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> there was a widespread belief that, by nature of being surrounded by tech, young people would automatically learn how it worked under the surface and possess

> there was a widespread belief that, by nature of being surrounded by tech, young people would automatically learn how it worked under the surface and possess an inherent fluency in IT. Over the course of the last 25 years, I've never heard that expectation anywhere. There was always a mentality that computers would keep getting easier to use, which is completely true. There was always the idea that kids would integrate computers into their lives from the start, which is also true. I never heard anyone say that kids born in the late 90s would somehow in general understand the inner working of computers.

tapland 7y ago
I'd say kids born in the late 90s missed that discussion by a bit. When you hit the teenage years we were already smartphone era which pretty much was the end of it.
michaelt 7y ago
I was born in the mid 80s; in my youth many families didn't have a home computer, and computer education in schools was... less developed than it is now. So if you met a kid who was good with computers in 1996, in all probability they sat down at their family computer and figured things out for themselves. There were certainly people who noticed this correlation and predicted, if every family had a home computer, almost every kid would do the same. With hindsight, nobody was noticing the kids who had grown up with home computers but hadn't figured lots of things out on their own, or controlling for things correlated with having a home computer. You can see a similar theme these days - like the theory [1] that TikTok and Snapchat are easier for young people to use, perhaps intentionally. [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-snapchat-app-design https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-snapchat-app-design
fmajid 7y ago
Books like "Growing Up Digital" by Don Tapscott (that introduced the term "Digital Natives" IIRC) were very influential. Disclaimer: I own a copy from the office, but I never more than skimmed it. Like most business books, it's a couple pages' worth of insights diluted with anecdotes into a 300+ plus doorstop.
usrusr 7y ago
That expectation seemed so natural back then that nobody really talked about it much. It wasn't a radical prediction theory, like the paperless office (nope) or global warming (ouch), it was an everyday observation: young people, if they had access to computers, were universally way ahead of older people with access to computers. It was am absolute no-brainer to extrapolate from this that all young people would become super fluent at computing once they all had access. It would have been a radical prediction to expect that this would not happen, like it did (due to ever-increasing simplifications). But nobody made that prediction, at least not in a notable way. People are generally very bad at predicting stagnation or even a reversal of trends. If you asked anyone to describe a 2020 communications device in early 2000, when cellphones had just recently evolved from bricks to the miniscule 8210, the prediction would have been a device the size of a keychain fob, not the pocket TVs we actually have.

tapland 7y ago

I'd say kids born in the late 90s missed that discussion by a bit. When you hit the teenage years we were already smartphone era which pretty much was the end of it.

michaelt 7y ago

I was born in the mid 80s; in my youth many families didn't have a home computer, and computer education in schools was... less developed than it is now. So if you met a kid who was good with computers in 1996, in all probability they sat down at their family computer and figured things out for themselves. There were certainly people who noticed this correlation and predicted, if every family had a home computer, almost every kid would do the same. With hindsight, nobody was noticing the kids who had grown up with home computers but hadn't figured lots of things out on their own, or controlling for things correlated with having a home computer. You can see a similar theme these days - like the theory [1] that TikTok and Snapchat are easier for young people to use, perhaps intentionally. [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-snapchat-app-design https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-snapchat-app-design

fmajid 7y ago

Books like "Growing Up Digital" by Don Tapscott (that introduced the term "Digital Natives" IIRC) were very influential. Disclaimer: I own a copy from the office, but I never more than skimmed it. Like most business books, it's a couple pages' worth of insights diluted with anecdotes into a 300+ plus doorstop.

usrusr 7y ago

That expectation seemed so natural back then that nobody really talked about it much. It wasn't a radical prediction theory, like the paperless office (nope) or global warming (ouch), it was an everyday observation: young people, if they had access to computers, were universally way ahead of older people with access to computers. It was am absolute no-brainer to extrapolate from this that all young people would become super fluent at computing once they all had access. It would have been a radical prediction to expect that this would not happen, like it did (due to ever-increasing simplifications). But nobody made that prediction, at least not in a notable way. People are generally very bad at predicting stagnation or even a reversal of trends. If you asked anyone to describe a 2020 communications device in early 2000, when cellphones had just recently evolved from bricks to the miniscule 8210, the prediction would have been a device the size of a keychain fob, not the pocket TVs we actually have.