things with them. My family is a bit like that but we never had the technical expertise. I’m indigenous from northern Ontario and a lot of my cousins and relations have a grade school education but there is a whole lot of excellent small engine mechanics. I have one cousin who barely spoke any English but her regularly swapped while engines from trucks to keep old vehicles running.
I tinker myself which is why I learned about computers and computer technology on my own but never to a really high level.
So every generation has their outliers and your family were probably the same group of people that made things or fixed things in earlier generations.
GenX is what the comment is about. Millennials were born to home computers but the early ones had to contend with much the same mess we did.
Yeah, early millennial and OPs comment fits to a “T” for me, though I think some of my experiences had a bit more socialization in context, like ICQ, Aol chat, and MSN messenger. The rise of cell phones, text messages, T9, etc. My kids are amazed when I pull out the VHS tapes at my parents, or my dad pulls out some cassettes or vinyls (though those have been more popular of late).
Our parents didn’t think it was important. Our kids don’t think it is necessary.
Imagine how horse farmers felt about engine maintenance on the first automobiles. Early adopters probably knew everything about how to fix tractors and cars. But today, how many people know how to change their own brakes or flush the coolant?
Life evolves, and transitions come faster with every generation. It’s good that nobody knows how to use a sextant or a fax machine.
I still know how to use a fax machine :(
It’s certainly partially that, but that’s not the whole picture. Before, every old thing “everyone” knew how to do was replaced with a new thing “everyone” knew how to do. But at the moment, is there a new thing? I can’t think of one. All but the most niche products are built to be as easy to use as possible, and if it breaks or slows down, replacement is more preferred than tinkering. I don’t see the same need anywhere to get our hands dirty that leads to widespread proficiency like the image is talking about.
or a fax machine
Healthcare industry is crying in the corner
I’m still mad we print so much stuff at work, it’s 2024 just update a spread sheet. I don’t need an email much less a physical copy of something I saw the update for an hour ago
I had to print out a PDF the other day because the software wouldn’t let me sign it, and then scan the document back into the computer.
I think the modern car climate is a better comparison than the change from horse and buggy to Model T. Many people work on their own cars, but it’s mostly for fun and the increasing levels of computers and sensors in cars makes it more difficult to do all the work yourself. And then you add in the nuts and bolts car companies make that can only be unscrewed using special tools that the companies also make to force you to bring the car to one of their dealerships.
Tech literacy rates are falling like the skill to use a car with a manual transmission. Since everything kids do is on their phone, and phones are like that one car company that welded the hoods of their cars shut, they never need to pick up the skills with computer software that the work world expects them to have (but who really wants to know how to use Word and Excel anyways), nor the skills with working on your own hardware.
Sidenote: Fax machines are, unfortunately, still very much a thing. At least, if you ever have to deal with the federal government or the medical industry, they are.
My dad thought computers were important. He got me a VIC-20 soon as they came out, and that was $1,800 in today’s money, not an amount he spent lightly.
Sure, obviously there were exceptions or we wouldn’t have half the modern conveniences we do. My parents were very enthusiastic about computers, and my kids are each building their own desktops. I’m speaking in generalities.
Yes
Yes.
My four-year-old daughter is shockingly proficient with a mouse and keyboard. Kid goes to town on Spyro: Reignited. My wife snagged an old PC from her office and we want to set it up for her eventually for learning, light gaming and MS Paint. We figure in another year or two we can set up a family Minecraft server and get her in on it. The dream is to get her playing Valheim with us when she’s older.
Hoping she will be as good with PCs and I am, and would love to help her build one when she’s grown.
shes old enough to start learning hardware now! i absolutely did this with my kids when they were 3-6. take an old pc apart, put it back together with them naming the parts. they all loved it. a toddler trying to say ‘processor’ is hilarious btw. only one (25%) seemed to continue playing with hardware but they all know what makes up a pc and he is the one running the family minecraft in docker.
does M$ Paint really still exist?
Mine started Minecraft at 5. She never took to Valhiem, and plays minecraft instead. She’s 16 now.