7 ms·

Sounds pretty unlikely. Gen z has a notably superficial confidence with web technology and the patience to go along with that. I am an early millenial and we ar

• vmception 6y ago
  Millenial here, Thats been my experience with Gen Z, technical familiarity, low technical literacy, low patience. Not bad, just something that should be understood. Millenials are expected to be “internet natives” and “good with computers”. This didnt translate to Gen Z linearly.
  • echelon 6y ago
    So you're saying that you think Millennials are peak computer users? And Gen Z users are worse? I wonder if this has anything to do with how platforms became locked down at the generational boundary. Millennials grew up on 90's and 00's internet, where you could download and install anything. It was the most open tech has ever been. Run your own chat software, embed HTML in your MySpace profile, create a forum, etc. Apply patches and cracks to pirated software. Re-skin Winamp. All of it was par for the course for your typical Millennial teenager. Gen Z has curated experiences in the form of walled silos. Less exposure to the underlying tech. Granted, some subset will always be attracted to hobbyist pursuit. Game development, app development, Minecraft mods, etc. But it's not as much a part of the day to day experience.
    • dundercoder 6y ago
      Winamp really did whip the llamas ass.
      • everyone 6y ago
        I still use it.. Havent found a better music player yet.
    • tayo42 6y ago
      Is it only just walled off? I think its also way more complex then it was 10 years ago. there's a big barrier to entry to just get started. even 20 years ago anyone could put stuff on the web. angelfire was filled with unpolished websites, and beginner site could keep up with the average. even big site were ugly and simple,js wasn't pervasive like it is now, yahoo was not pretty. or even dual booting linux is hard on a laptop with stuff being locked down in the boot process. hacking on stuff seems harder then ever if your starting from nothing
      • Reelin 6y ago
        > anyone could put stuff on the web. angelfire was filled with unpolished websites Check out (https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/). > dual booting linux is hard on a laptop with stuff being locked down in the boot process All the major distros should work out of the box with secure boot at this point. UEFI USB sticks are incredibly easy to create since you don't have to worry about magic MBR stuff anymore. (The bootloader can just go in a specific folder and have a specific name.) For that matter, turning secure boot off completely is typically a simple toggle in the firmware. Even the drivers "just work" out of the box these days for all the mainstream laptops I've tried. > hacking on stuff seems harder then ever if your starting from nothing This is true if all you have is a locked down mobile device. Otherwise there's really no excuse - a Raspberry Pi can be had for $35.
        • tayo42 6y ago
          Linux is missing drivers for how my laptop is set up. Something with raid or ahci, it's been a while since I messed with it. For the rpi you really need to go out of your way to hack on it. But that's different then being bored and deciding to break something you have. That's not the only way to hack something. Like game modding, seems more difficult.
      • aembleton 6y ago
        How is it any harder to dual boot Linux now than on a desktop in the 00s? Didn't seem any harder with Manjaro Linux and Windows 10 to me.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • phobosanomaly 6y ago
      1,000% This. The internet during that era cultivated some incredible heuristics for navigating the internet. During the era (at 14/15) I: - Stuck behind a firewall, I downloaded gigabytes of porn from unsecured FTP servers by Google dorking - Played hours of bootleg Quake3 and SOFII on my old-faithful cracked Windows XP (still remember the key to this day) - Reinstalled XP about 1,000x everytime I downloaded something I shouldn't have - Found hundreds of weird documentaries on The Pirate Bay and Smoking in the Rain from all over the planet - Spent countless hours talking with a bunch of weirdos on IRC - Had an HTML-only website called 'Science Experimenter' - Dual-booted FreeBSD - Played around on my SDF Unix shell - Played Doom and Wolf3D downloaded from Vetusware on Dos 7.1/Win 3.1 - Newsgroups. Oh man, remember bootlegging movies from newsgroups. That early internet was just incredible. From wandering through Fravia's Searchlores, to Geocities (where I first discovered the term 'Computer Engineering'), to the early MP3s you could find of HOPE and Defcon talks), to Andre Lamothe's XGameStation kit, to the Homebuilt CPUs Webring (I fell in love with Magic-1), to the OsDev wiki DexOS, MenuetOS, etc. Today's internet is so convenient. It's like you said, it's 'curated.' It's not a jungle of lost Mayan civilization you can Indiana Jones through. Edit: I realize today's internet is even more rich than the one I describe, but the nostalgia is just too strong. I prefer to live in my simple world.
    • Alterlife 6y ago
      Is there really such a difference? Older people tend find excuses to accuse younger people of being inferior. We're older people now. Perhaps we should be careful not to fall into that trap.
