Phones (and tablets) changed the way people use devices. It’s neither better or worse imo, I use both methods.
Idk, being born in the early 2000s didn’t make torrenting any harder. Dare I say, it was the opposite: in the 10s, when I got into all this this, there already was a bunch of well-established trackers with tons of content one could use without fear of downloading a piece of malware instead of a new shiny game, for example.
This is 100% not true as I have personally had several times where I got ransomware (though still the thing I wanted to download somehow?) in late 2000s / 2010s. Hasn’t happened a single time since, even downloading the most sketchy torrents. For a lot of younger people, if they want to torrent something they’re not looking at trackers or much of anything, they just want the download. Windows defender used to be complete trash at preventing viruses so you’d need to know to download things like malwarebytes and be a lot more wary of what you download, and even if the torrent is 100% legit you’d have random registry/driver/software issues. Now these issues are rare unless you’re downloading some custom software or a much older game.
The one thing I would say was a lot easier back then is it would say “xyz free download” and it actually would be the thing itself instead of random bloatware.
Generational wars doesn’t do anyone any favors.
Yeah and let’s not pretend that everyone back in 2002 was eMuling or torrenting and cracking videos games. I knew so many people who failed at ripping a CD to MP3 or copying it with a CD burner.
What war. It’s an acknowledgement of a historic shift. One generation received an education another didn’t out of necessity.
The subsequent ones need to fill the gap if they want to keep the knowledge. It’s been made available. Fuck we’re trying to pass it on.
I’m fucking using it even if you don’t
Acknowledging differences is not “war”.
as a high schooler with a special interest in computers, it’s genuinely surprising how poor most of my peers computers skills are. most of my peers don’t even know the very basics of folder structures.
also unrelated, let’s all love lain
folder
Directory?
Twenty years ago when I was 13, I started doing web stuff. This was back when everything was super simple, so everything to get a webserver up was super manual. I’ll mention port forwarding at my current job and there’s this slice of people that are 28-40 years old that know what I’m talking about.
I’m slightly younger than that even, currently finishing up my master’s but have been working as a backend dev for a couple of years.
I’ve learned an order of magnitude more about networking from just being in the vicinity of my girlfriend (who is a network technician) than from uni, and it’s definitely already paying off.
special interest
poor skill of peers
(I’m totally with you though)
I could swear there was a wildly similar version of this particular comic that was even more on point with reference to assembly call codes.
I blame google for the demise of well-organized folders. Their approach to email was “chuck it all in one big folder named Archive, and you can search for it using keywords that you will definitely remember when you need to find it again!”
It’s a useful tool, but paved the way for the current state of affairs where people get overwhelmed by their email because they have 150,000 unread emails in their inbox and as a result, don’t read an email until you tell them the entire contents of their email via the inferior messaging platform known as texting.
Idk. I blame Apple, and Android hasn’t done much to really bolster the need for file folders (not a bad thing, just lack of opportunity for learning).
But Apple actively prohibits its user base from engaging with folders, and has been for well over a decade - plenty long enough for my (millennial) generation to phase it out and for the generations after to never need them in the first place. Plus, emails aren’t dependent on file paths, whereas systems file paths are completely necessary.
Wait, with no folders how does apple deal with files these days? I’m a lifelong pc person so I have no idea
You may as well have asked this question in 2012 because it’s exactly the same as it was back then, except now there is iCloud. Which in some ways is impressive.
Folders are generic labels, Photos, Documents, Downloads, and within those there is folder structure, but I’ve never seen any Apple user actually utilize them beyond the most basic organizational functions (and even that is not common). Granted, my demographic for the past couple years has been the elderly, but before that I worked with kids and it was basically the same.
If you use Apple products, you don’t need folder structures because you can’t take files off your device easily, it basically has to go through some form of cloud upload, if not iCloud then Google Drive. And you don’t need folder structures for the same reason, cause why are you adding files to your device from somewhere that isn’t iCloud?
This is only like 95% facetious, it’s actually ridiculous how closed off Apple makes their products. By default when you make a spreadsheet with Apple’s software it exports as a .pages file, instead of the actually useful .xls. This is for every. Single. Program. Word files, PowerPoint files, I’m sure there’s even a PDF specific Apple file format.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I have been using macOS for years for nearly a decade and have used a normal folder structure with folders and subfolders just like I use now. Only that macOS allowed the additional tagging with keywords of files and folders, that made searching easier. Granted I stopped using anything more modern than macOS Catalina, because that was the last thing that was supported on my old macbook, and after tinkering with wine, homebrew and the like for a few years I got a new laptop on which I installed linux because the hoops I had to jump through to get most modern software I needed for my studies working was getting absurd; I do have a bone to pick with apple for their software support. So I am definitively not the average macOS user and do not know what they did afterwards with the OS.
