4 ms·

Is it the terms you object to or do you fundamentally reject the premise?

• greedo 14y ago
  It's obviously the premise; that people who are proficient in computers (whatever that may mean) are abnormal. Computer/tech savvy is obviously a continuum. Lumping people into binary categories doesn't help the conversation much.
  • shimfish 14y ago
    They are abnormal in the sense that they are a minority. It's not a value judgement. Do you accept that those with enough proficiency to be creating commercial software have different modes of computer usage to the majority that don't?
    • greedo 14y ago
      Words have meaning. Being in a minority doesn't mean abnormal. You may not intend it to be a value judgement, but it clearly is when you're referring to a group of people. Perhaps in a clinical setting normal/abnormal doesn't have any perjorative qualities, but in normal day to day use it does. Your question is also a non sequiter. Computer usage patterns aren't always correlated to either proficiency in programming or computer experience. For example, I know many commercial programmers who have the most simplistic understanding of their OS, be it Linux, OSX or Windows. They don't understand the difference between CISC/RISC, nor do they exhibit a greater facility with various application than non-programmers. As I've said before, computer knowledge is a continuum, and trying to pigeonhole users into neat categories is foolish. There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. Neither are better than the other, and calling some normal with the subtext that they're inferior to computer geeks is elitist.