Yes. We are.
We are young with to have learned tech at an early age, but old enough that the tech wasn’t user friendly when we were kids, so we needed to understand it better than people do in the smartphone generation.
Installing a new game on my PC in high school was a multi-hour, sometimes multi-day ordeal.
Plugging in a secondary hard drive involved putting jumpers on pins to keep the system from trying to boot off it.
Assigning ports on peripherals involved understanding how to count in binary so you could assign addresses on dip switches.
Installing a printer involved unholy alliances with formless beings.
Every 2-3 years, I still wake up wearing black robes in a strange room in Romania, blood on my hands and a lingering scent of cordite in the air. I’m fairly certain that’s related to the Canon BJC driver issues I had upgrading my AST to Windows 95.
More likely from soundcard settings than printer settings. If you’re channelling, its due to wrong number of channels selected.
It’s funny because we always thought that the next generation’s technical knowledge would utterly eclipse ours, but instead they only know how to edit a short video to seem to loop infinitely.
iOS is literally designed for toddlers to be able to use it. “iPad kids” aren’t especially gifted, “iPad adults” are especially stupid.
But on the bright side, those same groups think they “know computers” because they can press large, brightly colored buttons - so they walk around with unearned confidence in their abilities and impatience/lack of appreciation for the people that actually have to fix things.
It’s also why a large swatch of these same fucking idiot, drains on humanity loudly challenge the validity of voting tech infrastructure without any factual basis to their argument - they just “feel” like they get it.
My boss very confidently proclaimed that all serious IT professionals use a Mac. Said Linux “is for programmers and nerds”
Linux is for programmers and nerds
…and your ideal system administrator is neither of those?
So, programmers != IT professionals, huh…
So what do they make of people like me who who use Linux on a Mac, with e.g. Colima or Rancher desktop - doing cloud/kubernetes/python development? I moved to a Mac a couple of years ago after 20 years of using Linux as my daily driver because frankly Bluetooth audio on Linux sucks and because I was tired of getting endless different video conference / screensharing solutions working at short notice for interviewing.
I’m in IT, from my experience, most people who use Macs either use it for media, because it is easy to use for the common man, or it is the most expensive option.
Also most people who use Macs need help from their Linux using coworkers to get anything moderately difficult done on their systems.
”iPad adults” are especially stupid.
Does this mean a specific type of adult, or adults who use iPads? Cause…I consider myself pretty technically gifted, I’m a software developer, previously worked IT…and I love my iPad (for the things it’s good for).
Not OP but I suspect they mean adults that struggle with normal technology but thrive on ipads (can remember the button they use to open sodoku)
Nothing at all wrong with making technology easy to use for the masses, but this can create problems.
Kids don’t even understand file structures because modern OSs obfuscate that stuff.
That’s my biggest gripe to be honest with modern OSs. My files in my folders are organized like I organize my house. I live in and around that. I hate the idea of a “Downloads” and other stuff with “automatically in the cloud backup for this app”. Give me a file to save you stupid app.
Android has taken away a lot of the manual usage shit when it comes to doing what you want of it on behalf of security protections. Well fuck you, if I want a program to have certain access to things I should be allowed to do it, whether you like it or not. My N20U still can’t have a full and proper root.
I don’t mind that they simplify it. It makes it easier for more users. Its the fact that even advanced users can’t access it. Not a problem with a perfect app on a perfect operating system with perfect interoperability. None of those exist.
Yeah ya stupid app!
tell em!
Kids? Try being a manager trying to hire for entry level data work.
I got maybe one out of five people who even knew how to do basic things like opening windows explorer and navigating through folders. And from that slim margin, finding someone who actually knows how to use software like excel or outlook or word, it makes me want to reword the listing to say that we need people with 5 five years experience. For entry level.
I have become that which we hate. I am demanding experience for entry level work, simply because the entry-level work pool has zero knowledge how things work. You have spent all your time browsing and none of your time challenging yourselves to install software yourself, to copy and move files, or tried even opening your “settings” panel to adjust things. When I started working a lifetime ago, I took some free lessons in learning how to navigate excel and other popular programs. Using that TINY bit of training, I went on to make formulas and automated several of the systems at my first job. I went from counting screws in the warehouse to an eventual VP position.