But you can use both the apple office suite to export to common microsoft office files or you can install the microsoft suite or libre office or whatever else. And the apple ‘Preview’ to view and edit both images and PDFs was one of the nicest image and pdf viewers I’ve ever used. And just the usal ways of attaching a file on an email or dumping it on a usb stick worked, if you did not want to use one of the myriad cloud services. So unless apple removed all usb-slots from their hardware or nukes the device once a thumb drive is detected I really do not understand what you are talking about, facetious or not. Hate apple for their planed and enforced obsolescence of otherwise working tech, not for their noncompliance with data formats, or otherwise mostly imagined problems. Stops ranting
As a user you can’t access the filesystem. It’s completely abstracted away. At least this was the case for the iPhone 6
I just watched lain some weeks ago without knowing what I have let me into 😂 got pretty confused, but I think in the end I got it. Probably…
I’ve tried watching it about 5 times and get to different points before I burn out.
It has sparked an interest in the works of R.D. Laing for who Lain is named in reference to.
A Psychologist who was active in the 60’s and is famous for their work with schizophrenics; I’ve been curious if their work may give a bit more context to understand Serial Experiments Lain
Wait what sites are down? Just checked the ones I normally use and they’re fine?
Also, just to say, I think there’s this big learning curve with torrents cause people aren’t straight forward with others ask for advice (told what not to do rather than what to do) and there’s also just too much fear mongering about viruses.
It’s like cars. Almost everyone has one and can drive it but don’t know how it works. Computers have become that. There are some who know or have an idea of how it works and others who can use it but have no idea.
I’m the computer guy for my car guy and small engine guy. When I introduced them I became our group’s guy guy. I don’t really know anyone I just help people with their computers in conversations when I’m trying to fill my knowledge gaps.
Yeah I think that’s a decent comparison. There are of course still hobbyists and enthusiasts today who know a lot about cars despite not being professionals working in a related field, but it does feel like the general understanding among the public has fallen because the cultural phenomenon of a father teaching his son about cars has dissipated. Piracy has always been a niche activity but the core skills and knowledges it requires were taught more to millennials than they were to zoomers. If people have grown up with less education about motor engines or desktop computers then it’s not surprising they struggle to expand on that later in life.
The expense of tools, equipment and supplies can be a huge barrier to car maintenance but there is so much legitimately free software for computers (even ignoring the pirated stuff) that people never had so much opportunity.
If is like learning another language or a musical instrument, people have to be committed and practice to get good and few people can make the effort. Businesses have trained people to seek instant gratification from fast food, social media, tik tok, gambling, loot boxes, and consumerism in general because short lived and unfulfilling experiences produce an endless monetization opportunity. The rare people with the discipline and support to focus their efforts have massive advantages with access to information and tools which were very difficult in the past. There are some prodigies out there in a sea of mediocrity.
Yeah but cars have become increasingly more complex over the last 20 years. You basically need an EEPROM arduino kit these days just to get the fucking diagnostics out of the car, because someone decided that analog circuits were just too much bulk
I think their metaphor is referring to ease of use and the knowledge required for use. I have a few personal anecdotes as examples.
I’m an eighties kid. My first PC was a Commodore 64 and my first car was a 1966 VW Bug. Neither was reliable nor easy to use. I had to learn to utilize interfaces that were more finicky and complex than modern equivalents, and I spent a great deal of time learning how to make them work when they glitched out or were broken. The alternative was not having them at all. It was hard to get BBS advice when your PC took a dump and no one else you knew had one you could use, and then where would you get car advice? Certainly not from my dad!
A kid growing up with an Apple anything and driving a 20 year old car doesn’t face the same kinds of difficulties. Many things just work more reliably and aren’t as difficult to use. One can easily buy gaming systems now where we often had to build our own to get what we wanted. My buddy’s 23 year old daughter had never even heard of CLI. That’s all I had!
It doesn’t make one generation better than the other - younger people today are skilled in ways I could have only dreamed of. We just have different opportunities for excellence.
younger people today are skilled in ways could have only dreamed of.
Any examples?
