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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who’s going to win?
SELinux+Seccomp+Containers…
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.
Neither! It’s whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.
Cool. I’m old enough that in middle school I begged my Mom to take to the mall to buy Linux. I got a Red Hat Linux CD-ROM pack from a store called Babbage’s. I couldn’t download the ISO on our modem and I don’t remember if we even had a burner at that point.
I used to love going to Babbage’s in the mall. So many King’s Quest boxes….
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.
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!
at least you had shoes
You guys have feet?!
No. So I had to pull myself up the hills in a wagon and roll my own datetime parser
you dont levitate, or teleport.
Lt Dan?
You mustn’t have been paying attention, Lt Dan ain’t got no legs, that doesn’t preclude him from having feet
The Rayman body type
Everybody Loves Raymond?
deleted by creator
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
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
I feel the same about things like irq. Useless but I feel knowing how they worked makes you closer to the hardware.
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.”
Now, 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.
There’s still a second natural entry, it is being critical and annoyed by corporate greed in apps, streaming services, ads, accounts for everything etc. The privacy/piracy entry.
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.
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.
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.
As a Louisiana resident. I feel ya neighbor.
They exist. They are capable of being smart and curious, but they’re less inherently familiar with the “bleep bloops” as we are.
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.
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.
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.
Print shops are not at home either.
Yes which is why I said to get a Brother laser printer.
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.
No. They are actually that dumb, mate.
I’ve never worked Helpdesk. I have just dealt with the general public routinely throughout my life. Goddamn, it might be just the state I live in but the people here are fucking stupid. Consistently.
Remember, there are also just dumb people who never call because they don’t interact with a computer to such an extent that they ever run into problems they need to call about. Those people are as tech literate as a rock and they are everywhere.
Very dumb. Half the population is below average intelligence.
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.
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.
Soon the era of hosting own VPN and tricking AI will start
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.
No need to be an asshole about it. Their point about the next generation becoming less technological literate has been widely discussed and isn’t even a controversial opinion.
Here’s a few sources discussing this
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.
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:
Feels like I’m listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.