xenogears

a million shades of light

  • he/they

first and foremost i am here to amuse myself
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i love weird and bad video games, speedrunning, professional wrestling, and rodents
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i hate computers
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also found on:
discord (indextic)
twitch (indextic)
bluesky for the foreseeable future, i guess



look, you already read the title, click it if you want


(i'm about to ask a lot of questions that are very easily answered by "because capitalism only cares about profit" so i'm just acknowledging here that, yes, i do actually know why things are this way. my questions are more about like... why does nobody else think about it this way)

there's a type of post i see a lot lately that frames zoomer tech illiteracy as a kind of ignorance on their part. that someone could only possibly reach adulthood not knowing what a file or a folder is by trying very deliberately hard to not learn about it. and, sure, maybe there is a discussion to be had about the willingness to learn technical workings across generations, particularly during/after the internet's rise to ubiquity, but i don't think it's the appropriate conversation to have surrounding this kind of tech illiteracy

i would be willing to bet a large number of people that look down on those less technically educated than them would not be able to own a car if they couldn't take it to a mechanic. i sure as fuck wouldn't. have you ever looked under those hoods? there's so much shit in there. of course i'm paying some other person to know what those parts are

the reality is, pretty much everyone is interacting with something they really do not understand every single day. and i hate it. i fuckin' hate it, because a lot of the times these situations aren't created out of genuine interest in learning or using certain kinds of technology, but rather out of necessity because the world we've built expects you to have a baseline level of operational knowledge, even if it's something as simple as "create a new word document" or "make the car go forward and stop it before you hit things"

so many problems are created through people's use of devices they really shouldn't have been using or really didn't need to. i'm pretty sure we've all met or witnessed someone who should probably never operate a motor vehicle. these people are everywhere. why are they allowed to drive? why is this not something we entrust to people who have intimate knowledge of every working system within the vehicles they operate?

would our transport systems not be far more efficient if there were a few highly trained vehicle operators driving roads more optimally built for mass transit? would we not save countless lives by removing bad drivers from the roads? why have we accepted this?

with computers, i feel like it's a harder question to answer. unlike cars, there's a pretty good case for most people to own a personal computer. they make our lives easier, they're capable of many, many things, the internet can act as a hub of information... but, of course, also mis/disinformation. there is a lot to learn about computers and the internet that a basic user really doesn't need to know, and it's pretty hard to define a baseline "you must be this informed to ride the computer" knowledge base, but i think people should know the very basics of:

  • what major computer components do
  • how the internet works and how a browser serves web pages
  • directory structures
  • important files and locations on the computer
  • "Don't Fucking Touch These Folders"
  • how to spot a fake email/ad/download button/etc
  • having a shred of skepticism
  • a lot more

this is kinda where i run into my issue when discussing this for computers. they're complicated! there is a lot going on with computers! they're sending out like billions of electrical pulses every second or some shit i kinda lost count. there's a lot to learn. i think my problem isn't that all of this isn't taught but rather that, like, pretty much fucking none of it is

you don't have to know a fucking thing about computers, the internet, online safety, cybersecurity, anything at all to be able (and expected!) to operate a computer that could very well contain all of a company's important documents. now obviously that's not a very smart practice in the first place, but worse things have happened

much like how many people who own cars couldn't own them without a mechanic, i think a lot of computer owners couldn't own them without a friend who actually knows a little bit about how they work! there's pretty much no place in our lives where we're expected to actually learn the important things about computers aside from like, a few classes in school that aren't really focused on the topic nor really do much to drill the information into students' heads

i just think the complexity of technology is increasing too rapidly for us to continue as we have been with just throwing people into the deep end and seeing if they can swim. software companies in particular have been spending the last decades smoothing out and abstracting the user experience, which you might initially think alleviates this problem, but instead it creates a group of people who are great at performing basic tasks, but completely crumble once they have to go find a file that isn't in the quick access menu, or find a program that isn't on the desktop or the start menu

it also creates people like me, who can drive a car but have to spend hours on google or hundreds on mechanic visits to be able to fix the smallest issues with it. i don't really have much of a choice though! nobody really does!

it'd be so sick if i had a cool line to bring it all together at the end but i don't. i'll edit it in if i think of one


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in reply to @xenogears's post:

"it creates a group of people who are great at performing basic tasks, but completely crumble once they have to go find a file that isn't in the quick access menu" - Yup, and it sure doesn't help that Windows Explorer's default behavior is to hide file extensions.

Whenever I talk to someone who gets totally confused by that, it puts things into perspective for someone like me who's been (somewhat of) a power user for many years. And on the other side, phones still intimidate me. Feels like there are a lot of ways to screw up with stuff like data limits or privacy, and the rules can change as carrier policies / phone software keep getting updated.

100% agree on cars too. I may be an F-Zero girl, but IRL driving makes me tense, and I absolutely have no idea what's going on under the car hood. Wish there was decent public transit to rely on instead.

yeah i pretty much agree with all of this. the file extensions thing annoys me so much

i've never been able to figure out phones either, every now and then i learn a new trick but for the most part i just don't know how to do anything. feels like you just kinda have to already know how to do things on mobile operating systems

i actually really enjoy driving when it's not particularly busy but i would love to not feel like i had to drive to get anywhere around here