You can get much, much further ahead of the curve if you actually try to learn a little more about the things you use every day, and you will grow your opportunities more than you can imagine.
“Get off my lawn kids. And god forbid we train people.”
The common man won’t go out of their way to learn a software they don’t even know they will use. Why is it somehow worst for young people?
The personal computer as we grew up with is long gone, but somehow, companies and hiring managers expect everyone to be like it is still the case.
And let’s be real, the vast majority of people don’t know how to use excel even if they work with it every day. For them, it’s a database with a UI and a chart module.
So yeah, ask for 5 years experience for an entry level data entry position, that’ll fix it for you.
As someone in the generation mentioned in the OP meme I can confirm, most people in my generation don’t know how to use Excel either, didn’t know it when we were younger and that is mostly because it is largely used in professional settings for a narrow range of jobs for its actual purpose and everyone else in a slightly wider range of jobs would be better off using a web app with an actual database.
My last job still had an access app for generating task lists
Well I’m your man! Been using Windows since I stopped using DOS. I meet every requirement you’ve listed here for the job you’ve described and then some. And not one of your peers will give me a call back. Not one.
If nothing else, gimme some pointers about how to make it thru your ATS. If i can get human eyes I can get hired. Problem is getting that far.
Amen. Been on the hunt for 3 years, had one call back. It’s brutal.
And pay is 39k.
Other than iOS what computer OS hides file structures?
Android is atrocious with this. Windows can be pretty annoying as well, saving things but you have no idea where it is.
Other than dumping files into documents and apps, windows is very open.
Android isn’t a PC OS.
It’s sad that they keep trying to make PCs more like phones. I want phones to be more like PCs.
I agree 100%. It’s a bleak future.
What’s a computer?
I fix my parents’ computers. I fix the computers of the super old people in the neighborhood. I fix my kid’s computer. I fix my friends’ computers.
I don’t think it’s generational.
When your car breaks down, do you fix it? At what point do you take it to a mechanic?
At what point do you call an electrician or plumber? Who biopsies their own cysts?
It’s all the same shit. We live in a society of specialists because there’s simply too much potential knowledge for everyone to be able to do everything.
And if we start arguing about what things people “ought to be able to do themselves”, we turn into a bunch of old farts lamenting about the good old days.
I fix my computers. I fix my car. I’ve done some electrical. No plumbing. And I recently biopsied a cyst that my doctor eyeballed and said was non cancerous and charged me $40 for nothing a year ago. It began annoying me a year later, and I’m stubborn and hate to go the doctor, and that guy was an ass. I’m ok with being called an old fart though. I’m also probably more optimistic about future generations. I don’t think we’re doomed, I remember being a collasal idiot, even as recently as last week, so I give other a little grace.
“DIY” is a thing because many strive to understand enough of multiple relevant basic disciplines needed as an adult to be able to cover the first 15% or so of common jobs before they see their limitations and call the specialists.
I believe the expressed frustration here is around the fact that acquiring that first 15% type skill is no longer seen as a responsibility/point of pride for folks to gain as they grow.
It’s like we just happened to grow up at the right time where everyone was raised to be a mechanic, and we wonder why our kids don’t fix their own cars.
It is less that and more that we are tired of using baby talk to describe the computer equivalent of “the driver’s side door” or “the steering wheel”.
This actually what drives me nuts about the US. Its like everyone is expected to be a doctor, a lawyer, an investor, a mechanic, an electrician, plumber, IT, and just everything. I look at the old black and white shows where the tv repair man is called and im like. wtf happened to this country.
100% agree.
I’m 50 years old and I am the IT guy for people of all ages. Not because I am part of some gifted generation that understands computers, but because I have a genuine interest and took the time to learn these things.
My 16yo son also has a keen interest in computers and I am passing on my knowledge where I can.
I somewhat feel that attributing computer knowledge to a generational thing in some way diminishes the effort and time it took to get the knowledge and experience that I do have.
You don’t have to have hung around with Henry Ford to be a car guy, or Nikola Tesla to be an electrician.
