5 ms·

I think it has come the time where the society starts to advance without caring about laypeople, if some folks can learn it, if there is documentation, then we

I think it has come the time where the society starts to advance without caring about laypeople, if some folks can learn it, if there is documentation, then we can just go on without caring about who doesn't know how to use it, because that's fixable. And I speak considering the German government who had to pull back from Linux because employee didn't know how to use it Let's start treating tech as the world treats everything else: Ignorance is not a justification

prox 5y ago
It is about expendable time. I mean it might take you a few hours or so do it, or even less. People working in other sectors, maybe with a family when they come home, do not have that skill or luxury. And speaking from experience, documentation is often greatly lacking. For example just today I had to thumb down a couple of google docs because it was riddled with inconsistencies and lacking crucial information. And that’s a company with near infinite money. And its like that for most software, with great docs an exception rather than a rule.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I don't agree with you, only for the fact that right now, in this age computers are everywhere, everything is digital, it is not luxury to learn how things work, it's survival, it's not expendable time, it's professional time
  - IggleSniggle 5y ago
    You could say the same thing about any number of fundamental disciplines: “chemistry is survival,” “roof making is survival” “SQL is survival.” The truth is, there’s only so much time, and we each must specialize. Software that decreases the need for broad reaching high-specialization is a public good, and software that increases the need for specialized knowledge across all economic activity is hurting productivity, whatever the bean counters may say.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    I have various friends who have made similar statements about food (everyone should cook meals for themselves), cars (everyone should do their own basic repairs and maintenance), homes (everyone should do their own basic home maintenance), keyboards (everyone should do basic soldering and learn a non-qwerty layout), accounting (everyone should have a budget and do their own taxes), gardening, fitness, investing, education, etc. The number of people who can learn all of the skills that someone in the world considers essential is small. The number of people who can do all those things while having a job, kids, and a working partner is smaller still. The rest of us have to focus on a proper subset. For me, every minute I waste learning how to configure my server is a minute I could have been playing Legos with my kids or riding my bike or sleeping.
    - fps_doug 5y ago
      You know, I have kids too, but I still wonder how much more dependent on big tech we might potentially get over the next decades, and how much responsibility I have in protecting and educating them in that regard. I'm postponing self-hosting mail for several years now, because it has A LOT of gotchas and requires tweaking and debugging every couple weeks/months because someone considers you a Spammer again (looking at you, Hotmail (German: Schrottmail)). But eventually they will be old enough to require an email address, so should I just let them use Gmail and stop worrying, or try to have something up and running until then? At least protect them from the data kraken until they can make their own informed decisions about that. But then I'm not just responsible for my email, but my whole family's email. What about 30 years down the road, when they long moved out? Am I still gonna sysadmin my family's self-hosting galore when they finally have kids on their own? Is it even still possible then? At least for mail it looks like when it's growing over my head I can just sign up with some mail provider (that hopefully values privacy) and let them handle that whole BS. It might not even be worth it anymore at some point though, if basically everyone else you communicate with via mail is on Gmail. Then Google already has all my email as well.
      - prox 5y ago
        I think it’s here Linux devs or the selfhost ecosystem should focus itself : making the software more accessible. It’s a bit like Blender before the big UI overhaul. There were actually a sizeable group of people who were very much against it, but now we are further along and its been a great success for both newbies and experts. An awareness campaign to go the extra mile in terms accessibility would be great (and that doesn’t mean dumbing down, the two seems to be equated sometimes)
ravenstine 5y ago
Your opinion is on the extreme end, but I overall appreciate the sentiment that society is about as stupid as we allow it to be. Sure, there's a midpoint where we would ideally want as many people to be able to use a technology as possible, which means making things easier, but we underestimate the capability of most users and dumb things down so far that those users not only believe that X technology is too hard but believe themselves to be too stupid to do anything that requires even the faintest amount of know-how. I do think we've gone way too far in the direction of acting like everyone, except we archmages on HN, have the intelligence of toddlers and can't figure out anything for themselves. Everything becomes so easy, but at the tradeoff of everyone being dependent on the centralization. The incentive has to be there, though. Convincing people to self-host is like telling them to eat more broccoli. Just because it's good for them doesn't mean they're going to do it, and companies of nearly any size certainly won't choose to make things hard on their users.
chongli 5y ago
I appreciate your perspective and I greatly value my own computer expertise. Having said that, I want to ask: what if doctors, lawyers, and engineers adopted the same mindset? Instead of translating their knowledge and recommendations into language a layperson can understand, what if these experts spoke only in their domain's technical jargon? We would be much worse off. In order to survive, everyone would have to become a dabbler in everything and many would be unable to keep up at all. We would lose all of the efficiency gains of specialization. So assuming we do not want everyone to have to learn a bit about medicine and law and engineering etc, why is computer knowledge different? Is a computer not merely a tool to accomplish a task? We don't expect people to learn to become a mechanic, let alone an automotive engineer, to be able to drive a car. We expect cars to be reasonably easy to drive and low maintenance, with occasional help from mechanics. Shouldn't we expect the same from computers?
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  Yeah, it’s incredibly unrealistic tech-elitism to put the burden on everyone else because you can’t be bothered to simplify your design. Anyone who cares about self-hosting should not be advocating for the UX equivalent of setting VCR clocks. We can be realistic about making hosting accessible, or you can bury your head in the sand with enthusiasts as AWS becomes the entire internet. It’s already pretty obvious which approach is winning.

