The author is correct when he writes, "The truth is, kids can't use general purpose computers, and neither can most of the adults I know" but he goes much further than I think is really necessary or even realistic.
I teach at a liberal arts college and in most of my classes I devote a day or two to researching and evaluating sources. I ask them "How can to determine if a web site is credible?" and in every class I get a significant number of students say "If it is a .org, .gov, or .edu" Who is telling these kids this?
This week I had one class take an online survey and gave them a bit.ly link. I just cut and pasted it from bit.ly into notepad to make the font large enough that they could read it on the screen. In a class of ~35 I had 3-4 that were having problems. They were putting the url into google. At least one was typing in the "http://" that I had just cut and pasted. Of course it was on his phone so he had to find the punctuation.
THen ther are the students who submit .gdoc or .pages files and when I tell them to export the files to .docx or .rtf they say they don't have word. First off, you can download MS Office for free from the university. Secondly, you can export from google docs and pages to word files.
Of course this is not the majority of students but it is easily 1 in 10.
So whenever I see something about "digital natives" I roll my eyes. Until I have a colleague freak out about having to use the online gradebook the university is now making us use instead of a paper one because that person doesn't know how to do it.
I teach at a liberal arts college and in most of my classes I devote a day or two to researching and evaluating sources. I ask them "How can to determine if a web site is credible?" and in every class I get a significant number of students say "If it is a .org, .gov, or .edu" Who is telling these kids this?
Their K-12 teachers are telling them this. Rather than actually teach kids how to evaluate information, it's easier to just give a set of rules. The kids are given a "rubric," which is basically a glorified worksheet, with precise details on exactly what's required. The rubric has to be precise enough that there's no way for a student to dispute the grade that they receive.
The question is not which website is credible, but what you can get away with on a paper.
THen ther are the students who submit .gdoc or .pages files and when I tell them to export the files to .docx or .rtf they say they don't have word. First off, you can download MS Office for free from the university. Secondly, you can export from google docs and pages to word files.
My kids are in 9th and 11th grades, respectively. When they were in grade school, we still needed to have MS Word in the house, because some of the teachers would freeze if a file wasn't in .docx format. Their papers still have to follow formatting rules that include things like margins, for doucuments that will never be printed.
Today, Word is a thing of the past. The kids do everything in the cloud, and the teachers have mostly figured it out. The last remaining uses of MS Word will be in academia, for manuscripts, and in business, for documents that nobody ever reads.
> Their papers still have to follow formatting rules that include things like margins, for doucuments that will never be printed.
The reason for these rules is not related to printing. These rules are in place to enable fair grading:
- fixed font styling and page margins allow proper comparison of paper lengths (e.g. a student might try to use a bigger font size or bigger margins to get around a "submit 3 pages of text on issue xxx")
- fixed line height requirements allow teachers to print out the submitted document and annotate it - the resulting prints and the correction marks are usually archived to make disputes easier
I suspect it actually did make grading unfair. Having pretty handwriting probably got you a better grade. Although, arguably it also made the writing more valuable, for instance if someone were ever going to write things like business letters.
Similarly, I was in college when word processing was introduced, and I think that turning in lengthy and typographically perfect term papers probably boosted my GPA. Thanks to doing lots of programming, I could sling text like nobody's business.
The other day I bought a backpack at a skateboard shop and a girl working there said she didn't own a laptop -- just a smartphone. I can absolutely see this becoming common in the near future as phones become even more useful. With a chromecast you can even watch netflix without a laptop, which takes away the main use I have for one aside from coding.
As soon as I can do work on my phone, all other computers will be pointless.
Imagine your phone with all of the computing power of your current desktop or laptop, with all of the same software too. If you want to work at a desktop, you could have a wireless keyboard, mouse, display, and power. This is all possible today, but the phones aren't quite there, yet.
I think I might rather switch careers. Phones are terrible. They're sort of mostly tolerable when I'm just trying to kill time reading stuff on the web, or type very short messages where correct spelling is unimportant, but try to get any actual work done with a phone and it's an exercise in frustration. In order to fix all the problems with a smartphone that make it such a bad experience, you'd end up with a device that looks pretty much the same as a laptop.
I already do everything except for programming on an iPad and iPhone. I can program on the iPad (by sshing into a digital ocean droplet) but it's not quite good enough for me to use exclusively. I'd happily give up using a laptop if I could make programming work comfortably for me.
If you don't need specialised tools, I personally think a tablet is much nicer than a laptop. A phone is basically just a smaller tablet.
Until I can install arbitrary software on my phone myself from source, I will still have use for a laptop.
What I wish I could have is a phone that I can copy an arbitrary python script to, then execute it. No "Android Studio" or "Xcode" monstrosity to create and load software. Just my text editor and a shell.
> What I wish I could have is a phone that I can copy an arbitrary python script to, then execute it. No "Android Studio" or "Xcode" monstrosity to create and load software. Just my text editor and a shell.
That's pretty much a Linux installation pretending to be an app. I'd see it as a workaround not a solution.
The underlying problem with android, as touched on in the article, is that your hardware vendor is the administrator of your phone.
Security on Android relies in the idea that who ever built the OS signs it, and any changes to system libraries, with a secret key. That's a lot of control. Couple that with lack of root and its not your phone.
Termux is like saying... 'I wish I owned my flat so I could remodell it how I want "
"it is possible to redecorated your rented flat if you only put plasterboard over the walls"
Will solve thier problem, doesn't fix the insidious loss of power over our computerised lives these platforms (Android, Web applications) lead to.
> If you don't need specialised tools, I personally think a tablet is much nicer than a laptop.
That's an interesting perspective. I've always thought of phones and tablets as being mostly collections of tools that are either specialized or focused on remote access. Almost everything that I do on my touchscreen devices relies on network access, to some degree or another.
