5 ms·

If you were born between the early 1980's and the mid-1990's, you probably have more technical know-how than those born earlier or later. That's because during

by csense 6y ago

If you were born between the early 1980's and the mid-1990's, you probably have more technical know-how than those born earlier or later. That's because during the years 1990-2005, tech had penetrated much of the population, but it was rough around the edges enough that you had to understand it if you wanted to get it working. Take modems. In the '90s have a dial-up modem that allowed a single computer to connect at a time over the phone line. You had to manually initiate and hang up your Internet connection, and you couldn't use it on more than one computer at a time. That process forced you to understand a bit of how the Internet works in order to use it. Now the Internet's just this magic thing that you have all the time if you just plug in a thing and pay the bill. I've noticed a lot of people use the words "Wifi," "router," "modem," and "Internet connection" interchangeably. The details are hidden from a user in a way they weren't in the days of dialup. Likewise, DOS. Before Windows moved away from DOS, you sometimes needed to work with the command line. Occasionally you had to create boot disks for your software that would load different drivers and stuff. Again, you had to know something about the command line and system configuration in order to use the computer effectively. I guess what it really boils down to: In my day we walked to school in a blizzard every day, uphill both ways. Now get off my lawn, whippersnappers. (Although when I was a student one professor regaled the class with tales of his first computer, some early home computer -- I don't think he ever told us the model, but it may have been Z80-based -- whose unboxing procedure involved some quality time with a soldering iron, and if you wanted to use permanent tape storage you had to toggle in a tape driver using a switch panel directly connected to the bus lines. Maybe every generation of tech enthusiasts has its own "kids these days are soft, in my day we walked uphill both ways" story.)

