I feel like the people I interact with irl don’t even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.
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.
It seems like a lot of people almost delight in their tech illiteracy. And the big corporations are laughing all the way to the bank.
I mean, technically competent people sometimes do too. “Every technology I don’t use is obsolete and insecure” is a badge of honor for some people.
Caught my teenage cousins bragging about how they can “make a video game without any coding”. It was this shitty iPad app I’d never heard of.
We’ve come a long way from re-creating space invaders in mode 7 on a BBC Micro during break times at school.
I discovered the USB boot by accident and thought my laptop bricked for no reason!
Hahaha! I’m sorry.
Gods. Floppies were a PITA with this. The default was (reasonably) to boot the floppy first, but there was no fallback for when the disk was unbootable. So, if you were saving your work to a floppy and left it in when you shutdown, the next time you turned the computer on it would just sit there saying “hey! Your floppy didn’t boot” until you ejected the floppy and powercycled it.
Pressing random keys as an 8yr old while booting till the computer makes the funny beep noise and the screen turns into a .txt document
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.
Ehhh maybe true for the US where they had a solid early tech industry and then made some questionable decisions. I feel like in the rest of the world progress is steady but forwards. Generally young stem university students where I live have all done a programming unit and a technology unit and each year more is added to curriculums whereas older generations might not have been given quite such an extensive education.
Also tech literacy = using a mouse is peak uppity midlife techy person. Get the fuck outta here there are more trans women and femboys wearing thigh highs and running arch off of think pads then there ever were of y’all older tech elitists back in the day.
Thafuq?
Yea, young STEM university students are obviously going to be more technologically literate than their counter parts. That isn’t a new thing and was true for the older generations too.
What questionable decisions are you talking about that the US made that you’re insinuating set them back compared to the rest of the world? The US does have more tech classes now than when I was in school in the early 2000’s. The problem is a vast majority of these kids coming up don’t know how to use computers effectively. It’s not just “using a mouse” that makes someone tech literate. Knowing how to navigate a mobile device, which is designed for ease of use to accommodate even the dumbest people, does not make someone tech literate. Some are power users, but most have nothing more than a surface level knowledge of how to use it. There’s little to no troubleshooting skills.
All of those mobile devices are programmed by actual tech literate people that understand coding, the network stack, security, and the general inner workings of how computers work. This generation coming out now doesn’t know any of that because they never use computers.
And lastly, holy fuck what’s wrong with you? Jesus fucking Christ you just came out shooting in that second half. The person you replied to made a valid, factual point, and you apparently took that as a personal attack. What the fuck do trans people have to do with this? What a fucked up transition to make and shit to take. You need help, dude.
The person I replied to said the “average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate” and his source is “kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.” Yet in the same sentence acknowledges “People grow up with phones and iPads.”
Yeah wow, kids don’t know how to use a mouse because they’ve never used one before. Truly society is regressing. Kids get taught how to use scissors. It’s just juvenoia.
Young people are more interested in technology then ever before. There are more people with computers, more people using computers daily and longer collective hours spent digitally then ever before.
But yeah tech literacy is down guys trust. these kids can’t even troubleshoot a fax machine. Just read the multiple studies that prove my point that I haven’t linked but I’ve definitely read guys trust.
Not knowing how to use a mouse is hyperbole for not knowing how to use a computer, but also, if you can’t use a mouse, you can’t use a workstation computer. Knowing how to navigate a mobile device does not make someone tech literate. In general it stunts computer skills, because there’s minimal tech knowledge required to download an app from a curated store or watching tik tok.
You’re proving our point in the second paragraph. Yea, kids aren’t being taught computer skills. Not knowing the fundamentals of how to use a workstation is a problem and it is causing a regression in technological literacy in society.
Young people tend to be more interested in phone and tablets than ever before. Some for sure are into workstations, but that is not the norm. Id argue less kids percentage wise are spending time on computers daily than 15-20 years ago. Everything is done on iPads or phones in schools, until college. Even if you didn’t want to, back in the day you had to know how to navigate a complex operating system, save files to removable storage, download files and install them, and a plethora of other seemingly simple skills, and that’s not happening now.
If you work in IT or around youth entering the workforce, it’s extremely clear that tech literacy is worse now than it was a decade ago, or at least it is as a millennial that bridged that gap and can clearly see the difference. I can see if someone is younger than millennials why they wouldn’t be able to see that difference, because they are in that demographic.
