Computer literacy is weird because it feels like millennials were born into it and had to learn how to use the tools available... Then said tools were made a lot simpler with a lot less control over them, and Gen Z was born into apps and saas and did not have the chance to properly learn
We generally only taught a single generation to master our tech, I think it's scary, but also I trust the Zoomers to figure it out, they're creative
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.
I think so too. My kids are around the age I was when I first started tinkering with PCs, but they don't have any awareness of what's going on under the hood, (to be frank, nor do they seem to need it, as everything is so polished these days).
I'm thinking of asking their teachers if I can take them out of school for a day each and bring them to work with me for educational purposes so they get some perspective in the form of networks and servers.
Sure, they're mostly interested in gaming, but I want them to see what kind of infrastructure is needed for a multiplayer game, specifically the hardware that they never get to see.
I'm building a new server stack in a couple of months, and most of it will be used for testing, so I'd like for them to help build and connect it.
(to be frank, nor do they seem to need it, as everything is so polished these days)
The problem is if you don't know basic concepts of computers you cannot transfer your knowledge from one program to the next. Folder structures are a bizarre thing for many people and if they see one in program A, then they won't understand that in program B it works the same way.
I have never had any issues learning any new software from scratch, but I see people my age not figuring out where to click next or where something they are looking for might be hidden in the options. Then an update comes that changes things and they are back to square 1 and helpless.
I just had a chat with my oldest (almost 13 years y.o.) asking him some theoretical questions in the hope to spark some curiosity: "When you connect to a Roblox game, what do you think you're connecting to?". It took him a few leaps of imagination to realize that he's connecting to a physical machine somewhere, and now he's curious as to how such a machine looks. So that server stack I'll be setting up, he's interested in tagging along.
He already knows full well that there are more to PCs than just the windows UI, as I'm a linux guy, but I don't think they're aware of just how much can be done with a computer once you go outside of the usual GUI app that connects to some cloud service.
So, provided that his teacher agrees (after all, I have to take him out of school for what effectively will be "alternative education" for a few days so we can fly down to the head office), he'll end up with bragging rights of having dealt network hardware that costs more than the average computer, and computers that cost more than the average house.
This could be a very formative memory even if he get disinterested from computers, getting this kind of perspective on things can go a long way !
I posted the result of the trip in CasualConversation: https://feddit.nl/post/19675883
Good on you. You can teach your son some valuable perspective, while getting in some quality time as well. Please let us know how it goes, if you don't mind. I feel invested now.
I posted the result of the trip in CasualConversation: https://feddit.nl/post/19675883
I just had a baby and I'm already planning how to get her to help me run my home lab as a way to get her to figure all this stuff out, maybe run some game servers or do a little local blog. Then I think about how I can teach her to solder a hand wired keyboard or maybe build a little fpv drone with me and then I start to remember that kids sometimes just don't like what you do so you never know what you could get them interested in or not or if you will each have the time when they're older
I posted the result of the trip in CasualConversation: https://feddit.nl/post/19675883
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.
That's super interesting, I do remember being taught as a kid how to use Google Image search (circa 2005), Gimp for photo manipulation around the age of 12 in 2008, we had technology classes with electronics, technical drawing, even some plastic bending machine, and light programming (made a robot figurine execute recorded moves in sequence)
I do wonder if it's still the case in my own country
To be fair, the overwhelming majority of people regardless of age don't know what LaTeX or markdown are. Not the best examples. I'm a millennial with a 4 year STEM degree and I maybe used LaTeX once because it was required, and before Discord became a thing, I'd never heard of markdown. Most people who use Discord probably don't even know it supports markdown.
I agree that is a extreme example. That's precisely why I started with keyboard shortcuts. I don't think anyone is required to know LaTeX and Markdown, but it seems to me that fewer and fewer younger people know them. If there are fewer people who know the basics, there are proportionally fewer people who know the advanced ones.
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.
