Errant-mel

@Errant-mel

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Errant-mel
@Errant-mel
johnnemann
@johnnemann
dante
@dante

thinking about this video and how the AlphaSmart was pretty well-known at the time that I was a youth, but also (anecdotally) there are so many stories these days of kids not really knowing how computers operate, having had most of their technological experiences on phones (which are cheaper, more accessible, and much more common).

and i don't want to be a complete anti-phone person here, but also it's definitely the case that technology (or at least, the common goal of a lot of computing and computer education) at the time that i was in elementary/middle school was designed primarily for people who had never used a computer before.

there's that theory about "digital natives vs digital immigrants"1 by Marc Prensky that i found particularly mindblowing in about high school or whenever when I first read it, since it felt so fascinating and optimistic, since to me as a high schooler i felt like i was Cool and Unique and the First Of A New Generation.

but the past decade or so has given me some significant doubt there -- and it's not due to the Kids Being Stupid. it's due to technology shifting away from a Transparent Device Catered To Provide Maximum Information To A User into an Opaque Device Meant To Guess What The User Wants And Provide It. newer generations do not feel like "digital natives" in the way i assumed they would because the realm of the "digital" changed.

the problem, as always imo, is not with the users, it's with the design trends and the people in power who set them. of course a more opaque device appealed to those who already felt they'd "outgrown" the comparatively verbose operating systems of the late-90s and early-00s. This also, of course, benefited tech companies, who no longer had to deal with users attempting to do things on their own and could simply work within the walled gardens provided, etc etc etc.

I'm sounding a bit like a FOSS crank right now and I know that, but what I'm really getting at is the fact that modern computing does not feel like it is built for a user who intends to understand the computing device as a tool. The modern layperson's computer (or much more often, phone) is being designed as more of an "appliance" than a proper "tool", and that's disappointing!

1editor's note: has not aged super well

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in reply to @dante's post:

Xuelder
@Xuelder

I wrote a post that intersects with this a couple months ago, and the conclusions I have come to over the last couple years is that we built computers more for usability than practicality. We are now victims of our own success, with kids coming into computer engineering courses without the ability to type nor the general knowledge of how file systems work.

I think your appliance vs tool metaphor is what I have been missing for a while. In my own terms, though, there's that old chestnut, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." I feel like instead of teaching a man to fish with a pole, explaining bait, how the tides correlate with fishing patterns, etc. we ended up just developing the solution equivalent of giving the man dynamite and assumed he had a net.

On an unrelated note, the AlphaSmart looks like what I am modding my RasPi 400 into.

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ghoulnoise
@ghoulnoise

i was a little stunned by how bad the kids were at Computer when i taught part time at an art school in 2017/2018

they learned a lot from me, lol (they had to make twine games in my class so they learned Twine and other programs like photoshop)

it also blew my mind that parents signed up kids who couldn't Type for a gamedev summer camp

some of the kids were totally fine, but with a few, we're talking excruciatingly slow two finger pecking. (and this observation is coming from someone who really only started typing somewhat properly in college.)

it's like the parents just assumed their kids can type because THEY had typing classes when THEY were in school

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Xuelder
@Xuelder

Our state got rid of typing and computer classes for high school around when I graduated 12 years ago. They just went on assuming that kids would grow up with computers and intrinsically know how they operate. Sometimes I have to wonder if this is a Principal Skinner Moment for millennials, we are banging around about proper filepaths and I/O management while the younger generations go "search function go brrrrrrrr."

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dante
@dante

it's like the parents just assumed their kids can type because THEY had typing classes when THEY were in school

this is exactly it, imo. texts like Digital Natives Digital Immigrants imply this too -- that future generations will just "get it". But the reason we "got it" is because the tech at the time when we were younger was designed to tell us all the info we needed, and our education was built to help us along in that!

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noahtheduke
@noahtheduke

The modern layperson's computer (or much more often, phone) is being designed as more of an "appliance" than a proper "tool", and that's disappointing!

Even that metaphor doesn't quite work, as every appliance in my kitchen has visible screws and somewhat simple circuitry, so I can (and do) open them up when they break or wear down to repair them or adjust them as I desire. My KitchenAid mixer, my coffee grinder, even my breadmaker and rice cooker, they're all more open than every piece of modern electronics I can purchase.

It's a real pain in the ass. :eggbug-sob:

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dante
@dante

This is true!! But like, technically you CAN do that with phones too. It's just that they're not really designed for it, which is what I'm getting at. It's an imperfect metaphor as all are, but I think you see what i mean, haha

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vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

What kills me is that there are two very different flavors of FOSS crank - explicitly socialist, which I count myself among, and explicitly libertarian - and the latter is IMO part of the problem by retreating into a wholly individualistic, "fuck you, i got mine [working Linux audio setup]" attitude whereby ordinary people use shitty appliances because they're "too dumb" and deserve all the hassles and none of the freedoms. When really it's plainly obvious how many people are left behind by tech capitalism, and humanity deserves better.

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