It would take 5 seconds to do a Google search for millennials and technology and find a couple studies on the topic. It isn’t some secret that’s being hidden and it’s easily accessible. Perhaps your inability to find these studies is the proof that tech literacy has degraded.
Phones and tablets are computers. Being able to use one is a form of tech literacy just as how knowing how to use a mouse and keyboard is a form of tech literacy. Bro it’s your argument, if you’re adamant the sources exist to support it that’s on you to provide it otherwise the person reading your writing will be unable to find specifically what you are referring to. I mean you are referring to something you specifically have read right? You wouldn’t make something up based on vibes right? All this talk about being tech literate and you’re not doing the basic literary work of source citation.
That wasn’t my argument, that was someone else. I’m just shitting on your response to them instead of doing the bare amount of research.
My whole point is, kids are coming out with less computer knowledge as a whole. Maybe they know more on mobile devices than older generations, but I’d argue that’s not even true compared to millennials who were also in the prime of smart phones and tablets hitting the market. The difference is millennials also know how to use workstations, making them more tech literate. Having skills on just mobile devices is very sandboxed and remedial. It’s not noteworthy in the slightest. Being able to work with a desktop OS, understanding a file system, and troubleshooting are tech skills that you get generations don’t have, making them less tech literate.
“That wasn’t my argument, that was someone else”
“If you work in IT or around youth entering the workforce, it’s extremely clear that tech literacy is worse now than it was a decade ago”
Yeah but it ain’t my argument guys I only said it and made a case for it. Come on man, just show the sources. I mean it’s really clear right so all those studies will unambiguously show it. And they’re right there in Google so it wouldn’t even be difficult to find them wouldn’t it.
One time I said “Hey this TUI program works perfect on every single distribution and even BSDs, takes no performance issues ever, and just overall good program. I wanna check contributors on github.”
It was all either anime or trans flag pfps.
Exactly. Exposure to technology does not make you tech literate. Tech literate typically means engaged with new technologies.
For instance, people were using phones, fax machines, calculators, watches, etc when dial up came out. Those users were not considered tech literate.
The same happens today, an iPhone or Android user is not tech literate by default anymore.
Soon the era of hosting own VPN and tricking AI will start
i also notice they fall for the simplest scams too online,
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.
I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles, both ways uphill!
I used to have to book computer time at the library and walk to said library so I could play Oregon trail on an apple iie
at least you had shoes
You guys have feet?!
you dont levitate, or teleport.
No. So I had to pull myself up the hills in a wagon and roll my own datetime parser
Lt Dan?
You mustn’t have been paying attention, Ltd Dan ain’t got no legs, that doesn’t preclude him from having feet
The Rayman body type
I feel the same about things like irq. Useless but I feel knowing how they worked makes you closer to the hardware.
In DOS time I learned how to type quickle because I had to type in
cd gamescd keenkeenas quickly as possible to minimise non-gaming time.That’s why you install Automenu
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.
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I used to love going to Babbage’s in the mall. So many King’s Quest boxes….
King’s Quest
Damn, that’s a good hit of nostalgia!
oh man, Babbages. Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. A long time.
If he doesn’t solve problems with chmod 777 then he’s already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company
Oh, but you gotta drop a chmod nuke at least once to feel the terror having done something irreversible. As a bonus, you’ll also gain a brand new appreciation for snapshots.
sudo chmod 000 /for securityAnd it’s also so much faster than full disk encryption. Cool little trick the admins don’t want you to know.
You don’t even need to do it recursively:
sudo find / -path '/*/*' -prune -o -exec chmod 000 {} +This is extremely fast.
Who’s going to win?
SELinux+Seccomp+Containers…
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.Neither! It’s whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.
I’m extremely young, I don’t know how shit works, like at all. Because stuff works pretty well nowadays. Cannot imagine not knowing how to use a mouse. It could not be simpler imo. Can’t remember a time that I didn’t know lol
You should spend some time trying to teach CAD to students in High School. My first couple of days with a new class involved teaching them that, No you can’t use your finger, and then how to use a mouse.
