You make some good points there. I remember LAN parties in high school where we would spend hours troubleshooting network problems and calling older brothers for advice. I learned a lot from those experiences, because I was forced to. I think a big part of the changes we are seeing in computer literacy is what I would call the Apple philosophy: if a toddler can't use it, we need to simplify. Basically, as you said, things are getting simpler with less granular control. Of course, Apple is far from the only company doing this stuff, but they seem to be industry leaders in the sense of 'dumbing down' tech.

I recently had a friend say that privacy is a luxury these days. My first thought was that there is nothing luxurious about it. It takes hard work, inconvenience and savvy. And I'm not even close to Stallman levels of privacy paranoia. I know just enough to acknowledge that I know nothing. I feel similarly about tech in general. I have been using Linux for ten years, I use VPNs, I have played around with DNS settings, et cetera. But I realize that I have barely scratched the surface of what is possible and available to those willing to spend the time and get it done.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. Thanks for replying thoughtfully, and thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

In my country, this generational divide doesn't make much sense. But comparing those born in the 90s and early 2000s with those born from the late 2000s onwards, there is a fundamental difference: there was, even in the public education system, a variety of computer courses available to many people. With the arrival and hegemony of the app model, which is designed with the idea that it is intuitive and does not require anyone to be taught how to use it, computer courses have been disappearing. As a result, millions of young people use computers daily and have no knowledge of simple concepts such as shortcuts Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, let alone advanced features of Office suites, not to mention that they have no idea what LATEX and Markdown are.

It's really not a generational thing. Every generation has their nerds and they always are just a tiny minority.

The late Gen X/early millennials may have been an outlier because they were forced to learn to get anything working but also from those years most don't care about tech.

This is quite a few years old now, but I think the main points are still valid. As you said, everything is so polished, kids don't need to figure out how it works.

http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/

Im surprised that a lot of people that are my age, even if they are using computers a lot, dont know how to search the solution for a problem or follow some instructions on how to do something

bro you're on lemmy, you're already outside of the curve for most gen-z

I feel like if you know how to look up the answer and can follow a guide to apply 5 steps, you are probably more capable than 80% of the people on this planet.

I’m an older Gen Z, but same here. I really don’t know that much but can torrent, so people see me as some sort of tech god lol.

My younger sister on the other hand, also Gen z, is so tech illiterate that her downloads folder is a mess and thinks deleting installers will delete the installed program.

Gen-z too, finding can be somewhat hard but the mega threads help. Torrenting itself is easy of course. Just get transmission or any other FOSS client, put on a proper VPN and good to go.

20yrs ago I had to help my comp sci housemate build a website for his module. I was not a CS student.

Some things never change.

You will also know nothing and be happy.

Ignorance is bliss after all

We are actively being held back by companies catering exclusively to the lowest common denominator.

Torrenting is getting worse and worse these days, I'm learning the ancient art of Usenet.

I think they're using this style: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-does-eat-hot-chip-and-lie-mean-the-viral-copypasta-and-meme-explained

Gen Z struggles with file systems in general, because the vast majority of their technical experience is on mobile OS's. However, Gen Z compsci students are somehow far beyond the skill set that millennials had at their age. Or at least that has been my experience with interns over the past 12 years.

My dad pronounced it war-easy. Some time later I played Morrowind and, well... "Khajit has warez if you have coin"

Ha I was actually just thinking that we need to teach them as I was reading this. We had to go through a shit ton of trial and error. God forbid if he started with something like LimeWire. Viruses... Viruses everywhere

Besides 1337 who is good?

Literally any private tracker is a million times better

linking_park_numb.mp3.exe