The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less. The era of growing up with a home computer that required fiddling and dial up, etc is over. People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.
And for that reason alone I built a Linux PC for my 11 year old and told him to go to town figuring things out. (I supervise everything of course). Dude has been doing fantastic so far.
If he doesn't solve problems with chmod 777 then he's already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company
Who's going to win?
SELinux+Seccomp+Containers...
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.
Neither! It's whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.
Cool. I'm old enough that in middle school I begged my Mom to take to the mall to buy Linux. I got a Red Hat Linux CD-ROM pack from a store called Babbage's. I couldn't download the ISO on our modem and I don't remember if we even had a burner at that point.
I grew up starting my computer use having to navigate DOS just before windows 3.11 was released. I work in tech today and I feel like just knowing about a lot of the automated things we take for granted today has given me a little bit of an edge.
So a friend of mine went to a convention to show off his gaming project. The kids there were trying to touch the monitors to play the game. They didn't grab the keyboard and mouse. They didn't touch the controller. They touched the monitor. People's framework of what a computer is and what it's made of is completely different than what it use to be
Hate to say it, but that technical literacy from having to operate computers the difficult way was a small blip in history. So things are just kind of going back to "normal."
Now, the only real natural entry into "computing" is gaming. Pretty much everything else has to come through formal education, which is largely myopic and boring.
Don't think I've even worked with a gen Z engineer yet. I assume they exist.
I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting... Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn't grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don't seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.
I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.
One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know. Saying I don't know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with "but I will find out" or "can you help/explain it". Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.
You are absolutely right, but let's be clear here... it's not so much the lack of keyboard and mouse that's the problem... it's that these touchscreen devices don't let you actually DO anything. The devices you can use a keyboard and mouse on ALLOW you to play, customize, make mistakes, and learn. There's no reason a touchscreen device couldn't provide that too, but iOS and Android specifically forbid you from learning anything - that's a recipe for security holes! And THAT's the real skill they lack. Real competence means bending the endless possibilities to your will - not just being given 5 of the most common ones and being locked out of the rest.
Something that amazes me that I often see is tech literate people wastly over estimating the tech literacy of an average person. Any amount of tech support would tell you that most people barley know the basics and doesn't care for anything else.
Relevant xkcd:
It's easy to forget the average person probably only knows terminal commands for Debian. And Fedora, of course.
The curse of knowledge; makes you lose the perspective of the average man in the field of your expertise.
Not me. I am so out of the loop here. But I loved the social aspect of reddit and was on it long enough to know how great it was when it was young. Hoping to find that here.
Honestly, Lemmy does have a lot of the early Reddit vibes. Reddit was largely started as a programming forum, and this user base definitely has a lot of similar traits.
And if you start using user tags, (not native to Lemmy, but most clients have the functionality added,) you’ll realize just how active users are, and how tight-knit the comments sections really are. I often end up finding myself responding to the same 10-20 users.
NGL, a lot of my relative tech literacy comes from just seeing all the programming posts too and getting curios.
Just the other day i learned that there is so called "snowflakes" that apprently work as a way to enter the tor network by pretending to be a video call. Crazy cool stuff some people come up with.
I can’t do any of the stuff you mentioned. I’m here because I hate traditional social media that are not social at all. And I hate ads. And have an interest in community driven stuff and DIY.
And I don’t feel like I am alone here.
I’m with you, I can’t do any of that stuff. I don’t like most social media , the lack of ads and the 3rd party apps was a big factor for me to join.
Relevant xkcd: Average familiarity
You severly overestimate the average persons tech literacy even when you try to correct for it. Booting from USB is already a really advanced topic.
Though creating a lemmy account is not that complex. Typically all you have to do is fill out a form on the websiten instructions included. The problem there is not the tech literacyn but the willingness of the people to even interact with systems they don't know, like finding a home instance or understanding the concept of the fediverse. Most people could create a lemmy account, though also most people wouldn't.
The average person can't even download the right authenticator app when prompted. The average person can't type their password the same way two times in a password change field. The average person does not know how to plug monitors and peripherals into a docking station.
