[HN Gopher] The digital natives are not who you think they are
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The digital natives are not who you think they are
Author : ingve
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-05-12 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.torh.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.torh.net)
| jackjeff wrote:
| I'm always reluctant to generalize. If I remember correctly most
| people from our generation (the author and myself) were pretty
| bad at using computer. Computer Geeks were a fairly minority.
|
| I see the same thing in my son's class. There's a couple of kids
| who can mess around with HTML and JavaScript and programmable
| LEGO. But they're all well versed in social media in the same way
| we could all type on a T9 keyboard.
| worker767424 wrote:
| This is confusing knowing how to use technology with knowing how
| technology works under the hood. I can drive a a car, but I'm a
| shit mechanic, and only vaguely know how to go about designing an
| engine.
| [deleted]
| mmcgaha wrote:
| The first time I heard the phrase digital native was about ten or
| so years ago from a then 22-year-old guy in IT. I get what he was
| saying; most of his life he had digital devices and internet
| access so it was more ingrained in his psyche. He was trying to
| use it as a differentiation between him and the rest of us old
| farts. Of course he did not have enough context to realize that
| folks older than him were no less digital native with our own
| computers, video games and slide rule calculators.
|
| At the end of the day it is just a term millennials used to
| market themselves in the tech community. I am sure the kids born
| in the 2010s will come up with their own differentiations (first
| always connected generation maybe?).
| swiley wrote:
| I'm a millennial and have never heard anyone younger than my
| parents use this phrase.
|
| I've always hated it for similar reasons, the "digital natives"
| are mostly just used to being slaves to cooperate software
| publishers/authors and don't understand the freedom that a
| properly configured PC provides.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > When it comes down to the meat and potatoes, they do not know
| jack shit.
|
| Don't forget to tell the kids to get off your lawn after you're
| done shaking your fist at that cloud.
|
| I find it pretty difficult to believe that, in the age of
| universal instant access to technology information at every level
| of abstraction, "kids these days" are somehow _less_
| knowledgeable about computers than they were in the author 's
| glory days of, presumably, the early-to-mid 80's - "I grew up
| with the 286, 386, 486 and all the other x86'es."
|
| If I had to, I'd bet that just as many (or just as few, depending
| on your perspective) "kids" get their hands dirty (as it were)
| with the guts of computing as ever have - and having written this
| out, my assertion sounds absurdly conservative. How is it
| possible that more kids don't know more?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'm a late millennial, born in 93. I've met a few of the
| vintage computing nerds in my travels, and am constantly
| impressed by the depth of their knowledge.
|
| I wouldn't say that young people are bad at _using_ a computer,
| or even building/servicing them, but we don't understand the
| technology in the same way the older generation had to.
| "Computing" just isn't a hobby the way it used to be.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| Old man yells at children to get off his lawn
| kortex wrote:
| That's still not what "digital natives" means. Yes, sure, there's
| millenial nerds like myself that had to actually know a bit about
| computers to use them. That's not the point.
|
| Digital natives were born after the inception of the internet. If
| they don't want to use it to learn about computers, or hobbies,
| or ancient history, that's their prerogative. But I bet the
| percent of young folks enriching their minds is about the same
| nowadays as back then. But now, they are outnumbered by general
| users. No, you don't get 1337 skillzors by osmosis, that's not
| the point of Digital Natives. The point is they were born with
| greater intellectual opportunities than any prior generation.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > The point is they were born with greater intellectual
| opportunities than any prior generation.
|
| Nope they weren't. This is the _least_ intellectual generation
| since the latest 60 years or more. There 's nothing
| "intellectual" about following the latest popular trends on
| Facebook or Twitter.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| That's not what they said. The parent said they're born with
| more intellectual opportunities than other generations. In
| other words, they have more content to fulfil whatever
| intellectual curiousities they want.
|
| > There's nothing "intellectual" about following the latest
| popular trends on Facebook or Twitter
|
| This just comes off as smug and self-serving bs.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I think there absolutely are more intellectual opportunities.
| On the flip side I also believe the absolute number of
| distractions have increased by an amount that seems to dwarf
| the productive activities.
| tomrod wrote:
| The author has a point. I disagree with it fairly strongly
| however.
|
| "Digital Native" doesn't meant built digital, it means uses
| digital means first.
|
| I get it's a slippery concept. YouTube creator sounds like a
| narcissistic ploy. It is, to a minor degree, but it's creating
| content for others to use.