I know plenty of people in their mid to late 20's who don't own real computers and just do everything from their phones. Some of them use a real computer at work but many of them don't. And this is in San Francisco, no less.
I am currently in my bed because I am sick and can absolutely confirm this. I didn't even bother to get my laptop because my smartphone has the YouTube, Twitch, Netflix, and Amazon Video apps on it. Those are enough for me to keep me entertained without needing to have a heavy laptop on my knees, which would also require me to sit.
And since Android 7 has a split screen feature I can have a YouTube video playing while I'm surfing the web. So multitasking isn't just a PC domain anymore.
> I ask them "How can to determine if a web site is credible?" and in every class I get a significant number of students say "If it is a .org, .gov, or .edu" Who is telling these kids this?
I distinctly remember, somewhere around the 8th grade having this exact question and answer on a "How to use computers" quiz. There was also some information about how search engines can't be trusted either (you should use curated website directories!). So who is telling kids this? Their education system, and whoever decided the curriculum to mandate kids learn.
The worst has got to be ssh keys. Getting students (even Masters Computer Science students) to properly configure and handle ssh keys is the worst ongoing challenge I have.
That's because there are 18 different ways to do it, and different pieces of software use different keys/formats. I can properly set up ssh, but not because it makes any sense.
Similarly I can use git, despite it's best efforts to be inscrutable.
I get that to some degree, and something like PuTTY makes it really unecessarily complicated.
But really, I find that people have trouble running ssh-keygen and then finding the key and sending me the correct one (they'll often send the private key, or more likely they'll send me both "just use the one you need".)
Oddly, to me, the full PuTTY suite is way easier to use then all the ssh stuff on Linux. PuTTYgen/Pageant makes ssh private keys just work, PuTTYgen also has the handy "open a private key, here's your public key for it" text box, that makes everything dirt obvious (of course you can export the public key as well.) And the other major SSH-based software I use (WinSCP) integrates with Pageant as well. I know all this stuff would be equally simple with Linux, but on Linux, there seems to be "use a single key" thing, whereas I prefer to have multiple keys for personal and work use, which Pageant makes trivial.
Not just students - I experience this in the workplace too, and it just boggles my mind. We hired a recent grad, and after about 10 days of watching him type a password into a terminal ~20 times a day I casually mention how he can use ssh keys. His response? No, I'm not interested in that.
Do note that on, at least, mobile Chrome, the Chrome "omnibox" is actually rendered as the Google search page's search box. Typing addresses "into Google" is how you get the browser to navigate to them. If that's the only browser you've ever used, it would be quite a surprise to find that on the school computers, the Google search box is just a search box, and there's another box up at the top of the browser window you have to use for URL entry instead.
I think this article is one big categorical error.
The author is not talking about people using computers, everyone he describes as not being able to use a computer is obviously using one. He needs another word to describe what they can't do.
I would suggest the people in the article cannot "maintain" a computer. I can use a car, but I cannot maintain one. I can use a watch but I can't maintain one (unless it's quite large and easy to disassemble).
It's troubling that people can't maintain something that's a big part of their lives, but society has made do with maintenance services for plenty of other things. I think nerds and geeks (let's call them computer mechanics) scoff at groups like geek squad (for reasons I agree with), but they take their cars to car mechanics like everyone else and don't think twice. I think it's common for computer mechanics to suggest that someone who wants help should learn to help themselves, but I know I would be taken aback if my car mechanic finished a visit by handing me a maintenance manual and a catalog for in-home lifts and told me that, really, I should learn to do this myself.
> I would suggest the people in the article cannot "maintain" a computer.
That's definitely too restrictive of a description.
Laypeople don't tell their mechanic "the car won't work". They say that it won't start, or that a tire is flat or a headlight is burned out or that the check engine light is on or that it's making an unusual sound under certain circumstances. Even if they don't have any skill as a mechanic, you usually get at least a specific identification of the symptom relative to the expected behavior. And while you're not expected to perform all the maintenance, you are expected to be able to read and understand the basics from the owner's manual and apply that knowledge.
But the average technically illiterate user has even shallower mental models for their computer than for their car, and is disinclined to attempt any amount of diagnosis.
> But the average technically illiterate user has even shallower mental models for their computer than for their car, and is disinclined to attempt any amount of diagnosis.
When have you truly encountered this? If you read through the article, the behavior the guy complains about is actually users going through the process of building a mental model of what their computer does.
E.g. the woman from the article expects PowerPoint presentations to just work despite Internet video being blocked, because she has a (correct) mental model that PowerPoint presentations should be local. This is what I would expect from someone who was trying to understand their computer and has made an honest attempt at diagnosis.
I've dealt with a lot of relatively computer illiterate users, including friends and family, and I can count on my fingers the number of times I've felt someone was being willfully ignorant. 95% of the time, people are making an honest effort to learn, and bashing them for not knowing everything yet is a very unfair reaction.
> "E.g. the woman from the article expects PowerPoint presentations to just work despite Internet video being blocked, because she has a (correct) mental model that PowerPoint presentations should be local. This is what I would expect from someone who was trying to understand their computer and has made an honest attempt at diagnosis."
The PowerPoint embedded video issue in specific is a case of not understanding the difference between a link/reference and the object itself. That class of misunderstanding occurs all over the place and PowerPoint's UI probably wasn't helping the situation, but it's still an extremely basic thing to be confused about. The user certainly did not have a correct understanding of what PowerPoint was up to; she was expecting PowerPoint to conform to her vague wishes, rather than deriving her expectations from any technical reality.
And taken as a whole, the anecdote shows a user that immediately gave up in the face of both simple and hard problems, was unwilling to help in the diagnosis process, and arrogantly rejected the author's attempts to educate the user. This wasn't a user that was trying to learn or understand, this was a user that had clearly decided not to learn anything more and was trying to outsource all further need for technical knowledge.
