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.
To be honest, it is complicated nowadays for no reason. So i can understand.
How so? Genuine question
Take windows 11. This os have multiple ui, ads are showed in your face, and microsoft ask you every month if you want to use onedrive or buy an xbox rent. Drivers for printers are a nightmare. Linux is amazing, but to much choice. And if something doesn't work or it's broken, it's even harder to repair. And so on.
I know how to use a computer because i like to learn geeky stuff. But i understand that for someone that doesn't care, it just want something that work.
this is just an accurate fact
They are like 4 tbf no?
Most definitions use 2011-2013 as starting range for Gen Alpha, so the older Gen Alpha kids are 13-15
hell, even zoomers cant tell the difference between windows and chromeos
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.
Joking aside I do actually worry about how superficial technical knowledge is becoming.
Millennials have technical skills, Gen Z has basic trades skills, big part of Boomers built their own houses. Every generation has its base skill that eventually becomes obsolete.
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.
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.
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
Oh it’s well fucked already.
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.
Honestly, I've not had that one but I've seen something close. Some students are unaware they need to manually save sometimes, they just assume autosave is always there.
For Microsoft office this tends to be ok (OneDrive default doing something good for once), but once they step out (into SPSS/minitab/R) there is always some lost work in the first two weeks.
they point at excel and say the file is in excel.
Watching them use the card catalog.
There are YouTube channels with letting the youth try to figure out old tech.
You mean the Fine Bros.? The people who tried to copyright the idea of reacting to things on YouTube and wanted to make people buy a license to keep doing what they had already been doing? Those channels?
Use a slide rule and protractor to find the card catalog. Now write your name in cursive to check out a book.
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.
I feel so powerful. I can develop in JavaScript, PHP and actionscript. All the hottest languages of the year 2000
I once wrote a game with hidden folders and txt files
I mean, both JavaScript and PHP are still widely used.
RIP Flash
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
