this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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I work in tech.
My dad was a teacher, his subject was computers, at that time "computers" class was heavily programming. Basic stuff.
It seems that kids from gen x, and the millennial generation had the timing to learn the tech before it "just works", so we're used to figuring it out as we go, because there was no way to look it up on the internet, so we had to.
The zoomers and younger generations are largely "it just works" users, where all the basics of getting things to just plug and play was a thing. If it didn't work it was either "incompatible" or broken. So don't try to make it work, or you'll be sued for DMCA related violations.
IMO, there's a sweet spot, somewhere in the late 70's or early 80's to about the early-mid 2000's when people had to know something about tech to operate it. Anyone with the aptitude for tech, who was born during this time is generally working in tech.
People born before that are generally the old school pen and paper types, and anyone younger is generally the plug and play digital era.
If course, everyone is different, so the dates are probably liable to be different depending on the area, and each person may have different motivations, etc.
My generation (early millennials) are generally known for being the "tech" person to friends/family, and ADHD; at least, as far as I can see, from my little bubble of friends who mostly work in/with tech.
Yup, agree with this.
And this is why I'm teaching my kids computer stuff. We haven't gotten too crazy with it, but my kids have built some stuff in Scratch and helped me assemble my PC (they'll assemble their own) with me explaining what the main bits do. I also intend to do some basic Arduino-type stuff w/ them as well once I get started w/ home automation (have a NAS and some apps, but no sensors or anything cool like that).
They'll probably never need that knowledge, but having the ability to reason about a problem using some foundational knowledge should be useful regardless of what they do (i.e. why isn't this working? I'll check the wires, run a simpler test, etc).
But do they have to set jumpers on the motherboard to choose the processor voltage?
And make sure the IRQs on their sound card and printer don't conflict ?
"your sound card works perfectly"
It really whips the llama's ass
I think they open sourced that recently... I should take a look.
Kids these days don't know how good they have it...
They probably never will.
I don't think that's a bad thing. We made it easier, and they're reaping the benefits of our work.
The only issue I see is that when it breaks, nobody will know how to fix it, since we've abstracted all the complexity away from the users, so they don't understand the underlying processes that need to work for the thing to function.
Other than that, it just works.
That's a pretty big issue, and that's likely a huge contributor to issues like ewaste. If someone owns a computer and the memory goes bad, they buy a new computer instead of new RAM. Likewise with batteries on phones, capacitors on appliance circuit boards, etc. There's so much that used to be regularly repairable that could still be repairable if people understood the basics of the tech they use. But when it stops working, the knee-jerk reaction is to replace it, not repair it, esp. when it's generally cheaper to replace than have a service tech come out (when 50 years ago, many would just repair it themselves using the provided service manual).
I like to blame manufacturers here, but a large part of me has to acknowledge that a lot of people wouldn't bother even if they had all the documentation readily available. A little bit of knowledge about how things actually work can go a long way in reducing waste throughout society.