I was born in 1982. The very first PC I ever used was a Commodore 64 at school. When we got our first home PC in 1996, we kids had to learn everything: how to install things, how to fix driver or OS issues, how to get software and hardware working. You basically learned how things worked, because you needed to in order to fix them. And things broke frequently.
Back in those days, PC’s and the web were nerd domains. There was a knowledge barrier to entry.
When we had that first PC, my dad never used it. You couldn’t explain him how to use a right mouse button, much less anything else. To this day, he’s never touched an actual PC or laptop.
But you wouldn’t know it if saw you him on his iPad. He can stream things, email, send pictures to people, sell stuff online, talk with people… but he still has ZERO fucking idea how it works. They’ve dumbed everything down so much even a toddler and a chimp can use it. And my dad.
But people who grew up with toddler-proof iPads and phones never had to learn how they worked. They don’t know how to fix a thing if it doesn’t do what they want. I’ve had to help teens with phone and tablet issues, because they lacked the basic skills to diagnose and fix an issue.
I understand why people are now regressing to tech illiteracy - but it’s also frightening to see.
Yep. We’re pretty much the same age. I got a hold of a computer earlier than you did, though. It was definitely a different age of knowledge. I was flipping dip switches and upgrading ram to a whopping 4MB. Crazy that we’ve gone from 30Mhz to well over 3Ghz across 8+ cores.
It really is the proverbial double edged sword.
I was born in 1982. The very first PC I ever used was a Commodore 64 at school. When we got our first home PC in 1996, we kids had to learn everything: how to install things, how to fix driver or OS issues, how to get software and hardware working. You basically learned how things worked, because you needed to in order to fix them. And things broke frequently.
Back in those days, PC’s and the web were nerd domains. There was a knowledge barrier to entry.
When we had that first PC, my dad never used it. You couldn’t explain him how to use a right mouse button, much less anything else. To this day, he’s never touched an actual PC or laptop.
But you wouldn’t know it if saw you him on his iPad. He can stream things, email, send pictures to people, sell stuff online, talk with people… but he still has ZERO fucking idea how it works. They’ve dumbed everything down so much even a toddler and a chimp can use it. And my dad.
But people who grew up with toddler-proof iPads and phones never had to learn how they worked. They don’t know how to fix a thing if it doesn’t do what they want. I’ve had to help teens with phone and tablet issues, because they lacked the basic skills to diagnose and fix an issue.
I understand why people are now regressing to tech illiteracy - but it’s also frightening to see.
Yep. We’re pretty much the same age. I got a hold of a computer earlier than you did, though. It was definitely a different age of knowledge. I was flipping dip switches and upgrading ram to a whopping 4MB. Crazy that we’ve gone from 30Mhz to well over 3Ghz across 8+ cores.