SecurityLagoon 6y ago
Agree after that period where you stopped needing to manually install drivers and configure things I'm sure tech literacy dropped off - there is no reason to know how your technology works these days (to survive) unless you like tinkering. I am sure it is the same in other technological areas too - I grew up fixing the family cars and now it seems every minor problem goes to the garage. I think black boxes are just the norm now - I'm guessing there are large portions, both young and old, of the population who don't use the internet outside of a smartphone or tablet which they use until it breaks or slows down and replace with another magical app machine. No understanding of tech required. I've only noticed the use of WiFi to mean Internet pretty recently. Its thoroughly confusing when you are trying to trouble shoot WiFi problems for someone and you realise their WiFi is working fine - their ISP just has an outage. I'd say this is a modern problem but I remember people calling the computer tower the CPU for as long as I can remember.
- tmearnest 6y ago
  After a few years of working home internet tech support when I was a youngin I’ve learned that you can’t really rely on anything the caller says, up to and including whether or not they actually powercycled. You gotta rely on them doing what you say to do and verifying it by how they describe the result. That job taught me patience to a fault. And misanthropy, but the patience was more useful.
mongol 6y ago
I am not convinced. I was born in the early 70s and am struggling to see what technical know-how I am lacking in comparison with those born a decade later.
- SecurityLagoon 6y ago
  I don't think hacker news readers are exactly an unbiased demographic.
- zepto 6y ago
  I think the date range is off, but the idea is correct. Born in early 70’s means being just at the right age to learn during the home / microcomputer revolution. I don’t think you missed anything.
  - mongol 6y ago
    Yes, my first computer experience was Atari 2600 which my cousin had. I was 7 years or so. My first own computer was Commodore 64.
rootsudo 6y ago
Agreed, so true. People are addicted to platforms, social media but can't run a program, grep, shell, reverse shell, etc. Setting up IRQ settings, jumper for IRQ settings, replacing/installing PCI/ISA/AGP cards... Man. It's amazing, just, how much separation there is by a generation.
- uzakov 6y ago
  We can do our part in my opinion, by educating, showing advantages of knowing how to use tech. I've written a tech setup guide for example for my family, taught my mum what CLI is, basic stuff on it. I think while this is an issue it can partly be solved without much effort, if we simply show others benefits of knowing tech
- qu-everything 6y ago
  OK I agree with this thread, but man, IRQ ? those are some low level shit
g_p 6y ago
Another deterioration I've noticed in knowledge is around the amount of understanding of a filesystem. There's a growing generation that don't properly understand files, folders and directory structures, as they learned their computing skills on an iPhone or iPad (my guess). I've seen this generation start to reach college and lack familiarity with the basics of file management and general basic productivity on a computer. The decline in general inquisitiveness is also a challenge - computing devices are now sealed and gasketed, single purpose, and most people have never looked inside one, let alone wanted to understand how they work. There's a part of growing up with technology where you should (in my view) start to wonder things like how if computers run programs, who made the first program? And how did they write it? And what tools did they use to write it if they had no other programs? It's very challenging to enthuse someone who hasn't thought about this into wanting to learn to program and think like a power user - the locked down computers they've known as they grew up were content consumption platforms, not creation. Apps are made by "other people" in some unknown process - the thought they could do it generally doesn't cross their mind.
- desi_ninja 6y ago
  kids use cloud storage lije Google drive which has folder structure. they learn through that
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    Too bad they did not learn how to write.
- wcarey 6y ago
  In the high school computer programming class I teach we use headless Debian on a Raspberry Pi. The idea that you can rename files, move them, and organize them is mind blowing to about a third of the students. When I ask how they organize their school files, they either use Google Docs for everything (all in one folder) or, if they use Word, they have one folder with all their documents named, "New Document", "New Document (1)", "New Document (2)", &c. When I teach them Chemistry as juniors and insist that they use a spreadsheet (or general purpose programming language) for their complex problem sets, about 90% of them have never seen a spreadsheet before. We now have the "talk" with our juniors about backups, as more than one has lost their entire junior thesis because it was stored on their laptop and nowhere else. It's frustrating that we spent decades developing fantastic tools to help ourselves with all sorts of intellectual work, and have more or less abandoned teaching people to use them well. As the tower of abstraction has gotten taller, there's a temptation to teach near the shiny end; ML for high school! But that leaves students with huge gaps in their understanding of how things work under the hood, which impairs their ability to connect what they learn and build on it.
dafoex 6y ago
It not just the yunguns, either. I'm from just the very end of the generation you describe, and have some memory of the limitations of computers at the time (I remember dialup and not being able to use the phone, having to change the computer to 256 colours in order to play games, things being too big to fit on a floppy disc, etc.) but I cringe every time my dad calls anything wireless "wi-fi", or uses wi-fi as a verb: The laptop wi-fis to the internet! Sure, I guess... The phone wi-fis to the internet! Um, yeah... The phone wi-fis to the tower to get internet! Wait, what? The phone wi-fis to the tower to make calls! No! The phone wi-fis to my headphones! Ok, warmer, but that's Bluetooth. ThE tElEvIsIoN rEmOtE wI-fIs To ThE tElEvIsIoN!!!1 NO IT DOES NOT!!

by csense 6y ago

SecurityLagoon 6y ago

Agree after that period where you stopped needing to manually install drivers and configure things I'm sure tech literacy dropped off - there is no reason to know how your technology works these days (to survive) unless you like tinkering. I am sure it is the same in other technological areas too - I grew up fixing the family cars and now it seems every minor problem goes to the garage. I think black boxes are just the norm now - I'm guessing there are large portions, both young and old, of the population who don't use the internet outside of a smartphone or tablet which they use until it breaks or slows down and replace with another magical app machine. No understanding of tech required. I've only noticed the use of WiFi to mean Internet pretty recently. Its thoroughly confusing when you are trying to trouble shoot WiFi problems for someone and you realise their WiFi is working fine - their ISP just has an outage. I'd say this is a modern problem but I remember people calling the computer tower the CPU for as long as I can remember.

tmearnest 6y ago
After a few years of working home internet tech support when I was a youngin I’ve learned that you can’t really rely on anything the caller says, up to and including whether or not they actually powercycled. You gotta rely on them doing what you say to do and verifying it by how they describe the result. That job taught me patience to a fault. And misanthropy, but the patience was more useful.

mongol 6y ago

I am not convinced. I was born in the early 70s and am struggling to see what technical know-how I am lacking in comparison with those born a decade later.