It seems that those aged roughly between 30 - 50 hit the sweet spot when it comes to computer literacy.
There is an interesting text about it, albeit it is 11 years old already: Kids can’t use computers… and this is why it should worry you
Every now and then I read one of those panicked articles raising the alarm about how some member of the young generation doesn’t understand folder structures or whatever, and I panic for a second because what if an entire generation grows up not knowing how to use a computer? But then I remember that I’ve read stories upon stories from Reddit and assorted boomer sites from the 90s and aughts about the exact sort of tech support problems described in that article, and that I’ve never met someone my age or younger who can’t touchtype at least 60 words a minute, and that my sister for whom a command line is the scariest thing in the universe figured out how to install ReShade for a DirectX game she liked all on her own, and that our parents talked the exact same way about cars, and I calm down.
Late Gen x and early gen y had an off-line childhood and digital adulthood. I think that explains a fair amount about computer literacy, because a lot of what they were exposed to is the base config so they had to learn their way up.
although I find that there are plenty of both that are absolutely clueless about tech
Another weird thing that changed in that generation was communication style. Sms and email bred their own language and abbreviations…
Other notables - digital wayfinding (online maps and Gps), music purchase and consumption, proliferation of social media, adoption of online persona, all changes that gen x / early y lived through.
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. “nom nom”. This blog post is not for you.
wow, this some next level obnoxious boomer shit.
If you are offended by this, then you obviously didn’t read the article.
Is it incorrect?
In the sense that I don’t believe the people described exist in any significant quantity, yes.
there is no statement there so I don’t know what you mean by “incorrect”. all i see is someone who doesn’t know how people use tldr.
Was it too long for you and you didn’t read it?
In that case …This blog post is not for you.
That’s what the question mark does. It marks a question.
RTFA? RTFA!
I didn’t read it because the tldr is retarded.
Or someone who knows very well people use tldr to skip reading the post and you are annoyed that he caught you being that lazy.
valuing my time isn’t lazy. if you can’t summarize your post you’re probably shit at writing and the article is not worth the time in the first place.
Im suspect about 50. Im just a bit older and it was thing for nerds back then.
gen z here, can confirm. most of my peers just do not care about learning how things actually work
Millennial here. I’ve definitely noticed a shortage of people entering my technical field. Great for job security, and I’m treated very well at work. But this is going to be a problem down the road.
Not only that, but co-workers from my own generation also don’t know how to fix their own computers, so I’m just surrounded by people that have no idea how any of it works.
I think that’s the real crux of it. Most people don’t know. There may have been a bump in literacy, but most people don’t know, don’t care, and don’t need to. If we had better education, this kind of thing could be a core class. I had computer classes, but they mainly focused on typing and specific programs. Basically nothing about components, the command prompt, programming, different OS, etc. Granted this was many years ago, but I live in Florida. So, it’s probably worse.
Counterpoint, most of the stuff I learned in my highschool A+ class (aimed at teaching you enough to pass a certification test that proves you can repair computers) was outdated already that year, and it’s like 95% outdated now. Typing and business productivity app skills are still directly valuable for most modern people.
Most valuable skills are things like learning how to learn, critical thinking, judgement, understanding the value of time, humility, etc. I’ll say that the A+ course was much better than most classes at growing those skills for me, but I could say the same thing about the construction course I took. American school system, at least when I was in it, is totally happy to output kids that only know math, science, english, and arts. It’s hard to teach those life skills, harder to test for them, do we just don’t.
Business apps are among the most useless things to teach, mainly because by the time they get out of school those apps already work very differently but also because they are useful to a very limited set of jobs.
We are the bridge generation.
We know and saw a world without the internet and we experienced it when it first came to be.
We saw the first mass produced computers and computer devices which broke often, didn’t work the way we wanted them to, they weren’t fast and they didn’t have much memory in any way. We were the first generation to see all this. Our parents were too old and busy to figure it out but we were young enough to be curious about it all. We also kept wanting to have the newest fastest hardware and software so we had no choice but to either buy, beg or steal these things to get them. We learned to swap parts, add parts, remove parts, install an OS, uninstall the OS, run backups, store data and learn it all on our own because there was no easy internet social media community to help you. Software was constantly changing and we had to keep up by either buying expensive titles or we learned about Linux and open source software or we became digital pirates or both.