We're conflating two different things, which is the user's attitude toward the author, vs. the user's attitude towards learning the tech itself.
Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start, I wouldn't be surprised at the user's reaction, although I agree she should show some level of appreciation for what is essentially unpaid IT work.
> extremely basic thing to be confused about
No, the confusion is that PowerPoint even allows links and references, rather than directly embedding the content. You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely.
It doesn't help that the software purposefully hides the fact that it's a reference in order to make the experience more seamless.
> "Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start,"
The author mentions that his usual tactic is sarcasm, but that during this encounter he was polite.
> "You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely."
The user has just been told that PowerPoint was trying to stream the video. At this point, she no longer needs specific prior knowledge that PowerPoint has a linking/referencing feature. She has been presented with enough information to infer that the feature exists, if she has enough technical knowledge to recognize the general concept of a link. But instead of rethinking her situation, she patronizingly rejects the author's explanation—the first occasion in the encounter where she engaged in any discussion of the technical details.
Again, we have only the author's account for the interaction, and he sounds like he's got a big chip on his shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if his attitude his coloring his interpretation.
Even if this particular user was being willfully ignorant, it's not been my experience with many, many other tech 'illiterate' people, who I've found by and large ask good questions and listen to explanations. I think computer-literate people really forget how much background knowledge they've absorbed over the years and how it helps them learn more.
Existing knowledge helps acquire more knowledge, and the effect compounds over time.
For example, a lot of posts here seem to be saying 'just Google it', but even knowing what terms to Google for is confusing for someone who doesn't have a knowledge base, because they don't even know what search terms to Google for, and which sources to trust.
For example, here's the first link you hit if you search 'remove viruses from computer':
Among other things, it recommends installing third-party AVX and random 'malware scanners'. Given how poor antivirus software is, following this advice will often slow down the computer and causes other problems down the line.
For someone who really doesn't know what they're doing, and knows that they don't know, another barrier to trying to learn is simple risk aversion. I'm hesitant to work on my own car because I know that I'm ignorant, to the point that I don't have a clear idea of what the failure modes are and the cost to me to fix them if I screw up.
Similarly, if a computer user really has no clue what they're doing and they know that they're ignorant, they might perceive the process of experimenting and learning as potentially very costly -- maybe they can lose all their files, or bork their computer for a week, etc.
There's also a second-order effect here -- some people are just not that quick at picking up new things, and they know that they're bad at it. I bet most software engineers are in the top 5% of the population in being able to teach themselves new things and learning them quickly. Unwillingness to learn a new task or fact can be rational if you have strong reasons to suspect that the cost of learning more is high.
To me, I think it is the other way round. Claiming that those people can use computer is a bit like claiming that a person who knows how to call a taxi can use cars. We do not have a word for car users like that, but I think we would need a word for people who have a computer and somehow every now and then manage to interact with it to get some tiny set of tasks done, but who are completely unable to use the computer unassisted.
> people who have a computer and somehow every now and then manage to interact with it to get some tiny set of tasks done
Cars can do far more than what the vast majority of drivers use it for (getting from point A to point B safely and within the law). But we don't complain that not everyone is capable of stunt driving.
Plus, you're ignoring the fact that even the best software engineer can only use a computer for a small fraction of what it's capable, since there is specialized software in every field.
A violin-maker and a violinist are two very different sets of skills, and I'd argue IT specialists are closer to the former.
I am not talking about being able to take advantage of every capability of the device in use, but capability to use the device autonomously in basic use cases. In the case of cars, it means that you are able to turn the engine on, refuel when needed, use steering wheel and engage gears. If you complain to the mechanic that the car is broken and the problem is that you have not turned the engine on you can't use a car. If you need to call IT support because ehternet cable is not connected, display is off or because the shortcut to browser in your desktop has moved, you can't use a computer.
That's fine? Our modern economy is based on specialization. I don't see a very strong argument for why every person should know how their computer really works to the point they can fix it themselves rather than paying someone else to fix it for them.
The difference is, with the amount of knowledge you need to learn to be a really good computer maintainer, you can be a well-paid devops maintaining a few dozen servers. If you have any aptitude for working with computers, it's likely you'll be at that level at around the time you hit 20 and just doing user maintenance will be severely below your skill and pay level. Plus, a lot of these people are asking for help for the equivalent of filling up their tank when it runs out of gas. Imagine being a car mechanic who can fully assemble an engine from parts and knows the purpose of every single part; but you're being paid minimum wage to run around town filling people's cars with gas. I get the sentiment, but there are enough specific factors at play that make the situation work out differently.
> If you have any aptitude for working with computers
It's difficult for people to estimate their aptitude for something before dumping a lot of time and energy into it, unless they have to do it or derive enjoyment from it.
> Imagine being a car mechanic who can fully assemble an engine from parts and knows the purpose of every single part; but you're being paid minimum wage to run around town filling people's cars with gas.
It's not his customers' fault that he's in that situation, it's his own fault for either investing in a skill that has no local demand, or failing to market his skills effectively.
I could learn to be the best widget-maker in the whole world, but it nobody wants widgets and I can't convince anyone that they should pay me to make widgets, it seems stupid to blame the world for this.
I watched some videos and read through the documentation that came with my Jeep. I did a few oil and filter changes. Before long, I realized I could do all the basic maintenance myself! But when I calculated how much money I had saved, I found that the loss of billable time (that I could have spent coding) was much greater than the money saved. So now I go to a local mechanic and bring my laptop with me.
This pretty much goes for everything from cleaning my apartment to repairing my family member's computers and laptops. I can do it myself, but it's cheaper for me to pay someone else to do it.
