4 ms·

I wonder if this is a transient phenomenon in which people from the last generation not to grow up with internet (=people born before 1985 or so) becoming easy

I wonder if this is a transient phenomenon in which people from the last generation not to grow up with internet (=people born before 1985 or so) becoming easy prey to manipulative agents online, or whether it will continue in subsequent "old" generations due to age-related cognitive decline and social isolation.

ido 8y ago
I think your timeline is way off. I was born in 1983 and know lots of people born in the 70s and 60s (many of which coworkers, friends or family) & I would place the "gullibility divide" much earlier than 1985 - by maybe 20 years. This is more something I find with my mother's (in her 70s) cohorts than with people in their 30/40/50s.
collyw 8y ago
Born in 1974, internet was becoming a thing when I was at university. I think most people my age are reasonably computer literate. My parents generation less so.
xxs 8y ago
1985 is way way too high, I'd presume you are young enough, though. If you were born pre-1985, you might have witnessed netiquette and its desolation.
- ubermonkey 8y ago
  b1970. I remember when it became September Forever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
ubermonkey 8y ago
I don't think so. By way of context: I'm 49. I graduated from high school (US) in 1988. I sort of grew up with the net, in the sense that I got my first Internet email address in 1987. I definitely grew up with computers; it's people my age that hassled their parents for those 8-bit machines that plugged into televisions. People of my cohort were definitely aware that we were on the leading edge of computer-mediated societal change. In 1985 it was still possible to hear folks suggest ridiculous things like "Oh, I just run a $small_business; computers will never help here" from people who did not yet Get It. It was bizarre. I thought, from my teens through my mid-30s, that this sort of fundamental technological illiteracy was the transient phenomenon, and that once people my age got to be 50 or whatever, it would be extinct. This has not come to pass. Today, I work in software (surprise!). Our product does a particular kind of project management only interesting in very large contexts. It's a staid and conservative market. And yet there are people my age or a little older within our user community who are still clearly baffled by the idea of having multiple applications open at once, or by the basics of file manipulation, or by the idea of importing data from one location to another. It's bizarre. My boss is 14 years older than I am, so into his middle 60s. He's like me; he's been in or near computing his whole life. Neither of us understand it, but there appears to be an inexhaustible reservoir of folks who just look at anything with an integrated circuit in it and say "Nope!" From our POV, though, it's just NOT OKAY to have worked in data intense business for decades and still be baffled by something as simple as "save-as" or whatever.
KineticLensman 8y ago
I was born in 1961 and first saw ftp [0] in 1982. I like to think I will always an ability to spot internet scams (as well as I can spot a doorstep scammer), but I can sense my own cognitive decline beginning even now in terms of quickly navigating to specific menu items, etc. Chatting to an (intelligent) 20 year old the other day, I realised that they didn't appreciate the difference between a search bar and and address bar (and the pros and cons of using either). So I don't make the assumption that young people always have a better handle on the underlying tech (as soon as I explained, they got it) But they still could operate an interface they were familiar with much faster than I could, now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol
oldPopulations 8y ago
Kind of, yes. But asymptotically so. In the sense that, the high priests of the AI koans drop off to negative infinity, with zero crossing having occurred in the 1990's, and from there, positive infinity came crashing in, and the vanishingly small number of digital immigrants persists above zero, and never goes away completely. So the nigerian princes, and the chain letters will always be there, and fantastically stupid people will always exist, but selective pressure will lop off enough of their heads over time, that fewer and fewer unfit specimens will manage to reproduce. This doesn't account for captive cattle, though. And for livestock, we know the rules are fundamentally different. Natural laws do not apply. Verizon is a good example of a feedlot, replete with antibiotics, and horomones for growth and lactation, but no genetic engineering (yet). Fiber optics and anti-net-neutral-deep-packet-inspected video and quad-copter-drone-enforced DRM is like the graduation from bolt gun slaughter to anal electrocution. The slaughter house advances its automation, but by the time we're ready to genetically engineer the cattle, the meat will be grown in vitro and assembled into hamburger patties by pipettes. So, pretty soon, I expect to have a Verizon subscription to a big mac vending machine in my living room, and I'll never leave my house. I'll earn my living breaking captchas in order to mine block chain credits that prove I watched advertisements for cars so expensive I can't even steal them, and for that, I can scrape together enough proof of work to authenticate half a big mac a day, with no special sauce. Which is fine, because I never need enough caloric energy to get off the couch. Just enough to flip over to avoid bed sores. Sounds fair to me.
Nextgrid 8y ago
I don’t think it has anything to do with old age. I’m in my early 20s and most of my friends’ tech-literacy (or lack thereof) is appalling. If anything, I’d say it’s worse than in old people - the latter group might not be tech-literate but they at least have a lifetime of experience and some kind of common sense. The younger group is just as bad when it comes to tech but doesn’t even have experience nor much common sense to save them.