SecurityLagoon 6y ago
I don't think hacker news readers are exactly an unbiased demographic.
zepto 6y ago
I think the date range is off, but the idea is correct. Born in early 70’s means being just at the right age to learn during the home / microcomputer revolution. I don’t think you missed anything.
- mongol 6y ago
  Yes, my first computer experience was Atari 2600 which my cousin had. I was 7 years or so. My first own computer was Commodore 64.

rootsudo 6y ago

Agreed, so true. People are addicted to platforms, social media but can't run a program, grep, shell, reverse shell, etc. Setting up IRQ settings, jumper for IRQ settings, replacing/installing PCI/ISA/AGP cards... Man. It's amazing, just, how much separation there is by a generation.

uzakov 6y ago
We can do our part in my opinion, by educating, showing advantages of knowing how to use tech. I've written a tech setup guide for example for my family, taught my mum what CLI is, basic stuff on it. I think while this is an issue it can partly be solved without much effort, if we simply show others benefits of knowing tech
qu-everything 6y ago
OK I agree with this thread, but man, IRQ ? those are some low level shit

g_p 6y ago

Another deterioration I've noticed in knowledge is around the amount of understanding of a filesystem. There's a growing generation that don't properly understand files, folders and directory structures, as they learned their computing skills on an iPhone or iPad (my guess). I've seen this generation start to reach college and lack familiarity with the basics of file management and general basic productivity on a computer. The decline in general inquisitiveness is also a challenge - computing devices are now sealed and gasketed, single purpose, and most people have never looked inside one, let alone wanted to understand how they work. There's a part of growing up with technology where you should (in my view) start to wonder things like how if computers run programs, who made the first program? And how did they write it? And what tools did they use to write it if they had no other programs? It's very challenging to enthuse someone who hasn't thought about this into wanting to learn to program and think like a power user - the locked down computers they've known as they grew up were content consumption platforms, not creation. Apps are made by "other people" in some unknown process - the thought they could do it generally doesn't cross their mind.

desi_ninja 6y ago
kids use cloud storage lije Google drive which has folder structure. they learn through that
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Too bad they did not learn how to write.
wcarey 6y ago
In the high school computer programming class I teach we use headless Debian on a Raspberry Pi. The idea that you can rename files, move them, and organize them is mind blowing to about a third of the students. When I ask how they organize their school files, they either use Google Docs for everything (all in one folder) or, if they use Word, they have one folder with all their documents named, "New Document", "New Document (1)", "New Document (2)", &c. When I teach them Chemistry as juniors and insist that they use a spreadsheet (or general purpose programming language) for their complex problem sets, about 90% of them have never seen a spreadsheet before. We now have the "talk" with our juniors about backups, as more than one has lost their entire junior thesis because it was stored on their laptop and nowhere else. It's frustrating that we spent decades developing fantastic tools to help ourselves with all sorts of intellectual work, and have more or less abandoned teaching people to use them well. As the tower of abstraction has gotten taller, there's a temptation to teach near the shiny end; ML for high school! But that leaves students with huge gaps in their understanding of how things work under the hood, which impairs their ability to connect what they learn and build on it.

dafoex 6y ago

It not just the yunguns, either. I'm from just the very end of the generation you describe, and have some memory of the limitations of computers at the time (I remember dialup and not being able to use the phone, having to change the computer to 256 colours in order to play games, things being too big to fit on a floppy disc, etc.) but I cringe every time my dad calls anything wireless "wi-fi", or uses wi-fi as a verb: The laptop wi-fis to the internet! Sure, I guess... The phone wi-fis to the internet! Um, yeah... The phone wi-fis to the tower to get internet! Wait, what? The phone wi-fis to the tower to make calls! No! The phone wi-fis to my headphones! Ok, warmer, but that's Bluetooth. ThE tElEvIsIoN rEmOtE wI-fIs To ThE tElEvIsIoN!!!1 NO IT DOES NOT!!