Now the digital landscape has changed. Younger generations prefer handheld devices so to them everything is solid state … they never can imagine changing the RAM, HDD, SSD, CPU, GPU or the PSU or even bothering to learn what those things are. Because everything is built in and no one (or very few) people bother with fixing or tinkering with anything. There are fewer people who learn about software and about how or where to find it, install it, configure it and run it. To new generations who only know the digital world through locked devices, there was less incentive to learn or even have access to know how these things worked.
We are the bridge generation. We got to see the world without the internet and the world with one. No one before us got to see what we saw, no one after us will experience what we went through. Our civilization dramatically changed during our lifetime and we got a front row seat.
The comp for an older generation is cars. Cars saw similar growth and adoption in the 50s-80s. And they had similar growing pains, reliability and maintenance issues were common place. So being able to perform maintenance and having an understanding of how they work was far more wide spread than just hobbyist and professionals.
As cars advanced the need to perform field maintenance and ad hoc repairs became less required so future generations (on average) became less knowledgeable and skilled at various car repair (and modification) activities, because cars just work now so there’s really no need to worry about learning how to fix minor issues, because they’re just not a common problem.
Here I am at 41 and know how to screw with everything. I stayed inquisitive and stayed a tight ass. I think I’ve paid for a professional to do something twice in the past 20 years. I didn’t want to take on the task of replacing a clutch on a front wheel drive suv on the ground in my driveway.
Case in point: I drive an EV and I don’t think there’s a damn thing I personally can do to fix it other than maybe change a tire. It doesn’t even have a spare and I wouldn’t even know how anyway.
My god, I’m the iPad kid of cars.
There’s a lot you can still do. All the suspension, battery cooler pump, brakes, wheel bearings, a ton of things to do with the electrical system and lights, fuses and relays, window and lock motors, blinker arms and switches, fluid changes, hvac and ac components, the traction motors themselves…generally the only thing hard for a shade tree mechanic is the battery itself. They’re really heavy and hard to remove.
Now some components are going to be hard to get a hold of because there isn’t any third party companies making replacements, but eventually as need arises, they’ll get made. Until then there’s places like pick n pull where you can go take used parts off used vehicles or buy used and tested components from ebay if the manufacturer won’t sell you something. I bought a new oem hybrid battery just a couple years ago from a Toyota dealership and installed it myself.
It’s a deliberate choice by companies because they sell you the thing, and the service to fix the thing.
You also can’t wrench on a car anymore in the way you used to. It’s all computerized and you need special software to access and configure parts.
I can’t replace my airbags without special pairing software that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It’s unlikely that I’ll learn by performing the repair because the tools are no longer available.
Eh…that’s still pretty doable. Many things actually got easier for auto work. A $12 bluetooth obdII dongle and a $4 piece of software on your phone will give you most all the trouble codes you need to diagnose problems, and that’s it it doesn’t outright tell you the issue. Almost no car parts are parts paired and thanks to the internet there’s guides that are way better than a Haines manual to show you how to fix things, as well as a dozen different places to order parts from.
In the past 15 years the only time I’ve used a mechanic was to replace a clutch.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Learning to edit config.sys to get some share ware game working without help was a rite of passage for many.
We got to live in the most interesting times in history, so far. Most of us are depressed for it.
The PSU is the only thing you can change easily. I love that everything is USB-C and that I can plug in everything, everywhere.
But I’m kind of happy everyone uses handhelds, I got really tired fixing everything for my entire family and friends.
“My printer seems to be defectiv…”
Entschuldige, ich kann kein Englisch. Muss weg, keine Zeit. Bye!
I work in Tech and this is my mantra: printers are Of the Devil.
I once turned down a job solely because they asked too many questions about printers during the interview.
I won’t be the printer guy! That path leads to depression.
Oh and cancer. Toner gives you cancer.
My buddy worked tech support for a fairly large facility. They got tired of getting calls for a busted printer, only to walk all the way across the facility to discover it was out of paper. It got to the point that if someone called about a printer, they would wait an hour before responding. If nobody else called within that hour, they assumed the issue was resolved on its own.