Hell yeah. My experience may be skewed due to my field, but I’ve noticed my Gen Z peers are SO much better at critical thinking. If someone asks most of my millennial coworkers to do something, they generally just do it. Ask one of my Gen Z coworkers and they’ll usually ask you why, often followed by probing questions to better understand what they’re doing. They’re full of healthy skepticism.
As a cohort, they’re also better at enforcing work/life balance. I’ve been fighting for employee rights for years but for so long felt like I was alone. Now I’m at home with the newer coworkers who (politely) tell their bosses to fuck off when asked to do extra unpaid work (we’re all salaried) or to work outside of their job description.
While many aren’t technically advanced - many couldn’t build or troubleshoot a broken PC - they are as a group fairly technically capable, having uniformly been raised using technology. Teaching my computer illiterate boss to use Excel is so frustrating that it feels like repeatedly punching myself in the side of the head. Teaching my equally Excel-unskilled, twenty-something coworker the same is a breeze. He has no fucking idea what he’s doing, but he picks it right up. He knows how to use a PC, just not how to use Excel in particular. My boss knows neither.
I absolutely love working with them, Gen Z is the best.
Thanks. Gives me hope. Would you also say the males are less constrained by the macho culture of older generations? More capable of talking about emotions?
And women less constrained by their own old stereotypes?
I find it hard to be sure because both stereotypes are still alive and popular. The gender benders have been around for decades but perhaps not as flamboyant now so they merely seems more mainstream now.
Lain?
♥️
LET’S ALL LOVE LAIN
and you don’t seem to understand…
How do you come to that conclusion with so little information about me?
Present day. Present time.
😂👌🏻
はい、そうです。
That’s why they made streaming media. Worked good, didn’t it?
I can’t even tell you what us Gen Xers did because I am not sure if the statutes of limitations have run.
Vaguely, it involved ftp and file repositories hosted unwittingly by large companies plus restricted IRC channels to discuss the locations of such places.
> restricted
More like walking into fansub channels and doing !get and walking away with DC++ info
Unless you killed somebody, the statutes of limitations have run.
I still remember the “dumb” tech was AOL warez chatrooms where you interacted with a chat bot to get an email with lists of scene games, movies and other stuff in the traditional multi-RAR parts, and you’d individually request them a few at a time to be emailed. Then you’d move to IRC when you found out could be done faster, or BBSes.
I’ve probably forgotten most of how things worked.
I remember installing a keylogger on the school library computers, then “accidentally” disconnecting the dialup internet and asking the teacher to type the login credentials again. I bet the ISP was confused when they saw so many concurrent logins after hours, all playing Quake and downloading huge files.
I miss my college days, Terabytes upon terabytes of “Linux ISOs” accessible via the blazing fast internal university network. And the IRC channel, where I learned what trolling was, but never learned to not feed the trolls.
Linux came out after I graduated. In my era I had 100s of 3.5inch floppy disks to hold the plunder from sailing the high seas.
I can’t even tell you what us Gen Xers did
They watched tv and traded tapes.
Without seeds, torrents become almost useless, and many pirate sites offer rare and hard-to-find movies/animes whose torrent versions never download because their seeds are practically extinct forever. So I don’t think this is a weak complaint. If torrents didn’t have this weakness I would always choose to use them but…
The usenet has many treasures
Usenet is awesome, but the fact that you have to pay for Usenet access defeats the main purpose of pirating for a lot of people.
Don’t get me wrong, it is super cheap(60$-100$/year?) and worth it to pay for Usenet from what I understand, but as a poor kid that discovered torrenting out of necessity, paying for Usenet back then would’ve been out of the question. I imagine a lot of Gen Z kids feel the same about it at this point in their lives.
Especially if you buy access via 2 providers on different backbones. Haven’t had a single failed/incomplete download since.
No.
I’ve pointed this out on another account on this very community through KBin Social.
And I was talking about how lazy and entitled pirates across all ages have become overtime. That we were losing more and more sources that had withstood a long standing of time. And one moment everyone is going “RAH RAH! HYDRA! CUT ONE DOWN AND MORE COME UP!” but when we lose some of which that have yet to return or take it’s place, the attitude grows weak. Almost desperate.
And it’s due in part how most of the pirates just take and take, but never give back. On r/piracy and sometimes on here, people are making posts wondering where they can get free stuff and how they can get free stuff. They don’t care about the technicalities, they don’t care about the cause of piracy, they don’t care at all. It’s always “give me free shit, thanks, bye”. There are few pirates out there doing the work and it’s just so that these lazy and entitled pirates can just take and take.