Most computer users run to a script: click this then this then this... Kids learn the latest app from their friends but the biggest difference is that they aren't as afraid of breaking things as adults. This is why adults are impressed by kids. Also, most of us learned by experimenting further. 'Digital natives' is a myth because only a few pursue what they are soaking in.
So 'maintain' is close. But I would argue that learning to maintain is not the goal or the measure. More important than using computers is understanding computers. Not a bunch of scripts or facts but concepts and a problem solving approach. This helps a little with maintenance but digital literacy is more about being informed of what is a pervasive aspect of our society (security, privacy, trust issues etc). This is also why a car analogy is not apt: technology is more pervasive. We don't use cars to make things in the way we use computers.
Am I the only one who is as tired of the 'kids can't use computers' meme as the 'digital natives' meme?
The vast majority of people have never been able to 'use' a computer like the author describes because the vast majority of people don't understand computing. And that's ok - I would consider it a triumph that we've been able to create such effective illusions in the form of UI that people who have no interest in computing can share in the incredible power that it enables.
But at the same time, it is a mistake to assume that mastery of the illusion equals mastery of the thing is abstracts. This is why the digital native meme is so misguided - kids don't know any more about computers than their parents did, they just know the walled gardens that sprang up around them.
Aren't we just masters of different illusions? Our illusions are lower-level, consisting of "file systems" and "kernels", "processes" and "TCP/IP", and "drawing calls". (And indeed, being able to upgrade a hard-drive and reinstall an OS hardly denotes mastery of anything, and never did. It denotes being able to follow directions.)
> To people like her, technicians are a necessary annoyance. She'd be quite happy to ignore them all, joke about them behind their backs and snigger at them to their faces, but she knows that when she can't display her PowerPoint on the IWB she'll need a technician, and so she maintains a facade of politeness around them, while inwardly dismissing them as too geeky to interact with.
> I've heard this sentence so many times now from students and staff, that I have a stock reaction. Normally I pull out my mobile phone and pretend to tap in a few numbers. Holding the handset to my ear I say: 'Yes, give me the office of the President of the United States.... NO, I WILL NOT HOLD. This is an emergency.... Hello, Mister President, I'm afraid I have some bad news. I've just been informed that The Internet is not working.'
Yes, it's a mystery how anyone could form the preconception that computer geeks don't socialize well.
It's a funny joke if you pick the right audience. The woman in this story wasn't the right audience, so he had the sense to contain himself. Doesn't seem that bad.
For me at least, my school's aggressive network filtering was a great learning experience. They used deep-packet-inspection combined with SSL MITM, so I designed my own obfsproxy-like tunneling protocol. In retrospect, I could probably have just used obfsproxy, but as I said, it was a great learning experience.
I'm doing the same currently but like any subject I encourage questions about the how & why. If we have a discussion about content that is filtered that has more to do with technical aspects I will, right now, always allow access. If it's about the actual content then it becomes a broader discussion that involves both parents.
My goal is that by keeping communication open early their moral compass will be developed enough to evaluate situations when the parental units have absolutely zero control over access. Pretty much like any other aspect of parenting except requiring more technical acuity.
The level of filtering at my school led to pretty much everyone knowing how to find and use a proxy - even some of the teachers would occasionally say to use one if something they needed was blocked. Watching the level of filtering ramp up over the last year of my time there, and the efforts by some students to side-step it, was rather entertaining:
* HTTP proxy server filtering traffic -> CGIProxy scripts found online to avoid the fixed filter list
* Alternative HTTP proxy server with a more thorough/updated list -> Self-hosted CGIProxy (at home)
* Network admins. actively monitoring for new proxy sites -> Self-hosted CGIProxy on a wildcard domain (unsurprisingly, that didn't last long)
* Locally installing monitoring software that would monitor the contents of any IE windows -> Portable Firefox + asking for the HTTP proxy server details (which unbelievably were given without question despite there being no allowed use for it - you weren't supposed to connect your own devices to the network or use your own software)
* More aggressive monitoring software (Impereo) that would kill any window with "Firefox" or "proxy" in the title -> Firefox extension to hide the window title
* Updated version of that software that would reliably kill Firefox (plus other behaviours which I forget) -> Exploit a weak password (single dictionary word....; hash cached on clients) to get domain admin. rights, then create an anonymous account that had sufficient rights to kill off any monitoring software (probably was another domain admin. account - I wasn't aware of the specifics)
Definitely a learning experience (and some of the teachers definitely knew but turned a blind eye as they knew it was motivated by curiosity rather than malicious goals), though perhaps not the education the school intended! The new account hung around for a surprising long time - it wasn't until someone malicious changed all of the machines' local admin. passwords[1] that it was discovered and disabled. That actually ended up being a lesson in OPSEC to some degree - turns out Impereo was tracking USB memory device names, and most of the people involved had changed it to include their name, thus tying them to the domain admin. account creation.
(Also, a side note, but if you have a VNC server on every machine in the school, maybe don't have a three-character password that is entered where students can watch the keyboard...)
[1] No idea who/why. It just wasted people's time for no reason, something I know the main group of people doing this tried to avoid - the most malicious thing they did (other than compromising the account....) was change a single pixel in the desktop background image as a proof of concept.
In the old days streaming video was forbidden not for its content but for the heavy use of data. I had that in the past at university and companies I work. Nowadays it looks like more an obsolete rule as Internet for companies and institutions is really cheap. So it only makes sense if they are located in a place with bad/expensive connection.
FWIW safe-guarding YouTube and Google searches can be quite a challenge. Using restricted mode and DNS config may not be an option if anyone in district uses Live Stream as any "streamed" content will be blocked by default as there is no active way to determine what the stream is. So if you choose not use these methods of filtering within YouTube you are left with video suggestions that could be less than appropriate for a myriad of reasons as well as the content readily available with normal YouTube search.