I’m in high school rn. I had to use this program called TinkerCAD in middle school for some weird class on the basics of engineering. Wasn’t particularly good at it, but no one needed an explanation of keyboard and mouse. Chromebooks are used heavily, so that makes sense. I never really considered that keyboard and mouse wouldn’t be at least learned. I guess with smartphones and iPads it makes sense. Makes me a little sad, but whatever.
Don’t underestimate yourself. Just by posting here you have proven that you’re more proficient than the average Joe.
It’s not hard to make an account lol
Lots of users fail on anything more complicated than a “Sign in with Google” prompt.
Fascinating. Guess I never knew lol
The average person is incredibly dumb.
Not that dumb. Helpdesk just gives survivorship bias.
The people smart enough to realize modems don’t work during outage don’t call as often.
Except for “can you hack my ex’s facebook” ones. Those are constant for some reason.
Read my comment history to get context on how you are wrong and then delete that comment you just made.
Imagine studying at uni for years to become a programmer, only to be replaced by a vibe coder with an iPhone.
But remember, hard work always pays off!We all imagine that, is has yet to happen. Vibe coders can produce the spaghetti code of upwards of 10 unpaid interns! What value!
AI=ALWAYS indian in the end.
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
Even when I was like 4, I would’ve gone for the controller. I knew how to use it from Lego Star Wars. I knew how to use a keyboard, but I didn’t play on pc, so I’d have had to have been told the controls.
Reminds me of my senior teaching days 15 years ago. Solitaire, same.exe and saddam.exe and whack.exe soon had those oldies clicking, double clicking and dragging.
Didn’t think then that the situation could reverse.
Same still exists on Android and is still a brain twister.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kubilayerdogan.samegamel
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.”
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.
Back to what, exactly? At what point in the past was it easier to use a computer than it was in the late 90s? Unless you’re talking about before computers, which doesn’t really have any bearing on what’s being discussed.
I’m assuming they mean “Normal” as in “the general public being completely oblivious to the inner workings of the things they utilize in their daily lives”, not “people going back to having an easier time with tech”.
I’m not entirely sure that is “normal” though. We don’t have to go back very far to reach a point where people would be making their own tools for their craft. I think this modern day is pretty abnormal in the grand scheme about not knowing how the things used actually work or is put together.
They exist. They are capable of being smart and curious, but they’re less inherently familiar with the “bleep bloops” as we are.
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.
is that when prompted with something they don’t know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don’t know
This is just the majority of people, not specific to any generation. Our minds are predisposed to use inductive reasoning to explain the world around us. We see something new and our brain immediately begins to make inferences based on prior information we believe we know (I say it this way cause our memories are incredibly faulty) that we think is relevant or comparable.
It’s essentially the Dunning Kruger effect: we think we know more than we do and, because of this, believe we can simply assume correctly about other things we know nothing about.
It’s an incredibly bad habit that is supposed to be trained out of us through our education systems but we all know how incredibly faulty those systems are.
The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn’t know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.
As a Louisiana resident. I feel ya neighbor.
Hadn’t realized what a gem “I don’t know” is until waaaaay too late. Saying “I don’t know” still often feels like a personal, albeit public, moral failure. Which is so dumb. But feels like it makes so much sense.
I think about the Lucky 10,000 XKCD comic all the time.
I work in a completely different field, but you last paragraph mostly sounds to me like a typical young person entering the job market. There is this false sense og confidence, pride and know it all when graduating. I’ve just seen it a few too many times and I remember how confident and skilled I thought I was when I got out. At the same time, there’s some anxiety and fear of doing a bad job and admitting fault may make you seem weak or unskilled and you want to impress the mentors and blah blah blah.
It is a bit funny to remember how I thought I was going to be helpful to colleagues who were way more experienced than me and then years later I’m being talked at by soon to be graduates who are trying to be helpful by sharing tips with me that I already do on the daily or don’t do because I learned years ago they don’t work. And when I try to give them advice or instructions it’s like they just space out and hear what they think I mean and then do something completely different from what I ask of them, haha. I can’t be mad at it, because it’s just a part of learning and growing into your career. I think it would be a mistake to think that a newly graduated person in any field will be able to hit the ground running without any hiccups.
Maybe I’m just a bit of a softie when it comes to young people, but I just remember how eager I was when I was in their shoes and how incorrect my assumptions were when it came to what my elders expected of me. It all came gradually as I learned how to be a professional and how to solve tasks and find my rhythm. I imagine new generations on the market can’t be much different from myself in that regard. 😊
Why there now exists “iPad Kid”.
