Considering the discussion here around tech literacy, I’d like to share this insight: technology access is not technology literacy.
Many, many years ago, we could conflate the two and did so freely. Say, back before 2010 or so. Nowadays, everyone has a very powerful computing device in their pocket, but not everyone fully comprehends how it works. And unfortunately, concepts like digital securtiy, digital rights management, digital privacy, and so on, are still squarely in the literacy camp.
I can’t say for sure what proportion of the population is in the full comprehension group, but I suspect it’s still in the minority.
Automobiles are a great analogue of this: we’re 100 years in and everyone is (still) not a mechanic, nor do they make decisions like one.
Even with access to the entire internet, search engines, discussion forums, etc. it’s still tough to move the needle on politically charged IT issues. Education and awareness are key to solving all this. Generational differences and exposure to technology at different points in its evolution are not, and never will be, enough.
TBF Zoomers and Alphas look to be inheriting that tech illiteracy
To me it seems that the most effective regulations are to ban the use of black box algorithms in content presentation, create a tiered list of required security standards to be licensed to handle different kinds of sensitive information, nationalize the telecom lines and force all them to share those lines and compete equally in all markets except if they’re a municipal telecom, require social networks to federate via a unified social networking protocol to break the monopoly of “it’s where my friends are”, require multi factor authentication to prevent mass botting, and to require services above a certain number of active users to provide an ad-free version for an equal value to the average advertising profit per user.
Also data agnostic advertising
TBF Zoomers and Alphas look to be inheriting that tech illiteracy
It’s because GenZ/Alpha has grown up in a world where technology just works. They’ve never had to troubleshoot drivers, or reinstall their OS after improperly shutting their computer down. Plus 90% of their tech use is on mobile, which is constantly in the annual update cycle and constantly backed up to the cloud. So if the tech ever stops working, they can just replace it with the newest model, sync their new phone to the cloud, and it’s as if they never had any issues.
And this isn’t a bad thing. But it means that they’ve never had to develop those troubleshooting skills.
The sad part is I disagree with most of what you just said. I guess part of the issue is no one can agree on things.
IMO most laws should be at the level of goals, and the agencies implementing them should get down and dirty with how that should be achieved. So the upthread comment would be appropriate for whatever agency is tasked with implementing a last stating “social networks may not cause user lock in”.
The main problem is I think the younger zoomers and the gen alpha were all brought up on touchscreens and smartphones. I am not saying the older gen zvis that much better but I do know that when I was growing up smartphones started becoming more prevalent when I was in my teens so at least me and my peers I believe are much better on the tech literacy.
Really they should have made a bigger effort to make touch screen controls more 1 to 1 with mouse and keyboard controls
How do you envision that? I don’t thibk I completely understand what you mean, how can they be 1 to 1?
Say an action which acts as a double click or right click, making software more directly compatible from phone to computer, nixing the app model in favor of more traditional .exe programs, more traditional directory access, command line interface access, make it a traditional computer in your pocket basically
Does the TikTok have access to your home wifi network?
That one made me cringe hard when I first heard it.
The app of course needs access to the Internet, through your WiFi or mobile Internet. However, depending on the app, phone OS and the security configuration of your local network setup it could have access to other devices as well.
But that’s usually on purpose or by accident of the user. In court, one valid question could be if TikTok tries to make use of such a configuration, and for what reasons.
So I think the question itself is not that bad, if it got a clarification / follow-up question like the above.
In all seriousness: yes. Any app or even website can scan your local network and attempt to access other devices. This is apparent in the fact that dedicated network scanner apps like Fing don’t require any permissions to scan your network, therefore any app can if it wanted to.
Offtopic but here’s some resources:
https://github.com/ashishb/android-security-awesome
My second to youngest brother is technically illiterate. Meanwhile my eldest brother is very technically literate and both are completely different generation (younger than boomer) but of the conservative mindset .
my youngest brother is technically literate and liberal. He’s of the same generation as the illiterate brother.
A does not equal B. These kind of fallacy arguments of ‘how generations be’ really need to stop.
What are you talking about? Dinner of these senators can barely string together a thought. Can they email? They certainly can’t foresee the societal implications of AI, it’s impact, how it works. How can they offer oversight?
You just described several of my relatives of the younger generation . Just cuz a person was born in the technical era does not make them a technical genius.
I hope they wouldn’t oversee technology or anything else they dont understand. The are billions of people but qualified to be a senator. I’m happy you know some
Which is an issue if their job is regulating tbe use of that technology, wouldn’t you say?
If that were the entire argument, yes. But I see you’re desperately dodging the ageism part of the discussion here. You are fooling no one.
Lol no. I never said anything ageist and neither did you in your comment. You said, you know people who are tech illiterate as well and I said wouldnt that be a problem if their job was regulating technology? The point I was making was that someone uneducated and unfamiliar with current tech, shouldnt be making laws about it. You even suggested that they were of the “tech generation” or something like that, how is anything I said even remotely ageist at all? Also, “desperately dodging” lmao you kind of seem like an idiot.
This comment made no sense. Go back to eating the walls. Bye.
It’s a series of tubes.
I mean ultimately, at that point in time, as far as describing the physical infrastructure of underground telecomm lines… its not an entirely innacurate description.
It leaves out the entire concept of software and DNS and everything about how websites and IP protocols and such actually work but uh… there at least actually are a series of tubes, lol.
I hate to defend it. But considering he was trying to present an analogy his peers could understand, I get it. You can build a bigger pipe, add more pipes, or push the water faster. It’s not far off the mark in that respect to the analogy.
And you’re right about exclusion of networking principles. You could build a very convoluted model of water distribution using networking rules.
Pretty much. The only real difference between plumbing and the internet is everything but the pipes.
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it’s a truck and I’ll die on this hill
And we keep electing them.
Hard to elect good people when you don’t get good options.
Neither of the main parties have transparent and tamperproof primaries and one of the few things they consistently agree on is keeping third parties and independent candidates out of power whenever possible.
The American parties don’t need to spend any effort suppressing third parties, the constitution does that for them. First past the post always leads to two parties.
Suppose Bernie Sanders went independent and campaigned for president, and he got half of the votes that the democratic party would have got otherwise. If that happened, the Republicans could win with as little as 40% of the vote. Even if 60% of people were leftist, if 30% vote democrat and 30% vote bernie, then Trump still wins. It’s always in your best interest to have as few parties on your side as possible, and that means there can only be two parties.
In an instant runoff system, I can vote for the communist party first, the legalise weed party second, and the moderate left party third. If the communists and stoners don’t get enough votes, my votes will still go to the moderates and stop the reactionaries from winning. That means it’s safe for me to vote third party. A luxury Americans don’t have.
tbh a lot of it is probably malice too
Meanwhile millenials and genz: still using chrome …
…“Alexa play my fav mix with the disco lights plz k thnx.”
why should either of those things be illegal?
I think the joke is people still use services with known privacy issues because it’s 1. Convenient, and 2. Already in their spheres of use
Who said anything about legality? I’m responding to a poorly thought-out, ageist meme about not understanding implications when all generations are making this mistake very regularly.
oh I thought you were saying - because the meme is about regulating technology- that those things should be regulated.
I’m sure Diane Feinstein’s handlers are trying to get a hold of Mitch’s necromancer.
I think the issue is everyone is willing to tell them what they are doing wrong but no one knows what we need to do right.