In healthcare IT there’s often a person who specializes in just printers. My friend makes a lot of money doing that.
I’m sure they got to us because they were too evil for hell and the devil itself got tired of them.
The part that royally pisses me off is that a roommate used to work for Lexmark. One day he brings home an “all in one” printer, fax, scanner, and something else I am forgetting. Best scanner I have ever seen. No light bar. The thing worked by taking four pictures and digitally meshing them together. When you scanned a document, there was a series of 4 rapid flashes. One Magenta, one Cyan, one Yellow, one White.
The damn thing was absolutely perfect at digitizing anything you put onto the unit’s scanning glass, but it did have a design issue where the scanning glass wasn’t parallel to the floor, and was instead tilted like a desktop picture frame.
According to my roommate, that particular design flaw is why they decided to kill the printer, never releasing it to the public. AFAIK they never even tried that scanning tech in any other printer.
It’s like all the old geezers who cum into carbeurators but like, shouldn’t they be happy that fuel-injection is a million times better and more reliable? I work on my own car and I can handle that shit in my driveway easy but these people seem to want more work to do. Yes, Fred, carbs make more sense for dirtbikes but oh my god otherwise shut up.
As for printers yea what the fuck. They all work differently even within the same company when all they need to do is take the exact same control module, maybe two versions of it, and slap it onto different bodies. But, instead, it’s just a giant fucking mess.
My 13 y o niece had no idea how to uninstall a program on a PC. I was a little stunned.
She never had to deal with a 4GB hard drive running out of space :-/
I’m reasonably certain that all four of my housemates, (58 y/o +) don’t have any idea how to close a program either on their laptops, or their phones. Thankfully I’m the only desktop guardian.
Great write up
Very eloquently put.
I’m not sure what the generation breakdown is. I’m in my 50’s and fix PCs. My brother in law is in his 70’s and fixes PCs. One of his 3 daughters (40) fixes her own PC.
It seems like it’s everyone between 40-80.
GenX is what the comment is about. Millennials were born to home computers but the early ones had to contend with much the same mess we did.
Early millennials are definitely thrown in there and remember “before the internet and cell phones” where a thing. I was flipping dip switches on my motherboard to make my swapped out components work. My first pc I got a hold of ran on dos and 5 1/4 floppies. Teens of the 90"s are probably the most pc tech literate ones.
Millennials were born to home computers
The majority of Millennials probably first got a PC in the home in their tween/teen years.
Yeah, early millennial and OPs comment fits to a “T” for me, though I think some of my experiences had a bit more socialization in context, like ICQ, Aol chat, and MSN messenger. The rise of cell phones, text messages, T9, etc. My kids are amazed when I pull out the VHS tapes at my parents, or my dad pulls out some cassettes or vinyls (though those have been more popular of late).
I think your family are tinkerers, and they are a rare breed. A group of people who just love taking things apart, bringing them back together and doing all sorts of other things with them. My family is a bit like that but we never had the technical expertise. I’m indigenous from northern Ontario and a lot of my cousins and relations have a grade school education but there is a whole lot of excellent small engine mechanics. I have one cousin who barely spoke any English but her regularly swapped while engines from trucks to keep old vehicles running.
I tinker myself which is why I learned about computers and computer technology on my own but never to a really high level.
So every generation has their outliers and your family were probably the same group of people that made things or fixed things in earlier generations.
in my experience, younger kids either don’t know anything about computers or are obsessed with them. I don’t see a lot of the middle
Try teaching them.
This seems like an opportunity to quote one my shirts “I can explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you”. Teaching always involves two willing people.
“Try teaching an impatient person, who undervalues the subject matter, already missed several opportunities to learn about it in formal education settings and who you lack a teacher-student dynamic with…”
Or, in a way…
“It’s one banana, Michael - what could it cost, $10?”
I refuse to fix anything for my inlaws without them watching me. I make them watch me Google the solutions and follow the instructions. It helps reinforce the “it’s not magic and I’m not a wizard” reality I want to instill in everyone.
The weird bit is that our parent’s generation is also the one that build the damn things in the first place!