That a friend I know of has a lot of his kids entirely on smartphones, while their family PC is hidden behind cobwebs and dust; if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
In fairness, it can be expensive to stock the holy water necessary to fend off the demons that inhabit all printers.
Just get a Brother laser
Or a library card.
Last I checked, libraries still charged per page.
Also, libraries are not at home.
Mine let’s you print an amount for free every month.
if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
Print shops are not at home either.
Yes, which is why I said to get a Brother laser printer.
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.
Wait, does that mean that we millennials are actually going to be remembered for something good ?^*
We better find a cool name… the golden generation of tech? The tech overlords?
^* obviously i think we are cool
And once again, Gen X is completely ignored
You have to break the realty market of you want to stop being ignored. Sorry, not sorry 💁♂️.
Gen Xs that got into tech are tech gods, the thing is, due to low tech availability, they aren’t very common in my country.
Well, at least you finally acknowledged that I’m a god.
The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less.
There’s simply no evidence of this
What’s more, the prevalence of cheap, accessible technologies is having a host of knock-on effects. Case in point:
People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.
Feels like I’m listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.
LMFAO, bruh, your categories are 18-29, and 65+.
Your Source literally entirely skips over the age group we’re talking about. You’re not proving strong literacy skills of any kind atm.
And writing skills are literally entirely different from understanding how a computer works and how to trouble shoot it. Can you name what activity Gen z is doing that’s equivalent to texting that is teaching them how to trouble shoot computers that’s different then the way millenials learned?
Because the whole point of that comic is that boomers learned to read and write using letters and books but look down at millenials when they read and write short messages to each other constantly, which is also practicing reading and writing. So what activity is Gen z doing that’s learning how to trouble shoot things that millenials don’t recognize as learning how to trouble shoot things?
(For the record I think the generation difference is wildly overblown in threads like this, but Im also not convinced that it’s completely unreal, and I also think boomers still had somewhat of a point that that comic glosses over, and we’re all now seeing it with our attention spans and vitriol).
I wouldn’t say that data is definitive proof. The table is missing ages from 30-under 65 from the table (at least if you’re not logged in, if there is a more complete table please share). Also not sure how good some of the questions are for determining tech literacy. Knowing that Elon Musk ran both Tesla and Twitter in April 2023 is more if you keep up with the news rather than knowing how to work a computer. Other ones are good like being able to identify 2FA or knowing what LLM/AI is capable of.
My wife is a teacher. Kids come to school without the ability to use keyboard and mouse which was not the case in the 90s. I also only drive manual :P
Bullshit, I went to school in the 90s, and half my class had never seen a computer before. I’m surprised you don’t remember how many kids struggled with Mavis Beacon.
It’s always different when it’s your generation. The fact that “keyboard class” was stuffed with Millennials in Freshman year of high school isn’t an indictment of kids’ keyboarding skills.
Only the Gen Z/A cohort has problems.
Feels like I’m listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.
There have been some articles regarding beginning CS classes bring required to include teaching concepts like folder structures because a sizeable part of class was list on this concept.
To use your transmission analogy, it would be like truck driving schools now need to how to drive a manual transmission vehicle, which adds to the length of the class. Or all the company vehicles are manual and now the company has to deal with hiring new drivers who don’t know how to drive stick but will say they know how to drive.
new drivers who don’t know how to drive stick but will say they know how to drive.
That’s how my great-grandpa got his first job, truck driving; might’ve been the first time he drove in general, automatic or stick.
like the early internet the tech gap was a natural filter and i see that as a good thing for the quality of the conversation.
Well, unless quality of conversation includes broad range of ideas and opinions. Personally I’m pretty happy with my little echo chambers lol.
The store I work at mostly hires immigrants. While I would say that the language barrier is squing things a little, my coworkers generally have never handled technology before, even if they were previously in a role that had a high level of education.
Take one of my coworkers for example. When she asked me what I was reading, my fumbled attempt to explain fanfiction might as well have been pure gibrish. She didn’t even have a concept of a book that isn’t educational, never mind not knowing the translation of “fiction”. After explaining the concept, she said “Oh, like the Bible?”
I think I might have done a mental bluescreen at that one.
