But both know how to use apps. What more can Corpos ask for?
I hate how true this is. Watching teens flail and panic at the library as they have to spontaneously learn how to use a non-chromeOS computer has been an upsettingly nostalgic reminder of one of my first jobs
The key concept conflict is they think files are inside apps (I teach some basic IT in one of my modules).
When asked to locate an excel file on their computer they point at excel and say the file is in excel. If you show them a .txt file, they'll claim it's in notepad.
The idea that a file is like a book, and the program is the glasses you use to read it, and their computer is the bookshelf seems to resonate well though. Then you just have to fight the clusterfuck that is Apple's file storage, since most bring an apple device to uni.
It can be even more fundamental than that. I’ve seen people cocking their heads at the existence of multiple windows and programs running simultaneously. As in, “whoa, where’d my assignment go?” after they click on the browser. They’re used to everything running through a single window due to school computers offering everything through the browser. It’s terrifying to me.
they point at excel and say the file is in excel.
Watching them use the card catalog.
Use a slide rule and protractor to find the card catalog. Now write your name in cursive to check out a book.
Writing cuneiform on wax tablets with styli
scoffs
Writing things down?!?
If you do that you'll cease to exercise your memory and will grow to rely on external means.
Back in my day we built our memory.
(If you're not familiar this was basically Socrates' (as portrayed by Plato) view on writing things down)
those teens obviously were forced into consumerism by their parents and corpos
Joking aside I do actually worry about how superficial technical knowledge is becoming.
We just need to integrate conversational AI into everything, so people never have to understand tech or learn to use it
Tap for spoiler
/s
Aye, we've almost all learned digital skills. And as time passes the skills required to perform digital tasks reduces as user interfaces and automation improve. What many of us don't have however is digital understanding.
This is from a speech by the founder of lastminute.com and now member of the UK's House of Lords
We have let these things come upon us, but it is not too late to wake up. If we want to change this dynamic and shape the future, we need to recapture some of the internet’s original promise and more of its positive transformative power. That means we need to understand – at all levels of society – what our digital world really is. We need to address the challenges that already exist and preempt the ones we don’t know about.
We live our digital lives this way because we have the skills to do so. 91% of us in the UK have the ability to use the internet. This is a remarkable achievement – and it’s important to continue the work to close the remaining gap and include those who are still without the skills or the access to use the internet.
But we also need to move beyond skills to understanding. Nearly all UK internet users have the digital skills to use a search engine, but only half know how to distinguish between search results and adverts. Around two-thirds of our digitally skilled population can shop and bank online – but a third don’t make any checks before entering their personal or financial information online. More than 1.4 million of us work in tech-related jobs – but, as the recent WannaCry attack showed us, hardly anyone is investing the time, resources or expertise to keep our systems safe. The list goes on.
Becoming a nation of people with digital understanding will be different and more complicated than becoming a nation of people with digital skills. For starters, digital skills are tangible and teachable: download this app, program this device. They also reinforce the idea that digital is something we do – time-bound and transactional.
But in a world where we spend more time online than we do asleep and where everything from our televisions to our kettles can connect to the internet, digital is something we are. Understanding is not a race to be run and won. It is a lifelong process of learning, one unique to each of us.
The full speech is available here. It was given in the House of Lords and is obviously directed towards UK parliamentarians but the concepts apply globally. I recommend reading the whole thing.
To play devil's advocate, I imagine your view isn't too far removed from folks who know to work on their cars being aghast that no one knows how to fix their own any more.
Computers are tools, and the more complex they become the harder it is to learn how to use and repair them.
I guess my point was more about it being an issue in professional settings as well, where the people should be technical.
One of technology's biggest achievements is making it such that someone who doesn't care how something works doesn't need to worry about that in order to use it.
In Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch argues that there are three waves of "internet people". The first was "before it was cool", the second when it became mainstream (give or take the turn of the millennium) and the third when internet was already a thing. The third are young people, too young to remember the 1900s and therefore the time before internet, and old people who go online because it's unavoidable and also more intuitive and easy than ever before.
Despite the generation gap, they have things in common and in contrast to the first and second wave (which she also subdivides but that's beside the point). For example they never used mail as primary communication and they have smartphones as first device and most often second hand from a family member.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk and sorry if I took your shitpost too serious but there's truth and science behind it and I couldn't not share it.
I wish we'd refer to early internet era as something other than the 1900s. WWW ostensibly started in 95. Maybe we just call it "The 90s" and be good with it?
When we start referring to the "turn of the century" as the early 2000s, I may just outright die.
I wish we'd refer to early internet era as something other than the 1900s.
Oh feel you. Saying 1900s for the whole century feels wrong but why tho? We do it for other centuries as well so maybe it's time to get used to it.
WWW ostensibly started in 95.
That's already part of becoming mainstream. I use "internet" in the broader sense that includes other technology I'm not really familiar with. But some precursors of the internet were around in the 70s and maybe even earlier? Donno, I'm second wave myself. Sorry if my terminology is confusion and not correct.
When we start referring to the "turn of the century" as the early 2000s, I may just outright die.
I used the phrase "turn of the millennium". Sorry if old people thought I meant 1000 CE.
We didnt vote for Æthelred the Unready! Were an autononous collective.
I grew up when the internet was already a thing but I didn't really get to use it until I was a teenager. We had a family computer with space cadet pinball on it, and as a small kid I didn't know how to surf the web, I only knew how to play the games like solitaire. I knew you could connect your DS (It's not a Gameboy, mum!) to the internet for online multiplayer, but it was too complicated to figure out without a grownup's help. When I got a bit older, I got My own laptop for schoolwork and discovered the internet. I got hooked on webcomics and Reddit. I had a dumb phone for emergencies, which was later replaced with a smartphone on a prepaid plan, with too little data to use it for the internet. So I browsed the internet from the Ubuntu desktop I built at home. Eventually I got a monthly plan and joined the 21st century, but it was a long way getting there.
Technically I fall into your third group, but I don't have anything in common with these kids.
On a side note, I would regularly get my silent generation grandmother to fix something on my smartphone when they first started getting popular. I miss her.
I feel so powerful. I can develop in JavaScript, PHP and actionscript. All the hottest languages of the year 2000
I mean, both JavaScript and PHP are still widely used.
I'm pretty sure PHP has died 16 times since then
PHP is Michael Meyers
RIP Flash
I watched a gen alpha iPad kid play a Nintendo DS recently. He held it on his lap and only mashed his thumbs on all the controls, fingers splayed wide. Raged like hell at it. A piece of me died.
Zoomers too
Dude, I'm an electrical engineer born in 02.
That's not possible, you'd only be ...
Oh.
Yep, the future is now, huh?
Get off my lawn.
dude, i was 1 year away from finishing high school when you were born. Holy shit I'm old.
See I don't entirely blame young people here. I downloaded a linux distro from their torrent mirror last year and my ISP started emailing me literal threats about piracy laws. It's the corporations.
(Tho I am pretty young myself for lemmy standards tbf)
There's a push by younger boomers to change the name to "Jones" apparently.
Everyone just thought the same thing in response to that too.
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