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Slight tangent from the original post: I wish "normal" people were more tech-literate. I don't think they realize just how much of their autonomy they've given

Slight tangent from the original post: I wish "normal" people were more tech-literate. I don't think they realize just how much of their autonomy they've given up by choosing to use Microsoft Products/Reddit/Twitter/Spotify/Facebook/TikTok/Apple Products/ etc. We're at a point where now the average person depends on several layers of technology that they can't even conceive of, and often the companies building that technology don't share their political interests. But then the average person expresses frustration at having to use open-source alternatives (which is completely understandable when the open-source alternative is definitively worse!). Basically, for me not understanding how technology works when it's so central to our everyday lives just seems baffling. I suppose someone could say the exact same thing to me about not understanding how my car works, or how to grow my own food. Maybe technology seems easier to learn than agriculture? But then of course it's easier for me, I'm a professional programmer. So I try to have a lot of empathy for everyone who doesn't understand technology, especially my mom when she doesn't know how to convert a PDF.

mattvot 4y ago
> not understanding how technology works when it's so central to our everyday lives just seems baffling I don’t know. I appreciate the sentiment and would also like more tech literacy, but there are lots of areas central to our lives and I think it’s unrealistic to expect a good understand across it all. I think it’s on us to be able to adequately communicate and understand the needs of those that ask us for help. Just as you would want a doctor to explain what your condition is in a way you would understand. Having buildings to live in is pretty central to most of our lives too, and we have some knowledge and intuition of what looks safe and can be used, but most of us leave the engineering to someone more in the know. Farming too, I rather people in the industry work on maximising yield to feed us all with tools made and tailored for them. I think when people go to the quickest solutions for them in tech (i.e. Ms 365, Spotify, John Deere, ABC MRI Scanner etc), I’d rather have them focused on the details of their trade than learning how to use a terminal, jailbreak a tractor or replace a magnet in an MRI scanner. Those that want to, great, but I think most don’t have the time or interest to take on that kind of deeper learning.
Dalewyn 4y ago
The reason is we only have so little time and yet so much to do. For the vast majority of people, understanding technology is simply not worth their time. They have other, more important things to worry about. You don't know nor care to understand how telephones and cars and electricity work. Nor how and where the food in the supermarket comes from. Water comes out of the faucet because faucets dispense water. You have more important things to worry about, like computer technology. Much like those aforementioned things are merely a means to an end for you, so too is technology merely a means to an end for most people; their ends lie elsewhere. Or to TL;DR: Life's short, ain't nobody got time for computer.
- pas 4y ago
  There's a (few) meta-level(s) for this. They should recognize the value of, and accordingly advocate for, having more "hackable/discoverable/understandable tech environments/contexts". And not necessarily for themselves. The post opens with the classic just brew install blah, and immediately runs into the problem of people not having brew (or some other package manager) preinstalled and ready on their computers. It's the walled garden problem. And it's not a trivial problem. And even this meta-level argument is not necessarily straightforward, because it comes with serious trade-offs. And .... unfortunately even one level up, where it should be straightforward to see how a walled garden monopoly is bad (as the consensus on rent-seeking being bad is pretty strong in economics) people mostly don't care about this issue, because they don't connect it to the value of "more power user freedom". People start to see the value of right to repair tractors, people see the value of the first sale doctrine, people see themselves as temporarily embarrased rich gentlefolk, but they are afraid to see themselves as just a few commands away from a power user.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >People start to see the value of right to repair tractors, people see the value of the first sale doctrine, people see themselves as temporarily embarrased rich gentlefolk, but they are afraid to see themselves as just a few commands away from a power user. The dissonance stems from the fact that most people don't care about power using. Users (most people) don't care for messing with their computers because that's not what they're at the computer for. They want to do something on the computer, and the only thing they care about is whether they can get it done. It's like how most people drive cars to get from Point A to Point B, without giving a damn how a car works or how they could tune the car. If it gets them to Point B then nothing else matters, and tuning their car is a roadblock to getting to Point B because they aren't getting any closer to Point B while tuning their car. Power users use computers as the end to a means, users on the other hand use computers as a means to an end. More dials and knobs on their computer is irrelevant and even prohibitive for users. Most of us here are all power users and it's natural to want more people to be like us, but the reality is we are not the majority of people on the planet. As an aside, most of us also gloss over how computers work without a care even as we preach about how the commons must understand the complexities. I doubt most tech bros and neckbeards would understand electrical engineering even as they preach how everyone must understand bash and Powershell.
jessekv 4y ago
The relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/ Markdown is incredibly accessible to people who know how to drag files around on a file system and open them with a click, and every laptop/desktop operating system includes a fast and reliable text editor. But many people don't have one of these "real" operating systems. Most non-technical people I know would need to build the mental modals of having "files" existing on a "file system" before they could even begin to create, organise and edit text files. Even as I describe this I wonder If I am parroting the xkcd...