prox 5y ago

It is about expendable time. I mean it might take you a few hours or so do it, or even less. People working in other sectors, maybe with a family when they come home, do not have that skill or luxury. And speaking from experience, documentation is often greatly lacking. For example just today I had to thumb down a couple of google docs because it was riddled with inconsistencies and lacking crucial information. And that’s a company with near infinite money. And its like that for most software, with great docs an exception rather than a rule.

lnxg33k1 5y ago
I don't agree with you, only for the fact that right now, in this age computers are everywhere, everything is digital, it is not luxury to learn how things work, it's survival, it's not expendable time, it's professional time
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  You could say the same thing about any number of fundamental disciplines: “chemistry is survival,” “roof making is survival” “SQL is survival.” The truth is, there’s only so much time, and we each must specialize. Software that decreases the need for broad reaching high-specialization is a public good, and software that increases the need for specialized knowledge across all economic activity is hurting productivity, whatever the bean counters may say.
- asoneth 5y ago
  I have various friends who have made similar statements about food (everyone should cook meals for themselves), cars (everyone should do their own basic repairs and maintenance), homes (everyone should do their own basic home maintenance), keyboards (everyone should do basic soldering and learn a non-qwerty layout), accounting (everyone should have a budget and do their own taxes), gardening, fitness, investing, education, etc. The number of people who can learn all of the skills that someone in the world considers essential is small. The number of people who can do all those things while having a job, kids, and a working partner is smaller still. The rest of us have to focus on a proper subset. For me, every minute I waste learning how to configure my server is a minute I could have been playing Legos with my kids or riding my bike or sleeping.
  - fps_doug 5y ago
    You know, I have kids too, but I still wonder how much more dependent on big tech we might potentially get over the next decades, and how much responsibility I have in protecting and educating them in that regard. I'm postponing self-hosting mail for several years now, because it has A LOT of gotchas and requires tweaking and debugging every couple weeks/months because someone considers you a Spammer again (looking at you, Hotmail (German: Schrottmail)). But eventually they will be old enough to require an email address, so should I just let them use Gmail and stop worrying, or try to have something up and running until then? At least protect them from the data kraken until they can make their own informed decisions about that. But then I'm not just responsible for my email, but my whole family's email. What about 30 years down the road, when they long moved out? Am I still gonna sysadmin my family's self-hosting galore when they finally have kids on their own? Is it even still possible then? At least for mail it looks like when it's growing over my head I can just sign up with some mail provider (that hopefully values privacy) and let them handle that whole BS. It might not even be worth it anymore at some point though, if basically everyone else you communicate with via mail is on Gmail. Then Google already has all my email as well.
    - prox 5y ago
      I think it’s here Linux devs or the selfhost ecosystem should focus itself : making the software more accessible. It’s a bit like Blender before the big UI overhaul. There were actually a sizeable group of people who were very much against it, but now we are further along and its been a great success for both newbies and experts. An awareness campaign to go the extra mile in terms accessibility would be great (and that doesn’t mean dumbing down, the two seems to be equated sometimes)

ravenstine 5y ago

Your opinion is on the extreme end, but I overall appreciate the sentiment that society is about as stupid as we allow it to be. Sure, there's a midpoint where we would ideally want as many people to be able to use a technology as possible, which means making things easier, but we underestimate the capability of most users and dumb things down so far that those users not only believe that X technology is too hard but believe themselves to be too stupid to do anything that requires even the faintest amount of know-how. I do think we've gone way too far in the direction of acting like everyone, except we archmages on HN, have the intelligence of toddlers and can't figure out anything for themselves. Everything becomes so easy, but at the tradeoff of everyone being dependent on the centralization. The incentive has to be there, though. Convincing people to self-host is like telling them to eat more broccoli. Just because it's good for them doesn't mean they're going to do it, and companies of nearly any size certainly won't choose to make things hard on their users.

chongli 5y ago

I appreciate your perspective and I greatly value my own computer expertise. Having said that, I want to ask: what if doctors, lawyers, and engineers adopted the same mindset? Instead of translating their knowledge and recommendations into language a layperson can understand, what if these experts spoke only in their domain's technical jargon? We would be much worse off. In order to survive, everyone would have to become a dabbler in everything and many would be unable to keep up at all. We would lose all of the efficiency gains of specialization. So assuming we do not want everyone to have to learn a bit about medicine and law and engineering etc, why is computer knowledge different? Is a computer not merely a tool to accomplish a task? We don't expect people to learn to become a mechanic, let alone an automotive engineer, to be able to drive a car. We expect cars to be reasonably easy to drive and low maintenance, with occasional help from mechanics. Shouldn't we expect the same from computers?

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Yeah, it’s incredibly unrealistic tech-elitism to put the burden on everyone else because you can’t be bothered to simplify your design. Anyone who cares about self-hosting should not be advocating for the UX equivalent of setting VCR clocks. We can be realistic about making hosting accessible, or you can bury your head in the sand with enthusiasts as AWS becomes the entire internet. It’s already pretty obvious which approach is winning.