But when we lose sources, they scatter away like cockroaches and all that they can think about is asking where it is that they can get free shit. It’s almost like consumerism but for free shit, it’s annoyingly disturbing. It’s not about wanting the new product, it’s about wanting the source to mooch off from.
I sadly predict in time that the whole hydra ideology will just simply become the way the Pirate Bay has become, just a symbol, but will it mean anything? It’ll be so if this whole trend continues and all generations are just as guilty to doing it.
The best pirates are librarians with legit ethics.
Preserve human knowledge and make it available to everyone.
I hate that you are right about mostly just greedy dipshits pissing in the high seas without contributing.
We should have taken up arms after Aaron Swartz…
I agree with the sentiment that it’s very easy to underestimate the harm done by the loss of a major site or scene group, but I’m not sure I really agree with much else you’ve written here. In particular:
And it’s due in part how most of the pirates just take and take, but never give back. On r/piracy and sometimes on here, people are making posts wondering where they can get free stuff and how they can get free stuff. They don’t care about the technicalities, they don’t care about the cause of piracy, they don’t care at all. It’s always “give me free shit, thanks, bye”.
The people making those posts have minimal exposure to piracy. This is getting your feet wet. For me, contributing my share is saying that I think these users deserve access. Yeah, they wouldn’t have a place on a private tracker, that’s not a problem because they’re not on a private tracker, and if they join one they won’t stay for long if they neglect seeding.
I’m sure a lot of these people will continue their lives without seeding or contributing. I won’t say I endorse that, but I’m cool with it, and even if I wasn’t I still don’t think an argument can made that the harms of any hypothetical injustice here outweigh the benefits from a single dedicated pirate that began their journey this way.
I care about uploader counts, about seeder counts, about the wellbeing of the people who maintain the infrastructure. I’m invested. I don’t care about download counts. Looking at an unseeded download as a loss in seeder count makes exactly the same amount of sense to me as looking at a download as a lost sale. I think it’s morally right to support pirates who will not end up contributing, and beyond that I think treating them with kindness a net plus for the cause, because less than 100% of them will just say “give me free shit, thanks, bye”.
To complete if you share back and join or multiple private trackers you can get all latest contents.
I remember learning the whole torrenting process after years of irc, newsgroups and p2p clients. It took a bit of time but, man, was I passionate about dumping everything I could on to SuprNova way back.
Anymore, I only package and share on private trackers, its just too much of a risk to seed out to public ones. And being completely honest, the majority of my dl’s are coming from newsgroups again. It’s just a simpler process and I don’t feel the leech anxiety.
That said, I also keep an eye out for requests and try to fill bounties whenever I can.
I think the gap stems from need. Most people only learn what they absolutely need to. My sister and I are just 3 years apart in age. Yet I am pretty familiar with tech, while she knows next to nothing. I was always there to fix whatever broke. Even now she knows that if she needs to watch something, she can just ask me to add it to my Jellyfin server. I often have to remote into her system to fix stuff.
The Gen Z we’re talking about here mostly grew up using phones, and phone OSes do their best to hide any complexity away from the user. So they never learnt anything. I’m also technically Gen Z (very early), but growing up in rural India, I had to teach myself how to pirate since streaming wasn’t a thing yet, and the local theater didn’t play anything except local mainstream cinema.
Teaching college students, I agree that phones and ‘need’ are largely the culprit.
Loss of typing skill, trouble shooting skill, and file directory skill.
Better at cameras generally
I also teach college students lol. People can’t even figure out how to upload assignments from their phone. Had a student tell me that she broke her laptop, so can’t submit an assignment even though it was already written. She was gonna scan it from her phone, airdrop to her laptop, and then upload the files to Canvas. I tried to explain that she can do it on the mobile app for Canvas instead. I eventually had to give up and asked her to drop it at my office.
She was gonna scan it from her phone, airdrop to her laptop, and then upload the files to Canvas.
When you know how to use the entire toolbox, but only if you can use the entire toolbox…in order.
Congrats on making me want to pull my youngest from public school for a year or so, so I can teach her typing, scripting, the command line, etc … (also, phonics) … Blows my mind that TYPING as a late-elementary-school glass is basically gone in our school district, nor is it a class that’s even available in middle or high-school.
I agree with Chapo. Maybe you can teach these things in addition to what your kid learns at school? Might be a fun way to spend time together anyway.
That’s how we handled it when we home-schooled the older three for a while. They ultimately asked to go back to regular school, but they had stayed ahead of their peers.
also, phonics
Giving up on phonics was a horrible idea. I’m not sure whose to blame for that but it clearly was a disaster.