Even just this last week, she seemed to be genuenly confuzed when I explained that I was writing a book. She kept asking “oh, are you in school then?” as if the only reason to ever write stuff was for school.
Anyways, my point is; the average everyday person has likely never so much as owned a smartphone, never mind knows how to boot off a usb drive. It’s not just an immigrant thing either, my familly is almost utterly unable to have conversations with me because they don’t even recognize 3/4ths of the words I need to use to describe the concept I need to explain to explain why I was laughing at a meme.
While I would say that the language barrier is squing things a little
To go on a tangent from this; this is literally the problem I’m constantly struggling with tech stuff. I am not fully illiterate in things (I’ve build my desktop, I’ve booted from USB, I’ve done quite interesting things with php etc. etc. small stuff) but I’m also not on a “Lemmy level”, for example never installed or used Linux, I don’t know Rust, nor do I understand a lot of the talks here.
But; English is my second language, and I’ve never had any formal schooling in IT. There are a lot of tech words that do not translate literally into my native language. So if I want to understand something, searching for things is an absolute nightmare. I often don’t know the English term, and I usually don’t know the proper tech term for it in my native language either. Translating doesn’t help since translators don’t understand the terminology but will translate literally, which again, doesn’t help in either direction. So I’m left guessing and trying to piece things together based on vague descriptions by people who understand what they’re talking about and expect the reader to understand as well.
On top of that the FUCKING SEO has made everything so much worse since trying to search anything with the word “optimizing” will only yield completely irrelevant things about SEO. I hate it I hate I hate it
Squing
Well, how would you spell it? I don’t have time to look up every word I don’t remember the spelling of when I’m typing from a phone.
I would spell it correctly, but I’m probably not so pressed for time.
You most likely wanted the word skewing
Tip for future: speech recognition can sometimes help you figure out the spelling of a word you only know how to pronounce.
Hadn’t thought of that, makes sense though. Thanks
meme tax!
Post the meme or story is invalid
Here’s one, it certainly got a laugh out of me
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its because we’re old people.
@TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world @Fleur_@aussie.zone I’m 30 and this is deep (to quote the meme)
I’m gen z. gtfo with that boomer mentality I refuse to become like you
ok zoomer. (/s)
But for real. I’m an elder millennial and most of lemmy is millenial-ish. Gen X and boomers, the ones who are on platforms like this, are incredibly rare. Reddit already skewed older than lemmy, and most of us were the earliest users/ power users of Reddit. So there is a reason why lemmy skews tech literate.
Like, we were the first generation to grow up with the internet in the house but also probably still had a land line phone. We had to figure shit out and also got to learn along with the technologies development. My intro to programing was Intro to Flash for making poop games that you might have played, but I also drank crystal Pepsi and could go see a double feature for $1 at the matinee. We bridge the gap between what was an effectively analog world to an entirely digital one.
So you aren’t wrong, but you are also on my lawn.
Your experience is the same for younger generations just the relevant technologies have changed. My great grandad who could ride a horse and drive a car wasn’t a better driver than me because he was there when cars were bad.
Yeah but like, its not just a personal experience or anecdote.
My brain had to bridge the gap between two different worlds. The year 2000 was more similar to 2025 than the year 2000 was to 1990.
And 1990 was more similar to 1965 than it was to 2005.
We didn’t experience a smooth technological transition; it was an abrupt and whole cloth transformation, and by 2005… well… things actually haven’t change that much since 2005. They’ve changed, but the change isn’t nearly as radical as the change from 1995 to 2005. New versions, faster, smoother, but not really fundamentally different.
Technical transformation follows a consistent pattern of tool innovation, radical adoption, and then, effective stability for long periods of time. Some generations bridge a gap between tool kits and some don’t. Gen-X largely missed out on that transformation. Z caught the tale end. Alpha is growing up in a period of, well, at least platform stagnation.
My brain had to bridge the gap between two different worlds.
As did past generations with new technologies. No car- cars everywhere. That generation could rebuild a transmission whereas it’s a mystery box you have a specialist fix for you.
No TV, TV everywhere, tubes in tvs, then transistors. My much older brother in law can identify and fix any TV at the component level. Like identifying a bad capacitor and not only replacing it but understanding the circuit to know that a larger ufarad capacitor will not only work in that part of the circuit, but prevent a future problem.