And even if Google searches are filtered using methods recommended by Google in the browser there are image searches done within their various services, Slides for example, that are either not filtered or not filtered the same way forcesafesearch and nosslsearch work. Not to mention Microsoft's DNAME functionality in W2K12+ breaking if any non-security update is installed rendering anything done to leverage DNS+forcesafesearch (using MS only) moot.
Maybe don't safe guard at all. My school sure didn't (back in early 2000s). I turned out fine. Anyways, most kids can just jump on their 4G connection and browse anything from there, right?
As far as I know there aren't many K-3 students with cell phones. And cell signal in a lot of the schools I've been is less than desirable but I do see your point. Not all schools allow students to carry a cell phone either.
There are multiple levels of restriction with YouTube that are geared towards primary and secondary age groups.
The one at my school was pretty entertaining, if you happened to stumble on a blocked site it would load a page with javascript obnoxious enough to lock up your computer while slowly flashing bright colors so everyone could see.
In the 80's, the local arcade owner in a podunk rural town could put up a random arcade machine from Japan, and the local kids would figure out how to play it. (Then lose interest, because it was some stupid movie tie-in thing.)
In the 80's, kids would run out of games on their dad's personal computer, then start typing in source code for additional games from paper magazines, and accidentally teach themselves how to program.
I know this. I was one of those kids. Necessity is the mother of invention. Boredom is a fantastic motivator.
This sounds like confirmation bias. I'm sure that this happened, but I doubt it resulted in any more kids being interested in and competent with computers.
After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s. I know several friends who that would also apply to.
Generationally, I think the number of people able to accomplish intermediate computer maintenance as described in the article is probably about the same across the board.
This article has one good point in my eyes: if you want people to learn, make them do it themselves. When my younger brother asks me, "how do I do [thing I know about], I tell him to Google it, first. Then I'll help him work the kinks out after he's at least tried to do something himself.
After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s.
Another anecdote from 2014 watching a kid walk up to a Battlezone 1980 emulator: Waggles the joysticks around for 2 seconds. This causes the tank to waggle. Kid gives up.
My thesis is that kids in days past would go to further lengths than kids nowadays to figure things out, mostly out of boredom. Middle class kids in the past also had access to "the sum of all human knowledge" through their public library and inter-library loans, but the barriers were higher than for kids growing up with the Internet. Nowadays, it seems like every kind of game imaginable is being implemented (albeit badly) by someone out there.
Providing another anecdote doesn't invalidate my argument. Nor does it counter what you quoted there.
Those machines generally had instructions on the attract screen and the ones that were too hard to figure out didn't get played. (Source: I was one of those kids too)
my first adventure in programming was changing a snake program to use different ascii characters. then that got boring so i taught myself a little bit of basic so i could make it put random letters on the screen so i could move the snake around and eat letters to spell out bad words in the snake.
Mine was altering a BASIC space shooter so that one's laser beams would fire directly at the location of the target without having to manoeuvre so it was in one's crosshairs. The hacking was more fun than the game became after my modification.
It has always been this way. Even back in the heyday of personal computers, people stayed on simple happy paths to make sure didn't get lost. If they got lost, and a restart didn't help, they were at the mercy of the closest technical person.
That person would be exasperated at the simpleton who wouldn't put in the effort to learn the tool they were using.
The truth: Those people can't, or won't, learn, and now, they don't have to.
Being that technical person, I eventually got to the point of saying to myself, "These people will never learn, and they obviously don't appreciate the joy that comes with computer proficiency. They don't deserve to have a computer."
I dreamed of the day that they wouldn't have computers. I actually started to design a operating system (no code, just UI, concepts) that I code-named MoronOS out of sheer bitterness. No file system, no window manager, no cut-n-paste, little or no configuration, like that. I never needed implement it because Apple did it for me. It's iOS. And now Android.
These are perfect for people. Rarely do people as me technical questions about their phones. Kudos to the people who design those OS's. The fact you can't even do 5% of what you can do on a general purpose computer is fine, cause they never used that other 95% anyway.
Now computers are for the people who will put in the time to learn them, to harness that power, and dare I say it, rule the future. Everyone else can enjoy their phones (really, what I think of as the real "personal computers").
Not everyone has to learn about computers to a high level of proficiency - there are many other things in the world for people to do with their time - and everyone learning the ins and outs of their machines probably wouldn't make the world a better place. Why are you so disdainful of these people?
High level of proficiency? No. But maybe enough to apply critical thinking skills to them, I work in IT and the number of people in IT POSITIONS that can't just dive in and ATTEMPT to diagnose an application they are unfamiliar with boggles my mind.
It extends far beyond the desk workers who can't be assed to make a 30 second google search before calling the helpdesk.
I don't know. I read it before and I agree. Heck, I've defended that point of view on the net in the past.
But I have spent most of the last 2 days surfing the net looking for information on which models of lightbulbs and washer pump I should buy for my car. Eventually I managed to track down and figure out the manufacturer serial number patterns and I was able to order the things (hoping the washer pump manufacturer I randomly chose delivers quality products) but I haven't yet found how to safely disconnect the battery of my - specific - car so I can perform the maintenance operation (which I am told is fairly easy).
So that is going to take me 2 days (at best) to fix my washer pump and change a lightbulb (how many HNers does it take ?). Any mechanic `geek` could fix it in 30 minutes. But I decided I am not going to shell out $120 to have that done. Yeah me and the hacker ethos.
My point is: I never had any proper mechanical courses in high school so I can see why today's kids can't find files or drivers or proxy settings (which reminds me of the f* proxy at work that is still getting on my nerves sometimes) or how to sort columns in excel even with the internet at their fingertips.
