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I found his advice to Tony on how to get better with computers remarkably insightful: > I said there probably was a book out there about “the basics of IT”, bu

I found his advice to Tony on how to get better with computers remarkably insightful: > I said there probably was a book out there about “the basics of IT”, but it wouldn’t help much. I didn’t learn from a book. 13 year old TikTok influencers don’t learn from a book. They just vibe. > My mum always said when I was growing up that: > There were “too many buttons” She was afraid to press the buttons, because she didn’t know what they did I can understand that, since grown ups don’t have the sheer dumb hubris of a child, and that’s what makes them afraid of the buttons. > Like, when a toddler uses a spoon for the first time, they don’t know what a spoon is, where they are, or who the current Prime Minister is. But they see the spoon, and they see the cereal, and their dumb baby brain is just like “yeA” and they have a red hot go. And like, they get it wrong the first few times, but it doesn’t matter, because they don’t know to be afraid of getting it wrong. So eventually, they get it right. > Okay so I didn’t tell the spoon thing to Tony Abbott, but I did tell him what I always told my mum, which was: “Mum you just gotta press all the buttons, to find out what they do”.

jhealy 6y ago
A similar anecdote from my family. My uncle (a sheep farmer) and I discovered that: 1. I was afraid to touch anything in a car engine, but happy to muddle through unfamiliar computer issues 2. He was afraid to click unknown buttons on a computer screen, but comfortable pulling apart and rebuilding an unfamiliar car engine. In both cases, we were confident because we knew whatever mistake we made we'd be able to reverse it. And in both cases, we were afraid of making a mistake that we couldn't reverse.
- dorkwood 6y ago
  That's basically how I taught my father to use a computer. It came down to two things: 1. He was terrified of breaking it, so I told him that there was nothing he could possibly do to it that I couldn't fix. I made sure to sound overly confident -- almost like I was challenging him to break it. That gave him the confidence to do whatever. 2. Every time there was a problem with it, I would Google the answer in front of him, and he'd watch me figure it out in real time. Eventually, he got the confidence to start Googling things himself. The tech support calls dropped off pretty steeply after that.
  - znpy 6y ago
    Yeah it's nice and everything but don't tell that to your boss or bosses in general otherwise most of us will be unemployed in a few years /s
  - toyg 6y ago
    Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to google, and he'll never go a day in his life without being obsessed with conspiracy theories.
    - dorkwood 6y ago
      You're not far off, to be honest. Just replace 'conspiracy theories' with 'extreme political YouTube channels'. It's not all bad, though. He invites his friends over and shows them how you can find all sorts of cool stuff online. One of them the other day was apparently trying to stump YouTube with increasingly obscure woodworking joints. I think most people would be surprised how many people are still out there who have no idea what the internet is or what it does. Imagine discovering that there's a machine that can show you how to do anything, or play any song you've ever listened to, and you had no idea something like that even existed.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  This reminds me of a trick I would do when I was the teenage “computer guy” for my family and neighbors back in the nineties. When I was doing upgrades, I would make the person in question replace a few parts themselves. Usually I would pull out one SIMM chip or PCI card, explain what it did and how it was retained, and then ask them to pull out and replace a similar part themselves. I found that getting their elbows dirty went a long way toward perceiving computers as things that could be figured out.
stubish 6y ago
You missed the corresponding footnote: “Nobody gives the baby a knife. You give them a spoon” - Mum, when I showed her this. (which is also insightful, because the 'Mums' I've dealt with are mostly worried that pushing the wrong button will permanently break something, as if they used to sell blenders without safety features or something back in the day)
arh68 6y ago
Yes! I call it cat-like thinking, after watching our cat walk all over the keyboard. She wouldn't look at the keys or the screen. I can't remember how many times I've heard "I can't log in, the machine is locked", when there is literally 1 button Switch User, and clicking that 1 button does it. "Oh, I didn't think to try that, it said it was locked.." Entering newlines in a textbox? It's.. shift-enter, or alt-enter, alt-shift-something. Multicursor? It's.. shift-up? Alt-up? You just try 'em. Cat-like
- dTal 6y ago
  In fairness, the "Switch User" button is a terrible interface on many levels. Apart from the complete lack of feedback on the actual situation (an active desktop session), it conveys a muddled mental model in which someone who has logged out and walked away from the computer is still considered to be "The User". A better interface would simply have the normal login prompt, along with some information about any active desktop sessions. The computer is no more "locked" than it is on first boot.