Its definitely not all students and, in reality, I believe every generation has been deskilled to diff degrees. So, while these skills are noticeably worse with Gen z than it is with millennials, many young people I meet come to college with some or all of these skills.
So I think you could go with a less extreme intervention lol
Why do you think “many” come to you with all of these skills? Home-schooling is more common than ever. Most homeschoolers we met were also restricted to older or no tech… Even no tech seems to be better than consumption focused devices.
Even no tech seems to be better than consumption focused devices.
It is far preferable to teach old relatives, who have never touched a computer, how to do basic things than it is to try to introduce a better or faster or freer way to those who have already been exposed to the officially ordained Microsoft or Apple way of doing things that should be simple.
I really doubt homeschooling has much to do with it. Some subset of every gen is good with tech.
The one homeschool kid Im working with this semester is terrified to use the telephone. Their entire experience in home school education was largely sitting in virtual classrooms
Jellyseerr is your friend. She can request whatever and you can get alerts to add it. Even if your stuff isn’t automated
I know about Jellyseerr, but I find it not worth it since there are very few people that send me requests. Messaging apps are enough for that.
Whatever works for you, simple is always better
I think it’s more a generational gap in basic computer skills.
Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux. We understand computers (mostly) and the (various) paradigms they use.
Gen Z is what I refer to as the iPad generation (give or take a few years). Everything’s dumbed down and they never had to learn what a folder is or why you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in “Documents” library and just using search. (i.e. throw everything in a junk drawer and rummage through it as needed).
As with millennials who can’t balance a checkbook or do basic household tasks, I don’t blame Gen Z for not learning; I blame those who didn’t teach them. In this case, tech companies who keep dumbing everything down.
Edit: “Balance a checkbook” doesn’t have to mean a physical transaction log for old school checks. It just means keeping track of expenditures and deposits so that you know the money in your account is sufficient to cover your purchases. You’d be surprised how many people my age can’t manage that.
you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in “Documents” library and just using search.
nobody look at my downloads folder. It’s fine. I promise.
Organizing my downloads has been on my to do list for… Four, I think? Yeah, four… phones…
Datahoarder checking in:
Never delete 🫡
Zettelkasten users:
I’ve been interested in Zettelkasten for a few years, since I discovered Obsidian, but I’ve never been able to quite get the hang of it enough to make it stick
Obsidian user as well. I like to think of it that tags are folders.
When you put something in a folder, you have to choose one of the files identities. Tags more or less allow you to assign a file to any number of groups.
So if you’re writing about an NPC in a DnD campaign, for example: That NPC will exist in a certain place. He will be associated with particular guilds and he will have certain moves that you might want to keep track of. You can later easily search by a guild or a move or a place and there will be a link to that NPC and others that share those indentifying characteristics.
A big advantage of zettelkasten is that you don’t need to really worry about file management in the sense of needing to make exclusionary choices.
Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux
Only the oldest millenials did. When the youngest were born, the internet and Windows 95 were readily available and they were in middle school when the iPhone came out.
Yea, I’m a millenial, and I remember mostly only interacting with old Macintosh LCs in elementary school, and then Windows 95 and up after that. My uncle had an old Tandy computer running DOS, that I remember at least learning how to run a game on, but by the time I was interacting with a computer, regularly, Windows 95 and AOL were the most common thing.
We did have some DOS games on CD during the Windows 95/98 era, though. Lemmings always ran better if you dropped down to DOS and ran it from there instead of trying to run it through Windows, for instance.
Trouble is that there are enough millennials who also have absolutely no clue about computers. Between dude-bros who won’t touch that nerd shit and girls who got told by their nerd boyfriend’s that the computer will start to burn if they click anything besides their allowed icons a vast majority of people are glad if they know how to turn on the computer and print out their document.
Yes, there are probably a lot more computer literate millennials than in other generations. But even there it pretty much depends on family and friends. And in a pirate community on Lemmy most of the people will belong to the tech savvy bubble.
In our friend group even the most computer illiterate kid knew how to set up a LAN without a DHCP server. Their younger siblings had no idea a LAN was even a thing.
My wife’s ex always told her that she couldn’t understand how to work with a computer. Her older brother who works in IT wouldn’t explain anything to her either. They were pretty astonished when they heard that she had installed a GPU by herself (which most people here know is trivial). Which gave her enough confidence to fix her VCR by herself.