mattvot 4y ago

> not understanding how technology works when it's so central to our everyday lives just seems baffling I don’t know. I appreciate the sentiment and would also like more tech literacy, but there are lots of areas central to our lives and I think it’s unrealistic to expect a good understand across it all. I think it’s on us to be able to adequately communicate and understand the needs of those that ask us for help. Just as you would want a doctor to explain what your condition is in a way you would understand. Having buildings to live in is pretty central to most of our lives too, and we have some knowledge and intuition of what looks safe and can be used, but most of us leave the engineering to someone more in the know. Farming too, I rather people in the industry work on maximising yield to feed us all with tools made and tailored for them. I think when people go to the quickest solutions for them in tech (i.e. Ms 365, Spotify, John Deere, ABC MRI Scanner etc), I’d rather have them focused on the details of their trade than learning how to use a terminal, jailbreak a tractor or replace a magnet in an MRI scanner. Those that want to, great, but I think most don’t have the time or interest to take on that kind of deeper learning.

Dalewyn 4y ago

The reason is we only have so little time and yet so much to do. For the vast majority of people, understanding technology is simply not worth their time. They have other, more important things to worry about. You don't know nor care to understand how telephones and cars and electricity work. Nor how and where the food in the supermarket comes from. Water comes out of the faucet because faucets dispense water. You have more important things to worry about, like computer technology. Much like those aforementioned things are merely a means to an end for you, so too is technology merely a means to an end for most people; their ends lie elsewhere. Or to TL;DR: Life's short, ain't nobody got time for computer.

pas 4y ago
There's a (few) meta-level(s) for this. They should recognize the value of, and accordingly advocate for, having more "hackable/discoverable/understandable tech environments/contexts". And not necessarily for themselves. The post opens with the classic just brew install blah, and immediately runs into the problem of people not having brew (or some other package manager) preinstalled and ready on their computers. It's the walled garden problem. And it's not a trivial problem. And even this meta-level argument is not necessarily straightforward, because it comes with serious trade-offs. And .... unfortunately even one level up, where it should be straightforward to see how a walled garden monopoly is bad (as the consensus on rent-seeking being bad is pretty strong in economics) people mostly don't care about this issue, because they don't connect it to the value of "more power user freedom". People start to see the value of right to repair tractors, people see the value of the first sale doctrine, people see themselves as temporarily embarrased rich gentlefolk, but they are afraid to see themselves as just a few commands away from a power user.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >People start to see the value of right to repair tractors, people see the value of the first sale doctrine, people see themselves as temporarily embarrased rich gentlefolk, but they are afraid to see themselves as just a few commands away from a power user. The dissonance stems from the fact that most people don't care about power using. Users (most people) don't care for messing with their computers because that's not what they're at the computer for. They want to do something on the computer, and the only thing they care about is whether they can get it done. It's like how most people drive cars to get from Point A to Point B, without giving a damn how a car works or how they could tune the car. If it gets them to Point B then nothing else matters, and tuning their car is a roadblock to getting to Point B because they aren't getting any closer to Point B while tuning their car. Power users use computers as the end to a means, users on the other hand use computers as a means to an end. More dials and knobs on their computer is irrelevant and even prohibitive for users. Most of us here are all power users and it's natural to want more people to be like us, but the reality is we are not the majority of people on the planet. As an aside, most of us also gloss over how computers work without a care even as we preach about how the commons must understand the complexities. I doubt most tech bros and neckbeards would understand electrical engineering even as they preach how everyone must understand bash and Powershell.

jessekv 4y ago

The relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/ Markdown is incredibly accessible to people who know how to drag files around on a file system and open them with a click, and every laptop/desktop operating system includes a fast and reliable text editor. But many people don't have one of these "real" operating systems. Most non-technical people I know would need to build the mental modals of having "files" existing on a "file system" before they could even begin to create, organise and edit text files. Even as I describe this I wonder If I am parroting the xkcd...