I suspect that like me, your TV repair knowledge ends at matching cables on the back to ports and replacing batteries.
Most people, regardless of age, have never been able to rebuild a transmission. That has never been a generation defining skill. It was only car enthusiasts, and more specifically motorheads, that has those skills. Did more older folks know how to work on their cars then today’s youths? Likely. At the same time modern cars are vastly more complex that cars of old. Almost none of those old hats would know the first thing about rebuilding a modern transmission, and the ones that do probably don’t have all of the special equipment needed to do it. If we include gender to this equation, what percentage of women in the general population do you think knew anything about working on cars? There were some, but I’d wager that is a really low percentage.
Your much older brother is an anomaly. There are exactly 0 people that I know that are 50+ years old that would know anything about fixing a TV. That is not a skill that a relatively large amount of people ever learned. I know many people that could identify a blown cap, and maybe with the advent of YouTube, could maybe figure out how to desolder and replace that component. Like with the cars, having skills in electrical engineering was never a generation defining trait.
Computers from the early 90’s+ have always been more complicated than old cars and TVs. Being able to do basic things on early PCs required more skills to the end user than knowing how to drive a car or use a TV. It was all new and nothing like anything before them. Cars were preceded by other ground transportation and TVs by radios for many years and knowing how to operate them at a basic level has always been relatively simple. Computers continued to evolve at an exponential rate in capabilities and complexity and if you grew up with them in your prime years, you had to be able to keep up.
Driving cars and using (dumb) TVs is very similar to how it was 70+ years ago. The invention and roll out of these to the masses took place over decades from when they first became available and during that time they were basically the same devices to the end user. Turn a switch and the TV powers on and you turn a knob to change the channel. With a car, you put in the key, put it in gear, gas in the right break on the left, maybe clutch on the far left. That is all most people needed to know, with specialist knowing more. That is very different from computers. Just turning on a computer didn’t do anything useful. It wasn’t intuitive to figure out and required reading a troubleshooting. That’s what every user had to experience, not just the specialists. The 90’s through 00’s brought with it significant changes in computers. It was a true technological renaissance and it took place over about 10-15 years which is when millennials grew up. That short amount of time and that much change isn’t remotely comparable to the slow and simple changes of past technologies.
It was only car enthusiasts, and more specifically motorheads, that has those skills. Did more older folks know how to work on their cars then today’s youths? Likely
Yes and you are a techie surrounded by techies. You didn’t see the millions your own age who used computers in the 80’s and 90’s without ever understanding them. I ran a mid sized ISP in the mid and late 90’s which meant training and supporting the help desk staff to handle the phone calls. I’m very aware of how stupid the average Millenial was about technology. I hired many smart kids. But they were rare. My company had a relationship with a private school where we’d get some high school students to work at my ISP and it counted as their “computer class”. There were maybe two kids per class of 100 students each year that knew how a computer worked rather than just how to click the buttons on their Mac or Windows.
There were more computer techies in the 90’s. There were more motorheads in the 50’s. Computers are more complicated now such that even an average techy can’t modify an iPad just like an average person can’t fix a car today because of its encapsulation of complications.
Your much older brother is an anomaly. There are exactly 0 people that I know that are 50+ years old that would know anything about fixing a TV.
Wrong generation. I’m 50+ (Gen X) and have no idea about how to fix a TV at the component level. Because I grew up with TV’s everywhere like kids today grow up with iphones everywhere.
TV repair was a thing. Radio shack and even Woolworths (Walmart of the 1950’s) had a tube tester so that people could walk in with the tube from their TV and test it without paying for professional repair.
Average people knew more about repairing TV’s than today!
Again, it’s not “everyone”. It’s the techies of each generation. It’s the same subset of the population that has the interest and skills to understand things. The only thing that changes is the popular technology that the techies focus on.
Then why is it that several, peer reviewed, scientific studies have shown, repeatedly, that millennials are better with all forms of technology than boomers, X zoomers or alpha?
What happens between around 1995 and 2005 was unprecedented.
The classic “several studies show” followed by exactly 0 mention of any studies.
The studies are on all forms of Computer Technology, not car transmission or TV repair.
The people that built the home computer and the Internet were all Boomers! Woz is a boomer. Vint Cerf is a boomer.