jhealy 6y ago

A similar anecdote from my family. My uncle (a sheep farmer) and I discovered that: 1. I was afraid to touch anything in a car engine, but happy to muddle through unfamiliar computer issues 2. He was afraid to click unknown buttons on a computer screen, but comfortable pulling apart and rebuilding an unfamiliar car engine. In both cases, we were confident because we knew whatever mistake we made we'd be able to reverse it. And in both cases, we were afraid of making a mistake that we couldn't reverse.

dorkwood 6y ago
That's basically how I taught my father to use a computer. It came down to two things: 1. He was terrified of breaking it, so I told him that there was nothing he could possibly do to it that I couldn't fix. I made sure to sound overly confident -- almost like I was challenging him to break it. That gave him the confidence to do whatever. 2. Every time there was a problem with it, I would Google the answer in front of him, and he'd watch me figure it out in real time. Eventually, he got the confidence to start Googling things himself. The tech support calls dropped off pretty steeply after that.
- znpy 6y ago
  Yeah it's nice and everything but don't tell that to your boss or bosses in general otherwise most of us will be unemployed in a few years /s
- toyg 6y ago
  Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to google, and he'll never go a day in his life without being obsessed with conspiracy theories.
  - dorkwood 6y ago
    You're not far off, to be honest. Just replace 'conspiracy theories' with 'extreme political YouTube channels'. It's not all bad, though. He invites his friends over and shows them how you can find all sorts of cool stuff online. One of them the other day was apparently trying to stump YouTube with increasingly obscure woodworking joints. I think most people would be surprised how many people are still out there who have no idea what the internet is or what it does. Imagine discovering that there's a machine that can show you how to do anything, or play any song you've ever listened to, and you had no idea something like that even existed.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
This reminds me of a trick I would do when I was the teenage “computer guy” for my family and neighbors back in the nineties. When I was doing upgrades, I would make the person in question replace a few parts themselves. Usually I would pull out one SIMM chip or PCI card, explain what it did and how it was retained, and then ask them to pull out and replace a similar part themselves. I found that getting their elbows dirty went a long way toward perceiving computers as things that could be figured out.

stubish 6y ago

You missed the corresponding footnote: “Nobody gives the baby a knife. You give them a spoon” - Mum, when I showed her this. (which is also insightful, because the 'Mums' I've dealt with are mostly worried that pushing the wrong button will permanently break something, as if they used to sell blenders without safety features or something back in the day)

arh68 6y ago

Yes! I call it cat-like thinking, after watching our cat walk all over the keyboard. She wouldn't look at the keys or the screen. I can't remember how many times I've heard "I can't log in, the machine is locked", when there is literally 1 button Switch User, and clicking that 1 button does it. "Oh, I didn't think to try that, it said it was locked.." Entering newlines in a textbox? It's.. shift-enter, or alt-enter, alt-shift-something. Multicursor? It's.. shift-up? Alt-up? You just try 'em. Cat-like

dTal 6y ago
In fairness, the "Switch User" button is a terrible interface on many levels. Apart from the complete lack of feedback on the actual situation (an active desktop session), it conveys a muddled mental model in which someone who has logged out and walked away from the computer is still considered to be "The User". A better interface would simply have the normal login prompt, along with some information about any active desktop sessions. The computer is no more "locked" than it is on first boot.