Whatever you think the average skill level is? It's lower than that. By a lot.
I work electronics in walmart and you would be shocked at the questions I get on things like laptops from collage age kids. A very frequent one is 'if it isn't touchscreen then how do you work it'. One of my favorite ever was a girl who went down the line asking can you type on them because i need to be able to type. Every time I told her you can type on all laptops but she just kept asking.
I know a huge part of it is some kind of 'location bias' because the kids who know something about computers are shopping online or at microcenter or something.
You are completely correct and their comments prove it. The bubble is strong here. But it’s a pretty nice bubble
Don't worry, my fair tech-literate maiden. I, a tech-dyslexic, am here to bring down the collective IQ and make the chamber echo less. You can thank me later, for adding some much needed intellectual diversity to the mix.
*with strong beliefs on random topics
I'll die on the veganism hill. I don't care. I'll take as many of y'all with me as I can.
My own experience, as someone who is not necessarily tech illiterate, but also not an expert either:
I decided to check out some basic Linux stuff, and found a post directing newcomers to a website that was supposed to be a top-notch beginner's guide. This guide started with a history of Linux, written in the style of an early 2000s GameFAQs guide. It then jumped immediately into selecting a distro, and started describing each option with terms like "lightweight"and "robust" without explaining what those terms meant in that context - or even defining what a distro was in the first place.
As someone who has used Windows for around 3 decades, I could make some inferences to fill in the gaps. But I imagine someone with less experience with PCs would get completely lost.
Now on the flip side, I've also shared in another thread the story of how I lost interest in programming partway through my introductory university course, and mostly received positive feedback. The folks in that thread seemed happy to hear the perspective of an outsider.
Ironically a windows veteran can give you a better introduction to Linux than a Linux veteran.
makes sense, since Linux users (me) are drawn to foss projects like moths to a light
Not my fault. Reddit pushed me here!
Anonymity and the general public do not mix. Barrier to entry is all we have left.
Why would normal people know how to boot from usb? Shit, if you clean the ads out of a windows start menu, a normie will think you're a wizard for doing the inconceivable.
The average person nowadays could not create and reliably access a Facebook account if they didn't have auto complete/password save.
The worst is twenty-year-olds that have never used a desktop. They just stare at the mouse, keyboard, and monitor like they have no clue what to do.
This is true but I ultimately don't care.
Is there any social media site that isn't an echo chamber? They're designed that way on purpose in most cases.
There are enough forums catering to idiots. I appreciate the better moderation, tech savviness, and lack of tolerance for right wing BS on Lemmy.
I just don't understand how it's more "techy" than Reddit. I just want our user count to keep going up.
I think we should focus less on hyping federation/decentralization and more on how there are no ads and the content is really coming from actual users (and maybe a leftist bias).
I got a few friends on here by explaining that choosing a server is no different from choosing an email provider. Everyone understands email, that you can communicate with most other email users no matter what their provider is.
Yes. And everyone thinks they are the smartest human ever because of it. As you can tell by the responses here lol
I don't think it's an echo chamber, I think you are wrong about that. The proof is that I am disagreeing with you right now. Therefore, not an echo chamber.
"Whats the best tool for..."
"Linux!!!"
"Haven't yet said what I'm trying to build"
"Pls just upvote me and tell me I'm good"
For the past month I've been developing a NixOS platform for local businesses.
I keep overestimating how much people know. It's infuriating trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I don't need to explain why it's amazing, just that it is, and it works. I feel like I'm Mugatu talking to Zoolander at times.
Even if I could perfectly analogise what a declarative operating system is, it wouldn't matter to a client because they don't understand how a non NixOS machine works.
Though, the worst part is trying to explain to someone, who is "happy with Windows" why they should not be.
How the fuck do people in 2025 not fucking loathe Windows? There's fucking ads in the start menu. There's like 4 different places to change settings. The systems bloat and slow to a crawl as the OS ages.
It's fucked.
Very much so, when I brought up that I am a software developer who just loves using their Macbook, because it just works, I was told I stupid because I am now locked in and what if I want to compile my own flavor of window manager, like with no sense of fucking irony.
I can live with that.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.