I see the parallel, but I don't think it's all that parallel. I'm in a similar situation right now with a motorcycle battery. My bike stopped working last Friday - 8 days and counting now. It took 2 days before I had time to go out and have a look at it. Then I had to come inside and look up a video to find the non-obvious location of the battery. I used a multimeter to check the charge on the battery, but I don't have a real tester to tell me the health of the battery. The multimeter seemed to be telling me it's fine. It took it to a local auto parts store to be sure, but the kid at the counter was even less sure than I was. So I took it into work the next day and walked to a motorcycle dealership to have it tested there. Yes, the battery is dead, no they don't have one...
There are several more episodes in this story (which hasn't ended yet), but the point is that this would have been a 30 minute job if I had a SHOP and TOOLS and LIGHTS and the ability to work on it uninterrupted for a little while. The fact that it's taken 8 days is almost entirely down to the fact that I live in an apartment building and my tools are in storage right now.
But the beauty of computers is that everything you need is contained on the device, and you can work from anywhere. If only more people would take advantage of it!
You bring up a good point. What is the social expectation of competence in these areas? In the USA it is assumed a man can change a tire, do basic handyman stuff, etc. But is there a social equivelent in tech? At what point are techs just keyboard moneys to the masses like mechanics are now?
Its odd, as the two share much. The average modern mechanic now knows hex, rom flashing, checksums, and some basic networking, in addition to metalurgy, gas/vapor flow, and customer service. The complexity has increased dramatically, but social respect has not.
I expect people to be able to connect devices, since the ports are labeled and shape matched. (And often color coded, too.)
I expect people to be able to perform slightly-nontrivial Google searches ('site:' and similar tags; Boolean operators).
I expect people to have the equivalent of "electrons flow in copper" (electricity) or "explosions push the pistons" (ICEs) level of understanding of what's in a computer and what it does, what the internet is and how traffic flows across it.
Now, the reasons some of these don't happen is poor teaching materials, but I think we need to get to that point -- where everyone knows at least those things -- before we can sanely discuss technology as a society. Democracy will break down -- is breaking down -- because most of the electorate refuses to know even the basics of one of the major social forces.
If anything, in tech, "anyone who doesn't know exactly what I know is an idiot" send to be the dominant attitude. And management generally sees anyone in tech as a socially stunted weirdo who is overhead rather than an investment.
Did he "shame" people, or write an article about the vapidity of common computer use?
At this point people who remain willfully clueless will suffer serious disadvantages, as computers start to make decisions for them, before they decide for themselves.
We pretend that machine learning has only good intentions and is pure of heart. It may seem like that now, but it won't last forever. Not every artificial learning system will play nice.
Explain to me how this line of reasoning doesn't apply to your car. Or flying in an airplane. Or doing your taxes. Or a million other things.
By living in a "modern society," we're trusting in so many things that we do not thoroughly understand. In some way, this is the principle that makes human "progress" possible. If every individual had to be competent in a given area in order to benefit from/take part in that area then things would move much more slowly.
Of course there are clear disadvantages to taking part in activities that we do not fully understand. We will make sub-optimal decisions because of our ignorance. But in sum, this isn't a problem. In sum, we gain a lot by organizing things this way.
Ignorance isn't good. It isn't ideal. But it's a necessary feature of human societies, and articles like this just come off as nasty and mean spirited.
I think "this time it's different" for reasons that aren't clear yet, but for technical people, has been an ominous fear for some decades.
It comes to this: Computer Systems aren't simply inert turing machines we can pull the plug on anymore. We are letting them off the leash and they are moving on their own out in the world, and they are making decisions to interact as peers or better within our social structures.
The car analogy [0] doesn't work anymore because cars are starting to drive themselves.
If you put this into an ecological premise, consider that we've been at the top of the food chain, above all other animals, and we have dominated the biosphere for a million or more years.
Now we are introducing machines as peers and they may soon dominate us, if we're not careful.
Look at the examples in the article, and consider that malfunctioning wi-fi might illustrate how poorly equipped most people are, to confront machines that don't act in their best interests.
Yeah. You can argue about the relative importance of different skills and they'll vary by situation anyway. Being a decent handyman probably matters less if you rent a city apartment than if you own a fixer-upper house in the woods. Similarly there are situations where you really should be competent at dealing with car problems. If you putter around the city doesn't matter so much.
To clarify: we're talking about being able to operate things.
If you had to choose between being banned from using any computer for the next 20 years, or being banned from operating motor vehicles for the same time period, which do you think would disrupt a typical person's life more? I mean, how would you even apply to anything other than an entry level job without being able to submit your CV online, or use a word processor? Think of all the professions you couldn't do at all: doctor, accountant, etc.
Even in places like sub-sarahan Africa, losing access to the computer-that's-a-phone would be a major impediment.
In contrast, there's lots of people who haven't driven a car in the last year that are perfectly well integrated into society.
There are also lots of people that don't use computers in the last year that are perfectly well integrated into society. I think you're overestimating the necessity of computers. I can't understand why a doctor would be required to use a computer.
I don't know about your doctor but mine uses his computer to see my medical records, including before I moved to the city. Also he prints prescriptions.
If you can use your computer but don't know how to fix things when they break, then you pay someone to fix it for you. That's what this article is complaining about: people who don't know how to fix issues with their computer, or don't use it in the most 'optimal' way.
You gotta be fucking kidding me! Did you skip the fucking Cameron section? Or the fucking "technologies that shape our future"? This is not some new-age crap. We are talking about things which are leading our lives. We are teaching our kids to be puppets of "tech savy masters". Worst of all, people who legislate about it know shit about computers, and they're probably repeating everything a corporate cocksucker told them to say. So, it's not shaming people about "you're no master at this field", it's about "you sold your fucking life for a few commodities".
And sorry about the fucking vote up in your comment, I'm drunk as hell, couldn't click the fucking right button.