I’m a youngish millennial and I’m pretty sure I’m about to die of old age
God I wish that were me. Socially acceptable death is a blessing for my peers and I
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.
I know people who claim to be tech literate but then keep sending me actual photos of their screen whenever they want to share anything. :|
Admittedly, I do almost all of my messaging from my phone, and 100% of Lemmy. Most of the time if I have something on my computer to share, it’s easiest to just take a picture. If fidelity matters, I can take a screen grab and share it to my phone via KDE connect. It’s not a matter of knowing how, it’s the effort required for a slightly clearer image.
There’s a huge number of people here who would learn a lot from giving tech support to someone like my mum.
The curse of knowledge; makes you lose the perspective of the average man in the field of your expertise.
Once you work at a place doing lvl 1 tech support, like say a Geek Squad, the perspective smacks you in the face everyday until you’re broken.
How bad this is in practice is something you can choose to mitigate simply by regularly talking to normal people.
Source: I’m a climate scientist, I do this all the time (and only rarely get looks of complete confusion)
As someone in wildlife conservation, this doesn’t work for everyone. For me, it just makes me hate talking to people. They will be confidently wrong and nothing you say will convince them otherwise. Doesn’t help that I live in one of the worst educated states in the union.
Also, the 'tism puts me at a disadvantage out the gate. So I might be biased.
I don’t necessarily mean trying to convince people of something, I more mean conversing with interested, but less educated people. Convincing people is a whole separate skill set to just explaining your technical knowledge in plain language (which is the part that’s beneficial here).
Climate is something people already understand to some extent. If you start talking about different climate models and their assumptions, you should get those confused looks straight away.
I don’t though, because I actually know how to talk to normal humans. It’s not that hard. You start high-level, and then gauge their curiosity (via questions and body language), and then go a bit deeper, and if they start getting confused, then you back up a bit, and you just stay at their level, not at whatever insane depth your own brain might be at at the time. You use metaphors to link what’s happening in your work to things they have experienced in their life to build understanding at their level. Simplify and abstract, without dumbing it down.
My brain is fully stuck in philosophy of science mode at the moment, and thinking about how to integrate climate science with financial risk models (and how that doesn’t make sense in some ways). I have talked with people from across the spectrum, from people working in climate science or finance for decades, to people with a high-school education. The conversations are nearly always interesting (for both of us), and usually decently long. It’s really not that hard, if you just make an effort to meet people where they are.
You’re fortunate that your field happens to be reasonably accessible to common people. For example, if you’re a production engineer in a company that manufactures network infrastructure, it suddenly gets very hard to even explain what you do for a living. Normal people may have seen a router, but they’ve never even heard of switches. Regardless, they never paid much attention to network hardware, because they didn’t have to.
Climate is a lot harder to ignore. Everyone has thought about these things at some level. Everyone has heard about climate change at school, on TV, news articles etc. People also experience these things on a very personal level. Only very few people can say the same about network switches, let alone submarine line terminal equipment.
There are even more obscure fields out there. The relatives of those professionals just know that their nephew does something technical and hard to understand. I guess those dinner table conversations might gravitate towards some easier topics.
I’ve played with switches before, and some DIY electronics, and have done some network admin. I’ll grant that the actual internal electronics and software are far to complex for even me to understand.
But again, if you talk to someone with some interest in what you’re doing, you can find a level they they can understand. Maybe using metaphors like human-operated old-school telephone switch boards, that’s an image that most people will have seen, and can understand at a coarse conceptual level. You CAN have an interesting conversation at the level, if YOU want to be interested in it (and if they do, which is partially contingent on you being able to connect with them in the first place).
If you think climate is simpler or more accessible, I’d suggest you have a quick go at explaining the Navier-Stokes equations, Darcy’s law for fluid flow through porous media, or why convective storm activity needs to be parameterised in climate models (and at what scale it doesn’t). Climate isn’t easier, or more accessible than network admin - both require years or tertiary education to start understanding even parts of the underlying principles, and no one person understands either field completely. It IS probably more familiar for most people, because it’s in the media all the time. But again, that’s just a matter of finding the extent of their knowledge and interest, and coming up to their level.
When something goes wrong the average response is some amount of confusion and anger with rapid clicking
Relevant xkcd:
Whenever this topic comes up particularly with tech literacy, this article never ceases to amaze me: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
It’s easy to forget the average person probably only knows terminal commands for Debian. And Fedora, of course.