I'm Gen Z and I still know all this stuff because that's just what I'm interested in. I don't think it's a huge issue that those things were made simpler for the average person and that they don't know how it works. It's not like you can or need to know everything.
Then said tools were made a lot simpler with a lot less control over them
Which needs to be reversed if we're to remain free in Western democracies. Access to and control of computing - general purpose computing in particular - is practically a civil liberty now. I look at legislators in my own country, and I'd wager 50% of them don't understand this, 40% kind of grasp the problems but are apathetic, and 10% are on the enemies' payrolls.
The weird thing is I know a lot of millennials that could use a dos computer just fine but struggle with anything modern
So maybe we shouldn't worry after all? Future generations will make fun of us because we can use Windows XP fine but we don't understand how TikTok works?
Remember that story about Gen Z students not understanding file systems?
Gen-z here - I know how to torrent lol. It's insane how tech illiterate a lot of my friends are, even in my IT classes don't know what HTTPS is or what an ethernet cable is so... yeah
Feels weird being known as "the guy who's an expert at computers" despite being a noob
yea we're fucked
torrenting is a little bit more complicated than turning a light switch on
I think the core of the problem is that back in the bad old days, things needed to be tuned up a bit before they would work right and there was a marked lack of standardization. Now, not only do our devices work right out of the box, bit they also have little quality of life stuff as well. I haven't bought a battery-powered device in years that wasn't partially charged when I got it, and most devices come preinstalled with all the basic utility apps.
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.
Dude I was born in 2000 and I get so mad when I realize how true this is. Apps/"smart" phones might be regarded as the biggest double edged sword in the history of technology.
It literally feels like we are at a moment in history where we are evolving backwards by force. This will only worsen as the ipad babies grow older.
You will own nothing and be happy. You will also know nothing and be happy.
You will also know nothing and be happy.
Ignorance is bliss after all
People thought the same thing about written language, that it would ruin everyone's memory cause they could just write things down and wouldn't have to go through the honorable effort of rembering everything
Although, to be fair, they didn't have capitalism then so our similar worries might be more well founded lol
We are actively being held back by companies catering exclusively to the lowest common denominator.
Ahh the halcyon days of downloading one song from a private FTP server with upload ratios, found by Lycos FTP search. Over a modem, natch, so it took about 50 minutes...and that's when your mom didn't kick you off the internet so she could make a call.
What's the original to template? It looks hilarious!
Found it! It's eat hot chip & lie. The text in the original reads:
any female born after 1993 can’t cook… all they know is mcdonald’s , charge they phone, twerk, be bisexual , eat hot chip & lie
Reading this as someone who torrents debian ISOs instead of directly downloading then in the hopes of reducing server load, while at the same time, not torrenting any pirated stuff.
But well, I was born a wee bit before 2000
There's just much less curiosity and "awareness of what you're not aware of" these days
It's not just a computer problem at all it's everything
OpenBSD predicted this in 2009: https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#46 :)
Damn dude, they got it to a T. This whole page is a discovery for me, gonna have to go through and listen to all of this.
What's the 411 on steamunlocked ? Just malware ? Can we just get the cracks like in the old days ?
needing a paid vpn to torrent without getting spooky ISP notices is a pretty big barrier for me tbh :|
Get into a Private tracker. Or You could rent a vps in a country that doesn't care, torrent to that server and stream or sync it locally. You would never be torrenting on your local connection.
I only learned to torrent because my dad used to when I was a kid. But these days I use XDCC instead because it's just so much more convenient. Though to be fair most of my friends who are also GenZ probably don't know how to do that either.
I've been a member of a private torrent forum since you were 2 or so lol
Torrent forum? That's interesting. I've only used private torrent trackers like TL. Any recommendations?
Not really. There are some adjacent ones I can check for invites if you pm me later to remind me.
But it's fantastic to have a core of users that talk about releases and sometimes call each other slurs.
i know how to torrent, usenet newsgroups are just safer and costs the same as an acceptable vpn.