>she maintains a facade of politeness around them, while inwardly dismissing them as too geeky to interact with
>Normally I pull out my mobile phone and pretend to tap in a few numbers. Holding the handset to my ear I say: 'Yes, give me the office of the President of the United States.... NO, I WILL NOT HOLD.
I think her initial reaction was spot-on based on this... Am I supposed to route for this protagonist?
So that's a long read... some good points buried in there, I guess it's good to provoke conversation in this area. Worth a read at least, much to agree with, much to disagree with.
>> Mobile has killed technical competence.
Yeah, maybe, probably? So many sweeping generalizations throughout.
It's hard to pick out everything that feels wrong, but I don't know about this...
>>Not really knowing how to use a computer is deemed acceptable if you're twenty-five or over.
I've not thought this to be true for a couple of decades now. Anyone* over 40 has been using computers for most of their life at this point.
* Yes, not literally anyone, maybe "Anyone reading this" is more accurate.
"Anyone reading this" isn't in the population of people who don't know how to use a computer.
Contrary to the beliefs of many people over the age of 40, being born around the time that the personal computer or the Internet or mobile phones were invented and took off does not make one any better with computers. The general population under 30 is just as clueless as, if not even more clueless than, the generations before them when it comes to computers.
Mobile supplied an acceptable device for doing most things a non technical person wants to do with a computer. This killed the advancement of technical competence but I'm not sure it set it back much. There have never been that many people who really get computers beyond the UI. Most people don't know how to fix a car either.
That being said, I do hate on mobile often for being closed and locked. PCs could provide a friendly UI that led people gently into more tech savvy levels, while mobile seems to lead nowhere.
I think we have to recognize that the use of the computer has changed over time. It's no longer the "computing" device that the users of yore recognize.
Before the late seventies, the use of computers were restricted to those who absolutely needed them and could afford them.
In the late seventies and early eighties the computers started entering the homes of ordinary people and where primarily used by the 'nerdy' kids. These were the kids that actually used the computers to program things and even program their own games (or copy/import other freely available game source code) and played them.
Come the nineties and we see the proliferation of high end games and the 'non-nerdy' users focused on using the computer as a game console. This was also the advent of the web browser and now the whole new world of the internet became accessible to the normal folks.
The audience today considers the computer as nothing but a commodity device just like a phone or an MP3 player. Now babies and toddlers are as comfortable with them as their grandparents are still confused with them.
You can't blame the kids of today for not knowing what the computer was originally used for. We read email, browse the web, play games and occasionally use it for the odd assignments which require a Word processor of some sort.
The real issue is that people do not have the patience to try and figure stuff out. They've got google and youtube, but would rather ask someone for the answer.
100% yes - and I am guilty of this myself. I've always found CSS miserable, so I'd just Stack Overflow things to "just make it work" ASAP.
Yesterday I took the time to read the specs for the flexbox feature. Spent an extra hour or two to build a cogent mental model of how to lay out various components, and voila - it's fun now; it's a brain-teaser and a game.
Speaking as a kid who does know how to use computers, this phenomenon infuriates me.
There is a special place in hell for people who claim to be "1337 h4x0rs", but have less skills than the average script kiddie. Especially if they spew BS to make themselves look good to their peers.
60% of Computer Science students also do not know how to use a computer. (At least in elite institutes in India).
The problem is they learn theory of computation and operating systems and all, but cannot reinstll their OS. And building a wifi driver from source in Linux is just wizardry.
Are they really learning it then? Memorizing facts without the practical understanding to back that up is pointless, especially nowadays with reference (Google) being instant and cheap.
I have not been impressed with the overall grad population in my CS department, which just happens to be dominated by Indian students. I tutor students who passed presumably difficult and comprehensive exams that can't get through the bridge courses, equivalent to the undergrad intro sequence. Yesterday I worked with a student who was incredibly flustered by the prospect of splitting a string in Java, even after I wrote out the functions to look at, how they worked, input and output examples, etc.
There's also an annual cheating scandal whereby ~90% of new grad students are caught cheating on the first assignment, and we explain that strike 2 involves losing their scholarships.
I can almost have sympathy. Skating through college without any practical understanding and then suddenly being expected to think is probably frustrating. I suspect there is some large structural defect in the educational system causing this situation.
My institution probably doesn't attract students from the most elite universities, but you'd expect a higher quality floor for a group passing rigorous testing and, y'know, getting a diploma.
I think the problem is with that people in India and other developing countries get into Computer Science not because they have interest in the machine but only because they want some sort of job.
They are very fast learners but do not care to learn how to use computers.
I think the capacity for computer proficiency is simply something you're either born with or not. Some people can be introduced to an unfamiliar system like a computer and actually make an attempt to make sense of it, figuring it out as they go, learning what does what such as actually reading the words on the buttons to make educated guesses on how to accomplish what they're trying to do and gaining an intuitive feeling for the filesystem/window management system, while other people (a lot of people) don't have that faculty and never will. These people will ask you how to print something when there's a giant print button on the screen, be taught how to share a picture on their phone with the messaging app but then not be able to connect the dots on their own to figure out how to send a picture in an email and have to be told to just select email instead of messaging, and so on. I've had extensive experience with these kinds of people and my only conclusion is that they are unteachable and you have to be born with "computer genes" for lack of a better term.
> while other people (a lot of people) don't have that faculty and never will. These people will ask you how to print something when there's a giant print button on the screen, be taught how to share a picture on their phone with the messaging app but then not be able to connect the dots on their own to figure out how to send a picture in an email and have to be told to just select email instead of messaging, and so on. @jimmaswell
We call those folk: LAZY.
They're too lazy to think for themselves, and want everyone else to do the lifting for them. This isn't new. This isn't some computer only or tech only thing. It's just plain lazy. Lazy has been around for thousands of years. It's just more noticeable now that everything is meme'd and shared online.