I’m glad that many kids are into PC gaming, at least. That’s still a decent vector into computer proficiency and a little hardware knowledge.
I’m not sure how many kids will be into PC gaming when a low end Nvidia gpu is currently $550. I know that everything comes pre overclocked, and the 4070s still a good card even though it’s got a low and die in it it’s just depressing in the principle of it.
Maybe things like the steam deck will push kids into Linux since the mid-range gaming desktop is like two grand now.
I built a decent rig at the time 2 years ago for a 10 year old for less than 600€. Sure, some parts were used and it’s obviously no monster but he’s still using it daily. He’s learning how to upgrade it every time I have money for it, too.
You don’t have to buy all new Nvidia GPUs for $550 a piece to play games, ya know?
Yeah my first gaming pc was like…a crappy HP desktop with an Nvidia 6600 that I plugged in. Worked great for Age of Mythology lol
I made sure our kids got introduced to PC gaming. It sort of worked, they are more adept with windows then thier peers, but 0/3 have used thier shell accounts. They were into the persistent Minecraft server for a minute, but barely learned any console commands.
Kind of. Those who were the first needed to know how computers did what they did… Because so often they didn’t …
Now your computers work without you needing to know how they do it Most are happy it simply works
Our parents didn’t think it was important. Our kids don’t think it is necessary.
Imagine how horse farmers felt about engine maintenance on the first automobiles. Early adopters probably knew everything about how to fix tractors and cars. But today, how many people know how to change their own brakes or flush the coolant?
Life evolves, and transitions come faster with every generation. It’s good that nobody knows how to use a sextant or a fax machine.
Farmers right now are fighting a legal battle for the ability to repair their own tractors.
It’s not good for farm equipment to be locked down and sealed off just like it’s not good for operating systems to be locked down and sealed off.
I agree with you on that. I’d also like to be able to replace the battery on my phone or control my social media. But that wasn’t really my point. Disposable goods are bad for consumers and bad for the environment, along with fast fashion, factory farming, corporate conglomeration, and the vertical integration of news media.
And I think that’s the new frontier, which is really just reclaiming the old frontier from the profit-takers. People are learning to sew and knit, how to cook, how to farm, how to repair their stuff, and how to evaluate propaganda. That’s the shit our kids will say we never bothered to learn, and if they do it right, maybe their kids won’t have to learn.
I still know how to use a fax machine :(
or a fax machine
Healthcare industry is crying in the corner
I’m still mad we print so much stuff at work, it’s 2024 just update a spread sheet. I don’t need an email much less a physical copy of something I saw the update for an hour ago
I had to print out a PDF the other day because the software wouldn’t let me sign it, and then scan the document back into the computer.
It’s certainly partially that, but that’s not the whole picture. Before, every old thing “everyone” knew how to do was replaced with a new thing “everyone” knew how to do. But at the moment, is there a new thing? I can’t think of one. All but the most niche products are built to be as easy to use as possible, and if it breaks or slows down, replacement is more preferred than tinkering. I don’t see the same need anywhere to get our hands dirty that leads to widespread proficiency like the image is talking about.
My dad thought computers were important. He got me a VIC-20 soon as they came out, and that was $1,800 in today’s money, not an amount he spent lightly.
Sure, obviously there were exceptions or we wouldn’t have half the modern conveniences we do. My parents were very enthusiastic about computers, and my kids are each building their own desktops. I’m speaking in generalities.
I think the modern car climate is a better comparison than the change from horse and buggy to Model T. Many people work on their own cars, but it’s mostly for fun and the increasing levels of computers and sensors in cars makes it more difficult to do all the work yourself. And then you add in the nuts and bolts car companies make that can only be unscrewed using special tools that the companies also make to force you to bring the car to one of their dealerships.
Tech literacy rates are falling like the skill to use a car with a manual transmission. Since everything kids do is on their phone, and phones are like that one car company that welded the hoods of their cars shut, they never need to pick up the skills with computer software that the work world expects them to have (but who really wants to know how to use Word and Excel anyways), nor the skills with working on your own hardware.
Sidenote: Fax machines are, unfortunately, still very much a thing. At least, if you ever have to deal with the federal government or the medical industry, they are.