      • vmception 6y ago
        There is an opportunity for education that just shouldn't be assumed. “Hey you are good with electronic devices that I had the same 20 years to understand as you, fix this other unrelated thing” Means something very different when the users don't understand anything about the device they are using. It isn’t about inferiority it is about understanding the baseline technical literacy and what areas should still be taught, just like they were taught to prior generations, instead of assuming there is a linear and continued proliferation of technical literacy. Its just a patch work.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      It never was outside of geek bubbles....
      • echelon 6y ago
        My "non-geek" friends knew how to torrent, rip mp3s, convert file formats, and patch cracked software. There were plenty of "non-geek" people tricking out their MySpace profile.
        • scarface74 6y ago
          And in the 80s, “true geeks” would type assembly language programs into their computers from magazines. In the early 90s we would use Gopher servers to get information and post to Usenet. Time marches on. I don’t miss ripping MP3’s, converting file formats and what the heck is “patching cracked software”? I think I qualify as a true geek, and I’ve never heard of that.
          • echelon 6y ago
            > patching cracked software Downloading commercial software, then downloading a tool to alter the binary to remove the license verification check. Alternatively, they would patch the signature check to use some known algorithm, and then you'd generate a key locally that worked. Skater kids, emo/goth kids, preppy kids. Everybody was doing this to get Photoshop or games or whatever. This wasn't limited to computer nerds. Kids in the 00s had to learn some skills and read warez instructional text files.
            • scarface74 6y ago
              By 92, I was already in college into console games. I wouldn’t even have bothered by 1996 and just pay for stuff. I also stopped downloading music from places like Kazaa when iTunes came out. In the 80s, I don’t know where my friends got their cache of cracked software for the Apple //.
    • anthropodie 6y ago
      Why are some people so obsessed with generations (that they even gave name)? Here in India we don't talk like that at all and have no name for generations.
      • searchableguy 6y ago
        We don't have explicit names but we talk about them by prefixing with father, grandfather, young, current etc. Example: My father's generation lived in poverty and had to struggle to get by while the current generation have it easy.
      • petre 6y ago
        You've got castes in India, right?
        • umanwizard 6y ago
          India does in fact have a caste system, but what does that have to do with this conversation?
      • coliveira 6y ago
        This is a common American pastime. The funniest thing is that they give "personalities" to these supposed generations. In fact these features have nothing to do with the generation, but with the economic conditions of the time. For example, Americans use to say that Gen Xers don't "like" to own houses, when the reality is that due to the Great Recession they didn't have the same opportunity to own property as their parents.
      • sjy 6y ago
        It had never occurred to me that other cultures might be less familiar with the concept of social generations. People find them interesting for the same reason as history and sociology generally – they are useful tools for understanding how the world works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_generations
      • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    • searchableguy 6y ago
      Do you have actual data to back that up?
  • pubutil 6y ago
    My experience in tech support was similar though, of course, it also depends on the person. I’ve met CAD folks who didn’t understand a password reset, and secretaries who gave great feedback on infrastructure. I usually experienced much less resistance explaining tasks and problems to people close to my age. Younger people would listen to a point until I saw their eyes gloss over, waiting for me to get to my point. Many older folks were tuned out from the start and just wanted to hear their problem was fixed. I’m sure part of this involves my lack of skill in explaining technical concepts to non-technical people. Someone else mentioned that the internet changing over the years affected this. I think part of this also has to do with the pranks of our generation: -“how do I [x] in this game?” “Alt-F4” -“how do I get rid of this virus?” “Delete System32” We’d either look it up first and call BS, or follow the instructions with reckless abandon and learn the hard way. Somewhat recently we had people microwaving iPhones thinking it’d charge them. I saw more news stories about this than I’d have expected, given it’s metal in a microwave. Something that many of us were taught not to do from a young age.
  • lovehashbrowns 6y ago
    Lmao the irony of a millennial making up generalizations about the generation that came after them. Search for "millennials killed" on Google.
    • vmception 6y ago
      Imagine that I think this is an important generalization because it undoes an unhealthy generalization by Gen X and Baby Boomers, the idea that everyone younger is literate with computer use and troubleshooting, the younger the better
      • lovehashbrowns 6y ago
        Oh, your made up generalization is important because it counters another made up generalization. Gotcha. The older Gen Z are barely graduating college, by the way. Maybe start by looking at the growth of computer science majors.
    • greencabs 6y ago
      I said the same thing of my own generation.
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Eh don't buy into the bullshit fed to you by older generation. Your generation is just fine. I heard the same BS about my generation when I was just starting out 20 years ago. Gen X was supposedly the worst generation EVER. But you know, we're not and neither are Gen Z or Millenials. You're just people facing a slightly different situation.
  • greencabs 6y ago
    I think there is quite a bit more nuance to what I’m saying here.