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Nobody tries to deny that old people can be top notch computer scientists. It's just a fact that computer technology has only arrived in the daily life of the g

by _0ffh 5y ago

Nobody tries to deny that old people can be top notch computer scientists. It's just a fact that computer technology has only arrived in the daily life of the greater population a few decades ago and therefore older people are statistically less likely to be familiar and comfortable with it the way younger people are. I'm surprised I have to write this.

mindcrime 5y ago
It's just a fact that computer technology has only arrived in the daily life of the greater population a few decades ago I would question that assertion, depending on how exactly we choose to define "few". Computers have been a fairly ubiquitous part of our society (in developed nations anyway) for a good 40 years or more now. And they've been absolutely ubiquitous for probably a good 30 years... ubiquitous enough that it's hard to see how any person who considers themselves an educated, competent adult wouldn't have had the opportunity to develop some baseline of technical literacy. Personally I believe that anybody who is a functioning adult in our society today, who doesn't have that technical literacy, lacks it due to their choices not due to their age.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  Sure. In 1984, 37 years ago, a whopping 8.2% of US households sported a computer. So yeah, ubiquitous indeed. Younger people tend to be more open to new things and less set in their ways, which certainly makes a difference in this case. Note that I'm again not talking in absolutes, but about matters of tendency. Naturally, in the individual case all things come down to opportunity and choice, but it seems curious to deny the statistics of the matter.
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    The presence of a computer in the home is not the only measure of the prevalence of computers in society at large. I'm not ignoring anything. I was there, I lived it. And I know that being 66 is no excuse for lacking technical knowledge. It's willful ignorance, not a byproduct of happenstance. Younger people tend to be more open to new things and less set in their ways Even if that were true - and that's a pretty dubious claim, IMO - it does not necessarily follow that ... certainly makes a difference in this case.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - _0ffh 5y ago
      > I was there, I lived it. Yes, so did I. I find it curious that we seem to remember that period so differently. I can easily find sources saying things like "between the ages of 25 and 60 people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year", that's 28 percentage points difference in the ability to use a website. But I'll stop arguing, it doesn't seem very promising at this point.

by _0ffh 5y ago

mindcrime 5y ago

It's just a fact that computer technology has only arrived in the daily life of the greater population a few decades ago I would question that assertion, depending on how exactly we choose to define "few". Computers have been a fairly ubiquitous part of our society (in developed nations anyway) for a good 40 years or more now. And they've been absolutely ubiquitous for probably a good 30 years... ubiquitous enough that it's hard to see how any person who considers themselves an educated, competent adult wouldn't have had the opportunity to develop some baseline of technical literacy. Personally I believe that anybody who is a functioning adult in our society today, who doesn't have that technical literacy, lacks it due to their choices not due to their age.

_0ffh 5y ago
Sure. In 1984, 37 years ago, a whopping 8.2% of US households sported a computer. So yeah, ubiquitous indeed. Younger people tend to be more open to new things and less set in their ways, which certainly makes a difference in this case. Note that I'm again not talking in absolutes, but about matters of tendency. Naturally, in the individual case all things come down to opportunity and choice, but it seems curious to deny the statistics of the matter.
- mindcrime 5y ago
  The presence of a computer in the home is not the only measure of the prevalence of computers in society at large. I'm not ignoring anything. I was there, I lived it. And I know that being 66 is no excuse for lacking technical knowledge. It's willful ignorance, not a byproduct of happenstance. Younger people tend to be more open to new things and less set in their ways Even if that were true - and that's a pretty dubious claim, IMO - it does not necessarily follow that ... certainly makes a difference in this case.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    > I was there, I lived it. Yes, so did I. I find it curious that we seem to remember that period so differently. I can easily find sources saying things like "between the ages of 25 and 60 people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year", that's 28 percentage points difference in the ability to use a website. But I'll stop arguing, it doesn't seem very promising at this point.