They were pretty astonished when they heard that she had installed a GPU by herself (which most people here know is trivial). Which gave her enough confidence to fix her VCR by herself.
Anyone can learn any skill if they actually invest the time.
And regarding the older brother, you learn pretty quickly working help desk that users generally don’t care what the problem is or why it happened. They just want to get back to work and not have it happen again. After a while you get conditioned to just be friendly and solve the issue without explaining what you’re doing or why.
I appreciate this measured take. Whenever generational differences get brought up, they oftentimes seemed framed as if generations are biologically different creatures or willfully choosing to be stupid in some sector. In all, or at least must cases, it’s what you suggest: people responding and developing based on what the environment has presented them.
This is part of why I, who am part of Gen Z, am actually really thankful that I didn’t get access to iPad until 9 (first gen, it might still be around here somewhere, kinda wonder if it’ll ever become a relic) and phone until 13, but did have access to a super old windows computer. It taught me how to install mods in Minecraft. It was astronomically difficult for me at that time with my limited understanding and all the fake green “Download here!” buttons that kept duping me and installing tons of bloatware and even malware onto the PC (yet another reason why AdBlock is a privacy and security concern, honestly deadass don’t let kids use a computer without it). But eventually I caught on and got good at identifying the scams from a young age and was able to teach other kids, and even eventually got into command stuff and writing my own mods. I memorized all of the block and item IDs before the flattening, but after that I was so disheartened that all my memorization was useless I kinda just stopped and never got really good at it. But still, just from that alone my computer knowledge was way ahead of other people’s around that time, and you might even say it set the foundation for my now linux-using open-source-contributing fediverse-loving self hahaha
Honestly I should have a bit of respect for zeds and alphas who grow up around locked black boxes and still despite that manage to come out the other side knowing how to use something like terminal or git.
Exactly. Basically nobody in their 30s can, say, drive a manual car without a synchro, unless they specifically practiced it, because there is zero need to learn that skill. And basically nobody under 20 can set port forwarding on a router because there is basically zero need for that skill.
When I wanted sound on Arkanoid, I HAD to learn IRQ settings, so I did. But now that stuff just works.
I’m a zillenial that had a manual that blew its clutch while I was out and I had to relearn how to drive it back home, that was scaryfun. Where does that put me?
I thought this was going to be an American joke about automatics, but then realised that this is like when I explained to younger colleagues that I just drove my car home ‘crash gearbox style’ when the clutch failed, some were amazed that it was even possible. (Match the revs and feel the gear mesh) Edited to add: when I first tried linux on a pc with CRT monitor, to get a gui going I had to roll my own modeline. Bzzt, oh not that value, ctrl-c try another one. Such funsies
I had the same thing happen to me on my manual. Kinda cemented my love/fascination with manuals. Too bad my partner wanted an automatic :( … next time~
The first 24’ truck I learned in was a manual. Hated it but felt like a pimp shifting without the clutch.
I don’t know how many time I answered the same thing to the exact same argument but here goes:
In short, it’s most likely not true. You’re implying the the millennials were generally more competent but it’s very likely wrong, the vast majority of people in that gen had absolutely no clue what they were doing on a computer most of the time they just knew how to do a few limited things with them.
The apps didn’t make the masses tech illiterate, the app adjusted to the existing ones and removed the stuff they couldn’t never understand, like where to save a file to be able to find it later. (I’ve worked in a support call center and I can tell you with 98.5% accuracy that the lost file is in system32).
The gen-z has quite a lot of smart, curious tech savvy people, and a vast majority of tech-illiterate people, so did the millenial, and the X, and the boomers.
This whole generational superiority argument is just as baseless as it was when my gen was blaming yours for being lazy, not able to learn anything due to a short attention span and an obsession for brunch and avocado toast.
I actually hire engineers and I do notice that the zoomers seem to have less general computing and IT skills, though I think some of that has to do with how the curriculum has changed. Software engineering and CS is just way more specialized than it used to be and isn’t just a slow evolution from computer engineering these days. So you don’t get that broad computing background which starts with electrodynamics and works up through digital design, comms, networking, and ultimately software.
For my purposes, this knowledge is a big part of what differentiates a developer from an engineer (and proper computer science is a different thing entirely) which has made it really difficult to figure out what to expect from a software engineering degree.
How do I delete this useless, obtuse, and inaccessible folder so I never lose my files again‽
Personally, I think both of these perspectives have truth to them but neither is the whole story.
True, there are tech savvy people in every generation, and the majority of each generation isn’t necessarily tech savvy.
