I don’t want to go backwards. As much time as I spent doing stuff the hard way I like that windows downloads all the codecs and drivers for me. I like that I can just swipe. But there is an inherent difference in people who have computers between the generations. It may also be because more people have computers and tech savvy people make less of that pie chart anymore. But one anecdote is Excel. I have yet to meet anyone my age who doesn’t know the basics of Excel up to creating macros and charts. They may lack the institutional knowledge to create useful data but we simply grew up with it as the spreadsheet app to do anything more complicated than a calculator or list. We won’t admit it in regards to work though because we all hate it with a passion rivaling the fires of hell and we know if anyone knew, we’d be assigned to the excel stuff before we left that room. Likewise many of us kept mum about tech support / IT stuff or purposely stopped staying up on it for the same reason. In the 2000’s it was really easy to get shoved into that role without any extra pay.
At the end of the day I’m sure it’s a gestalt of all of these factors along with tech becoming so mainstream. but in years past you didn’t get to just play music on your phone. You had to buy the MP3 player, find music files, convert them, and manage the playlist on your computer with the really crappy program. Many people just stuck with CD’s until ipods hit. So yeah at a certain level we are comparing people willing to overcome tech barriers to people who didn’t have to.
I don’t want to go backwards. As much time as I spent doing stuff the hard way I like that windows downloads all the codecs and drivers for me. I like that I can just swipe. But there is an inherent difference in people who have computers between the generations. It may also be because more people have computers and tech savvy people make less of that pie chart anymore. But one anecdote is Excel. I have yet to meet anyone my age who doesn’t know the basics of Excel up to creating macros and charts. They may lack the institutional knowledge to create useful data but we simply grew up with it as the spreadsheet app to do anything more complicated than a calculator or list. We won’t admit it in regards to work though because we all hate it with a passion rivaling the fires of hell and we know if anyone knew, we’d be assigned to the excel stuff before we left that room. Likewise many of us kept mum about tech support / IT stuff or purposely stopped staying up on it for the same reason. In the 2000’s it was really easy to get shoved into that role without any extra pay.
At the end of the day I’m sure it’s a gestalt of all of these factors along with tech becoming so mainstream. but in years past you didn’t get to just play music on your phone. You had to buy the MP3 player, find music files, convert them, and manage the playlist on your computer with the really crappy program. Many people just stuck with CD’s until ipods hit. So yeah at a certain level we are comparing people willing to overcome tech barriers to people who didn’t have to.