They may not know all the commands, so we’ll just tell them
man manand they’ll be able to bootstrap from thereOf course.
No, farmers know barley, average people bearly know
No, biologists know bearly, average people, bairly know
No, Baloo, Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, and Yogi know bearly. Average people barely know.
whelp, I guess that’s the end of that joke thread
“Literate” is being generous. This place is pure pop tech, and generally just regurgitates tech YouTube meta.
“youtube tech meta”
That’s going straight into the folder
How has nobody posted the geology XKCD yet?
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.
Dw it’s easy just type
sudo computer open the pornography file
And that’s how you command line navigate
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.
3rd here. I can maybe boot from a USB without needing any external help, but im nearly certain im going to need to consult some form of instruction to make sure im doing it right.
I’ve boot from USB on quite a few things in my time. I still check the manual occasionally because there are different keys for the boot menu/bios
spams F2
“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”
You mean Gnu/Linux etc.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, systemd/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, systemd plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning systemd/Linux system made useful by the various daemons and services provided by systemd, which manages system processes and configurations.
Many computer users run a modified version of the systemd ecosystem every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of systemd which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the systemd framework, developed for streamlining service management on the Linux kernel.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is usually paired with the systemd framework: the whole system is basically systemd with Linux added, or systemd/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of systemd/Linux!
Now, let’s talk about systemd itself. systemd is not just an init system but a sprawling suite of software designed to harmonize the management of services, logging, and much more across all those Linux distributions adopting it. While there are plenty of critics who claim that systemd suffers from mission creep, and bloat, they fail to realize that systemd is here to unite the divergent spirits of the Linux universe into a cohesive whole.
It’s often cited that systemd is the first daemon to start during boot and the last to terminate at shutdown, meaning it’s the parent that manages the chaotic brood of processes that stem from it. But of course, the truth remains that Linux is merely the kernel within this greater whole. For many, using systemd without acknowledging its complex ecosystem is like using a bus without realizing it’s the driver coordinating every route.
While some advocate for a leaner alternative, the benefits of systemd are often overlooked, such as its ability to parallelize the boot process to expedite your start-up time, or how it beautifully integrates logging with journald, merging many separate tasks into one efficiently managed service.
In conclusion, while there’s certainly a Linux kernel powering many systems out there, it’s really the systemd suite that brings it all together. So please remember, when you’re running your Linux, you’re not just running Linux; you’re enjoying the splendid orchestration of systemd/Linux, or as I like to call it, systemd plus Linux.
Good boy, you do the groupthink very well. Have some uppies :))))
Do you think creating a Lemmy account is that much harder then creating a reddit account (or any other website account)?
Yes it is. Because immediately you are faced with having to pick a server. And then grasp and navigate the fediverse, which depending on the use case is not as straightforward. There’s generally more hoops to make things happen. Depending on the server you pick, the UI is not all that intuitive. And then you have things like mbin forks which swap terminology.
So no harder than email then
Signing up to Gmail is way more streamlined than any Lemmy instance sign up
Have you looked at the signup page for your Lemmy instance lately?
I just did. The age verification is the only thing that looks slightly confusing, and anyone keen enough would deal with that fine. It’s not a technical skills/knowledge barrier, it’s just reading comprehension.
People ask how to make a Lemmy account all the goddamn time. You’re experiencing is preventing you from understanding how it looks to a new user. Go to any big sm platform and there’ll be so much less clutter on the screen and fewer things to do
Yes because people from reddit are constantly asking how to do it and what an instance is
In my opinon its because there is an approval gap. When create a reddit account you open reddit > enter email and password > you’re dropped into reddit on an unverified account.
For lemmy: you get linked to lemmy (could be any instance) then you press the sign up button and submit an application > then you wait for hours to days for that to be approved and you cant login during that period.
Yeah true but the verification is avoidable on certain instances. It’s just hard to explain that different instances have different sign up rules.
The comment section here is proof of the echo chamber part…
I can confirm I can do the other things but can’t do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line.
Strangely in work I’m the ‘computer guy’ as I can navigate Microsoft office.
Yeahh exactly right. Like IRL you’re a tech guy but here you’d be on the lower end of the spectrum.