But it’s also true that the tech savvy people today are growing up in a world where technology has been obfuscated and simplified whereas formerly tech savvy people didn’t have a choice but to learn the ropes to be involved at all, which meant there was more need for Millennial tech savvy people to understand the basics, while there is no such equivalent need for Gen Z.
I agree, I think many are overselling the impact of that, but it has an impact nonetheless, however small.
I know this is true or I wouldn’t have such trouble explaining to crypto (specifically NFT) enthusiasts why counting bits matters and how there is limited “space” inside an NFT for nothing but a simple URL. If you grew up in the 80’s or 90’s and were learning ANY amount of networking, counting bits for subnets in IPv4 was pretty much a requirement. Now a lot of networking is obfuscated and automated with IPv6, which is finally coming into its own, and a side effect is that understanding these limitations of the technology has flown out the window for buzzwords like “smart contracts.”
You make the same mistake as the previous person. You take the exemple of the minority of people who cared to try to understand how computer worked and generalize it to the entire gen.
I have thousands of people in my office that prove everyday that millenial are for the most part tech illiterate and do not care about how thing works. I’ve seen the millenial arrive in the work env and the gen-z and there is absolutely no difference. Millenial were exactly as dumb (or as smart). If anything, I think gen-z are actually smarter because they come in not believing the corporate bullshit the X and the Y drank like cool-aid. But that’s another topic.
In any case, all the stuff we had to go through didn’t make us smarter, for every 10,000 of people of my gen who learned they had to edit autoexec.bat to launch a game, I’d bet that barely one knew what the heck himem.sys actually was. That didn’t make them smarter, just monkeys who learned a trick.
So yeah, geeky gen-Z don’t need to tweak as many parameters, they can directly launch fusion 360 and start designing parts for their 3D printers. Tech has moved on. Gen-Z geeks fiddle with other stuff than shitty windows drivers.
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Relying on edge cases in either generation is pointless. Millenials had zero tech support to help them for everything you need to do on computers.
How to load a program: Nowadays - touch the icon on the screen. Millenials - Load"$“,8 LIST LOAD"LEISURESUIT*”,8,1 (wait 10 min.) RUN
How to install a game: Nowadays - Click BUY on game store and choose INSTALL. Millenials - Learn MSDOS basics, Type a series of 5 commands without typos
How to configure game settings: Nowadays - Play with volume sliders, Graphics preferences, and game difficulty. Millenials - Edit config.sys or autoexec.bat to ensure device drivers are loaded, load game, assign proper IRQ, DMA variables to get your SOUNDBLASTER card to play sound, select game difficulty
How to setup a printer: Nowadays - go to manufacturers website and download drivers, run setup.exe, plug in printer to USB port. Millenials - Check Device manager in Windows to determine COM port and other relevant variables. Set values in word processing software. Employ Minor in mechanical engineering to align or correct bad ink ribbon with perforated track runners. Repeat fixes every 5 pages ad nauseum.
All that BS and more required hours of research to learn how to do in an era where guidance was buried in some sketchy newsgroup where ‘Rick Rolling’ was seeing if you’d notice “Deltree c:” in the instructions, and not just a simple 20 second video on TikTok.
I work with children using Ipads and that one kid who doesn’t get lost if the relevant icon is missing in the UI is the one I know is going to be trouble. They say average IQ increases by 3 every generation and this is the first one I don’t think that trend will hold for because they aren’t required to think at all ever.
Having to search out codecs even, that was a big thing back in the day. My entire school was passing around videos on floppies an cds and learning about codecs to play the Pamela Anderson tape it seemed like. Years after it was on vhs I think
Your analysis fits neatly into what the book Because Internet describes as different waves of “internet people”. First were geeks who went there before it was mainstream, second us millennials growing up as it is getting mainstream, alongside older folks forced to use it at work or voluntarily at home. Third wave are GenZ growing up when everything is easy already and, ironically, also even older folks now that it’s accessible for them.
You say that like other generations don’t also just save everything to the desktop.
It’s not about generations at all. Some people who grew up with early computers may have used them but never really “got it”.
Almost like the education system was meant as a long term investment to turn out a profit instead of “education”
Born in late ‘80, I’m borderline. A Xennial, I guess.
Just yesterday I was groping on Mastodon that so much of Linux is done via the command line, which messes me up because I’ve only ever really used OSs with a GUI. Sure, we had a family C64, but my brother would load the games for me. Then we got a ‘proper’ Windows PC, where I stayed until I got my first Mac in ‘07.
