This is all very true, but I feel like the society has also failed to properly teach basic IT to the general population. Personal computers are a massively used tool in today's everyday life and work. It deeply concerns me that even the "tech generation", i.e. gen z I guess, generally don't even understand what files and directories are. Generic boomers are even worse because they just never learned anything, even touch screen UIs. These people can just about get by now, but I'm not so sure anymore when we go forward a decade or two when we rely on IT services more and more.
I feel like there was a very short window where PCs were just easy enough to use that most people had one, but the OS experience was just complex enough, with things breaking frequently enough, that you had to learn some basics out of necessity.
Like , I'm a 100% not an IT guy - but I know all sorts of shit that seems like it should be common knowledge, but isn't. Any time I manage to get something in our IT and software environment functioning at work, or explain the chain of events to some catastrophe based on evidence in our software logs, and I get talked about like some kind of wunderkind, it is frustrating more than anything else.
I'm not some IT genius, I'm your average asshole who knows some basics about the tools we use in 99.9% of the work we do. Chances are if there were more of said assholes we wouldn't run into the problems I address in the first place. But admittedly, perhaps some of that knowledge/ability to think that way comes from having to figure out shit like why my DOS game wouldn't work in 1995, or what the fuck that purple monkey Mom downloaded a few years later was actually doing.
Ugh - sorry, this turned into a rant, this kind of shit has been top of mind recently...
Yeah, I am kinda the opposite - I'm halfway through a master's in software engineering and I work in the field, using Linux at work and Windows on my own PC.
Still, as I never use e.g. Word or other office programs I don't know jack shit about them. But as one of the family "computer guys" I am constantly asked to help with stuff that I rarely use or even have never used before. If they had the ability to think in the correct way, like how you just mentioned you do, they would be able to resolve at least 70% of the problems pretty effortlessly. Society definitely needs to teach these basics better so that people could just google their problem and deal with it.
At that point they'll adapt.
They are scared of technology, but when forced to interact with it by themselves, when nobody's there to help, they learn very quick.
It just requires some short stress and bare minimum effort.
Says someone who grew up with computers.
Yes, and often had no one to help.
Search engines are out there! Also, it is very much proven from personal experience that older generations can troubleshoot issues themselves when I'm not available. They just tell me after the fact.
This is all very true, but I feel like the society has also failed to properly teach basic IT to the general population. Personal computers are a massively used tool in today's everyday life and work. It deeply concerns me that even the "tech generation", i.e. gen z I guess, generally don't even understand what files and directories are. Generic boomers are even worse because they just never learned anything, even touch screen UIs. These people can just about get by now, but I'm not so sure anymore when we go forward a decade or two when we rely on IT services more and more.
I feel like there was a very short window where PCs were just easy enough to use that most people had one, but the OS experience was just complex enough, with things breaking frequently enough, that you had to learn some basics out of necessity.
Like , I'm a 100% not an IT guy - but I know all sorts of shit that seems like it should be common knowledge, but isn't. Any time I manage to get something in our IT and software environment functioning at work, or explain the chain of events to some catastrophe based on evidence in our software logs, and I get talked about like some kind of wunderkind, it is frustrating more than anything else.
I'm not some IT genius, I'm your average asshole who knows some basics about the tools we use in 99.9% of the work we do. Chances are if there were more of said assholes we wouldn't run into the problems I address in the first place. But admittedly, perhaps some of that knowledge/ability to think that way comes from having to figure out shit like why my DOS game wouldn't work in 1995, or what the fuck that purple monkey Mom downloaded a few years later was actually doing.
Ugh - sorry, this turned into a rant, this kind of shit has been top of mind recently...
Yeah, I am kinda the opposite - I'm halfway through a master's in software engineering and I work in the field, using Linux at work and Windows on my own PC.
Still, as I never use e.g. Word or other office programs I don't know jack shit about them. But as one of the family "computer guys" I am constantly asked to help with stuff that I rarely use or even have never used before. If they had the ability to think in the correct way, like how you just mentioned you do, they would be able to resolve at least 70% of the problems pretty effortlessly. Society definitely needs to teach these basics better so that people could just google their problem and deal with it.
At that point they'll adapt.
They are scared of technology, but when forced to interact with it by themselves, when nobody's there to help, they learn very quick.
It just requires some short stress and bare minimum effort.
Says someone who grew up with computers.
Yes, and often had no one to help.
Search engines are out there! Also, it is very much proven from personal experience that older generations can troubleshoot issues themselves when I'm not available. They just tell me after the fact.