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Your argument would make sense if computer knowledge had been replaced with something else of utility, in younger generations. What has it been replaced with?
by WalterSear 11y ago
Your argument would make sense if computer knowledge had been replaced with something else of utility, in younger generations. What has it been replaced with?
- dalke 11y agoNearly all of that 'computer knowledge' I learned in the 1980s - DIP switches, IRQ lines, BIOS calls, how to undelete from a FAT16 directory, etc. - is transient knowledge that is about as useful now as learning to start a Model T by hand crank. So here's a real example of utility. The son of a friend of mine, about 12 years old, uses his iPad to make stop motion animation. He once made a movie on the plane, and totally amazed a seatmate. Could you or I have made such a thing in the 1980s? No. Well, not without a lot of expensive equipment. Sure, there's no utility if you define "utility" as being able to understand hardware (or how to rebuild a Model T engine or a carburetor). But it's excellent utility for someone who wants to go into animation. He could be a co-founder of the next Aardman, for all we know. The vast majority of kids with computers in the 1980s, btw, mostly used it to play games and do school reports. Compare your experience to the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S in the 1960s and 1970s, who started with their own vacuum tube computer, had a teletype to dial into a PDP-8 until DEC donated one to them, and more. Do you think the kids of 1990 really learned something of utility compared to that?