I’m not unfamiliar with doing stuff in Terminal, but all I really do is follow instructions I find online.
You must have big hands if you can grope a mastodon!
(In all seriousness youtube “command line basics” or “bash basics” and follow along with a video or two like it’s a class, helped me when I ditched windows.)
I mean that is usually all it takes, and as time passes you learn, provided you have the will to do exactly what you are doing and you have an interest in understanding it.
I think your first paragraph only applies to US or US-like countries. I learned how to navigate unregulated Internet to download most things I could fit, and then expanded into more technical knowledge as I grew up. I know of the things you said in your first paragraph now, but I did not grow up beside them to have learned what I know today, or even what I knew back then. These computers were expensive (for us?) at first, so very few people had them, and then a few years later they were more abundant and easier for us to even have a chance to learn about them.
Who owns a checkbook? I also didn’t need to learn cursive, or how to take care of a horse. If you want to learn something you will.
“Balance a checkbook” doesn’t have to mean a physical transaction log. It just means keeping track of expenditures and deposits so that you know the money in your account is sufficient to cover your purchases. You’d be surprised how many people my age can’t manage that. Also, at first, I read that as “Who owns a Chromebook?” lol.
Outside of using cursive for my signature, yeah, I’ve never used it in real life.
If you want to learn something you will.
True, but we learned computing because we had to.
You don’t learn to drive in a round about, or use the automatic checkout, or a thousand other things that have changed…
By the time I was born, checks weren’t in regular use here anymore. I’ve never seen one in real life. I’m 27
You probably do not know b/c reddthat has downvotes disabled, but people are downvoting your comment.
I find it the height of irony that your comment, which is relevant and contributes to the conversation, is receiving the “*I* personally do not like this idea” treatment.
A comment that aims to provide a more balanced perspective, to round out the discussion beyond “things should be the way that I am most comfortable with”, and offering not only logical facts but very relevant personal experience.
RedditLemmy can be so toxic sometimes. :-|I like the lack of downvotes, it’s nice. I get to focus on arguments being made. If someone wants to tell me they disagree, they’re going to have to actually tell me
35 and I’ve used cheques 2x in my life
I’m also in my 30s and I’ve used a bit over a hundred checks. Mostly for paying rent.
As yet another 30-something year old I’ve never even seen a cheque. Is that a USA thing?
45 year old here, I remember my father using cheques a long time ago. (non-USAian)
the only people who know how to torrent are the ones that want to learn. the learning curve is gentler than a walk-in shower. I’ve shown people of all ages and all tech backgrounds, though recommending VPN connections and getting that going does throw a few.
anyway, it’s so easy, it’s crazy compared to the old days of usenet, ZIP disks, ftp sites, .is files, and sequenced RAR files. this is the golden age of piracy and I love it.
The tools were annoying but the process wasn’t very hard. Unprotected FTPs were pretty common early on and IRC download bots were around before torrenting. Sharing applications like Kazaa, Scour, Limewire, and Napster were super simple. There were fewer roadblocks. I wouldn’t want to explain to someone how to get a private invite, understand the trackers rules, and ensure they do not get VPN leaks.
What’s there to learn? You just simply download a client, go into thepiratebay (if it still exists, dunno, havent torrented a thing for like 10 years), click download and wait.
thepiratebay still exists but is regarded as untrustworthy and infested with malware. I’d say knowing you’re getting something from a trustworthy source is harder than it used to be.
And these days magnet links are everywhere, making it even a little simpler
It is more difficult than a few years ago, especially if you don’t want to get sued or get a threatening letter from your ISP.
I would only torrent with a VPN and a private tracker. It’s certainly not difficult to learn, but absolutely requires some small amount of information to acquire.
If you had real shitty internet back in the day (read 56k modem) and you liked to play russian roulette you would dump satellite traffic with a skystar2 DVB-S card. You never knew what you’d get realistically, found some true gems underneath mountains of coal in the day of (still) unfiltered internet.
That’s wild. Did you need a special program to parse stuff out of the data stream? I guess it would mostly come in as http reaponses, so it wouldn’t be too hard, but still an interesting problem.
Yep, used Skygrabber, you could filter out files depending on extensions, filenames etc and could narrow out what you wanted. Still had no real way of knowing what you’d end up with as you were effectively just passively listening on the satellite traffic. It was wild as you could fill out a 40 gig drive overnight without issues in the era where people were downloading a MP3 album for hours.