ido 8y ago

I think your timeline is way off. I was born in 1983 and know lots of people born in the 70s and 60s (many of which coworkers, friends or family) & I would place the "gullibility divide" much earlier than 1985 - by maybe 20 years. This is more something I find with my mother's (in her 70s) cohorts than with people in their 30/40/50s.

collyw 8y ago

Born in 1974, internet was becoming a thing when I was at university. I think most people my age are reasonably computer literate. My parents generation less so.

xxs 8y ago

1985 is way way too high, I'd presume you are young enough, though. If you were born pre-1985, you might have witnessed netiquette and its desolation.

ubermonkey 8y ago
b1970. I remember when it became September Forever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

ubermonkey 8y ago

I don't think so. By way of context: I'm 49. I graduated from high school (US) in 1988. I sort of grew up with the net, in the sense that I got my first Internet email address in 1987. I definitely grew up with computers; it's people my age that hassled their parents for those 8-bit machines that plugged into televisions. People of my cohort were definitely aware that we were on the leading edge of computer-mediated societal change. In 1985 it was still possible to hear folks suggest ridiculous things like "Oh, I just run a $small_business; computers will never help here" from people who did not yet Get It. It was bizarre. I thought, from my teens through my mid-30s, that this sort of fundamental technological illiteracy was the transient phenomenon, and that once people my age got to be 50 or whatever, it would be extinct. This has not come to pass. Today, I work in software (surprise!). Our product does a particular kind of project management only interesting in very large contexts. It's a staid and conservative market. And yet there are people my age or a little older within our user community who are still clearly baffled by the idea of having multiple applications open at once, or by the basics of file manipulation, or by the idea of importing data from one location to another. It's bizarre. My boss is 14 years older than I am, so into his middle 60s. He's like me; he's been in or near computing his whole life. Neither of us understand it, but there appears to be an inexhaustible reservoir of folks who just look at anything with an integrated circuit in it and say "Nope!" From our POV, though, it's just NOT OKAY to have worked in data intense business for decades and still be baffled by something as simple as "save-as" or whatever.

KineticLensman 8y ago

I was born in 1961 and first saw ftp [0] in 1982. I like to think I will always an ability to spot internet scams (as well as I can spot a doorstep scammer), but I can sense my own cognitive decline beginning even now in terms of quickly navigating to specific menu items, etc. Chatting to an (intelligent) 20 year old the other day, I realised that they didn't appreciate the difference between a search bar and and address bar (and the pros and cons of using either). So I don't make the assumption that young people always have a better handle on the underlying tech (as soon as I explained, they got it) But they still could operate an interface they were familiar with much faster than I could, now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

oldPopulations 8y ago

Kind of, yes. But asymptotically so. In the sense that, the high priests of the AI koans drop off to negative infinity, with zero crossing having occurred in the 1990's, and from there, positive infinity came crashing in, and the vanishingly small number of digital immigrants persists above zero, and never goes away completely. So the nigerian princes, and the chain letters will always be there, and fantastically stupid people will always exist, but selective pressure will lop off enough of their heads over time, that fewer and fewer unfit specimens will manage to reproduce. This doesn't account for captive cattle, though. And for livestock, we know the rules are fundamentally different. Natural laws do not apply. Verizon is a good example of a feedlot, replete with antibiotics, and horomones for growth and lactation, but no genetic engineering (yet). Fiber optics and anti-net-neutral-deep-packet-inspected video and quad-copter-drone-enforced DRM is like the graduation from bolt gun slaughter to anal electrocution. The slaughter house advances its automation, but by the time we're ready to genetically engineer the cattle, the meat will be grown in vitro and assembled into hamburger patties by pipettes. So, pretty soon, I expect to have a Verizon subscription to a big mac vending machine in my living room, and I'll never leave my house. I'll earn my living breaking captchas in order to mine block chain credits that prove I watched advertisements for cars so expensive I can't even steal them, and for that, I can scrape together enough proof of work to authenticate half a big mac a day, with no special sauce. Which is fine, because I never need enough caloric energy to get off the couch. Just enough to flip over to avoid bed sores. Sounds fair to me.

Nextgrid 8y ago

I don’t think it has anything to do with old age. I’m in my early 20s and most of my friends’ tech-literacy (or lack thereof) is appalling. If anything, I’d say it’s worse than in old people - the latter group might not be tech-literate but they at least have a lifetime of experience and some kind of common sense. The younger group is just as bad when it comes to tech but doesn’t even have experience nor much common sense to save them.