Knowing how to work around weird quirks caused by bad UI design != Knowing how to use a computer.
The wifi-switch on the side of laptop is a classic one (or even worse: fn+F7). While i personally do appreciate having a physical switch for it, how is an average user supposed to know that my laptop has a magic switch that can turn on or off the internet when the only error message they get is "Connection error". This is the type of error that can have so many fault sources that it should have a checklist that the average user can easily go through themselves. Now if such a list exists and the user doesn't have the attention span to read it - then they don't know how to use a computer.
Simply using linux doesn't teach you how to use a computer. Unless you are interested in knowing why certain things work and can troubleshoot yourself, using linux will simply teach you how to use linux.
There's a pretty strong tension between creating a great product and creating a product that encourages learning.
Great products we love make it so that we need to learn as little as possible to be successful (intuitive = didn't need to learn). Windows just works, macOS just works, and Linux gets closer every day.
The author recommends switching to Linux, but I think he underestimates the Linux dev community. They're taking their sweet time, but they will eventually get to 'just works', and students raised on Ubuntu will be just as alienated from the command line as Windows users are.
I would never have learned so much or gotten any sort of limited understanding of computers if Windows 98 just worked. That is scary because we've been in 'just works' territory across the board for years.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but asking people to fix their own problems is probably a good first step.
Digital natives can use MS Office, play pokemon go and other games, use social media snapchats and bully each other online. They don't care about privacy online because they have nothing to hide (unless they are being bullied), they don't know how internet works but have strong opinions about it. They can not replace RAM, sometimes they have the luxury to through away the whole PC because they can't figure out that it's just graphics card that's dead and since parents can buy new anyway. Digital natives don't know how programs are made, they don't control the checksums of their software and if they see a recognizable logo they would think that it's totaly legit thing even though the utility isn't signed and they downloaded it from some dodgy forums.
This piece tells me more about the author than it does any of his unfortunate users & students.
He lacks any understanding of his users' needs and sneers at them rather than try to improve their understanding. No wonder he's surrounded by people who struggle with IT.
She showed a clear lack of respect for him after helping him many times. He shouldn't taken that, gaven her laptop back and said: "Go to the it help" for the uni. There was no reason to pull out a 3g hotspot to rip a youtube video.
Your explanation of the Ubuntu Touch solution saddened me. I know the OS has improved a lot since this article was written, but I still don't think there is a 4G LTE option.
I therefore recommend BlackBerry 10 as a mobile OS for serious "users." Root is locked down, but the brilliant community has devised ways to install GCC and other software development tools, so you really can write, compile, and execute applications on your mobile. I use Helium Code Editor, Term48 terminal emulator, and you can google how to compile and install GCC on BB10. It also comes with a Python 3.2 interpreter.
I told a colleague, whom isn't tech savvy, that contrary to her belief, most kids aren't digital natives. They all can't use computers. Examples of people who can't use computers are mostly the obvious (plug in the ethernet cable; turn on the display; turn on the wireless switch in an OS of your choice); one is a bit harder (reinstall Windows). Parents did it all wrong, fixing everything for their children without teaching them how to do it themselves. The UK asked the industry what should be taught and Microsoft told them Microsoft Office, so now that's what they know. People aren't used to a command line anymore.
Why should we care? Tomorrow's people are going to be creating laws regarding computers, enforcing laws regarding computers, educating the youth about computers, reporting in the media about computers and lobbying politicians about computers. All while not being able to use a computer.
How to fix it? Stop fixing things for your kids. Schools should teach not to install malware instead of locking down machines. Teach how to stay safe on-line. Adopt a responsible disclosure model instead of punishing kids in school for hacking things. At least play around with Linux and powershell and stuff.
I've owned a car for most of my adult life yet I wouldn't know how to fix one. It's a recurring problem with computers. Yet I want to build a generation of hackers. Who's with me?
--- End of TLDR. ---
That took the author 4165 words in story mode (and me about 30 minutes to read, including this summary). This, author, is why you were probably asked for a TLDR in the past and why you write "gtfo you stupid fuck" as a TLDR on top: it takes forever like this. And be honest, author, did I miss anything? Other than clipped sentences, should anything more be included to get that message across?
Now as for my own commentary, I more or less agreed up to the "Why" part. I mean, yeah, digital self defense is important but not for everyone. If a subset of the population in every country knows it, we're good right? You even admit to not knowing how to fix your own car, yet without explaining how this is different you expect us to understand that it is different somehow?
I'd like to see people be a little bit more tech savvy, but not as much as you seem to think is necessary before not calling someone computer illiterate anymore.
Thank you for the public service tl;dr version. Should be compulsory on any article this long.
I experience this 'digital natives' lie first hand from my younger family members, it's really disheartening but unlike the author I don't think it's all that important. Compared to social media induced passivity being tech illiterate is inconsequential.
I teach at a liberal arts college and in most of my classes I devote a day or two to researching and evaluating sources. I ask them "How can to determine if a web site is credible?" and in every class I get a significant number of students say "If it is a .org, .gov, or .edu" Who is telling these kids this?
This week I had one class take an online survey and gave them a bit.ly link. I just cut and pasted it from bit.ly into notepad to make the font large enough that they could read it on the screen. In a class of ~35 I had 3-4 that were having problems. They were putting the url into google. At least one was typing in the "http://" that I had just cut and pasted. Of course it was on his phone so he had to find the punctuation.
THen ther are the students who submit .gdoc or .pages files and when I tell them to export the files to .docx or .rtf they say they don't have word. First off, you can download MS Office for free from the university. Secondly, you can export from google docs and pages to word files.
Of course this is not the majority of students but it is easily 1 in 10.
So whenever I see something about "digital natives" I roll my eyes. Until I have a colleague freak out about having to use the online gradebook the university is now making us use instead of a paper one because that person doesn't know how to do it.