|
| So to map an analogy, this guy is complaining about people using
| the roads he builds and knows how to build, and fails to
| recognize the farmer, the opera singer, the teacher, the Cloud
| Engineer, and so on that use those roads regularly.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Something that's missing in all of this is why the author was
| into computers. They obviously were, and running a homelab is as
| good of a hobby as any, but to what end? Kids aren't learning
| this because why would they when they just want to watch Tiktok
| videos.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Fluency in digital culture is a separate skill from expertise in
| digital technology. Both are valuable, but the latter is what
| "digital natives" generally refers to.
| christophilus wrote:
| Pluralization are not what you think them is.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think the way "digital native" is someone for whom the
| technology is so pervasive that they don't think about how it is
| implemented and spend more time thinking how it can be used.
|
| Many times, it is rarely the people that developed the technology
| that are aware of all the ways it can be used, but rather people
| for whom the technology was a given.
| sethammons wrote:
| Key quote:
|
| > If anybody is a digital native, it is me. I did not just grow
| up with computers, I grew up alongside them.
|
| Yes, this. I grew up and grew with technology as a member of the
| Oregon Trail Generation. Of course, kids these days will learn to
| operate with the greatest and latest abstractions and will
| continue to awesome things. The folly is calling the whole
| generation "digital natives." Just because you are exposed to
| (consumption based) technology, it does not mean you understand
| it at some foundational level. It is similar with cars - I've
| driven cars all my life, but working on them? I'm terrible at it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Coming from using dialup with a USR Robotics Sportster 56K modem
| using Mosaic browser on Win 3.1 with Winsock I am glad my kids
| have the iPad.
|
| I learned a lot but things are now far complicated but easier for
| ordinary people to use.
| awestley wrote:
| I've thought the same thing. I was lucky enough to grow up with
| computers. I matured as they did. This allowed me to understand
| the hardware and software fundamentally. It seems like a lot of
| that knowledge has been abstracted behind the well polished
| machines that exist today. It makes it hard to really learn what
| these devices are actually doing.
| [deleted]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Fortunately, these abstractions are horribly broken, so you get
| to peek behind the curtain on the regular.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| Another instance of "middle-aged tech nerd makes fun of kids
| these days"
|
| I get it, you're not too old to be good at computers, but I don't
| see the need to put down the younger generation and act like
| their tech knowledge doesn't extend beyond "video streaming".
|
| Acting like kids are computer wizards is an exaggeration, but
| acting like young people know _less_ about computing than this
| older generation is simply wrong.
| teachingassist wrote:
| I have taught kids for 20 years.
|
| Young people (on average) know _less_ about computing than they
| did.
|
| The author of this article says "floppy disks, or 'the save
| icon' as the young kids would recognize it" - except that they
| often wouldn't. Kids don't have any experience of saving and
| loading files.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > Young people (on average) know less about computing than
| they did.
|
| They know less about _desktop_ computing.
| teachingassist wrote:
| I do disagree with the article: there are lots more
| opportunities for kids to deep dive into almost any field
| of tech that they choose to.
|
| But, on the other hand, I've met teenagers who lacked
| confidence even using a browser to navigate to an
| unfamiliar website. They've learned how to navigate
| particular apps as silos.
|
| This reminds me of my parents and grandparents' generation
| using computers. Comfortable with what they know and use
| regularly; no concept of what happens outside of that
| narrow window.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And they know more about _cultural_ computing. In the same
| way they 'd be clueless when faced with a DOS prompt, many
| older people are clueless about how Insta etc work.
|
| You could argue that's not really computing, and in a very
| obvious sense it isn't. But it's certainly a form of
| application development, for a very specific kind of
| application.
|
| And the up side is that - unless AI takes over - people who
| can do nuts and bolts infrastructure computing will be
| rarer and in even higher demand than they are now.
| brongondwana wrote:
| Kids these days know less about cars than they used to.
| Lots of them drive, but they couldn't service the engine.
|
| Same energy.
| falcolas wrote:
| Tangent.
|
| I grew up with cars I could (and did) service. I still
| remember how to break down a drum brake, and adjust it so
| it worked again when re-assembled. I've used grease zerks
| on the auto I drove. I've helped troubleshoot a
| carburetor.
|
| Can't do that anymore, and it's only partially because
| the components don't exist, but because everything is so
| much more complicated you have to specialize in it to get
| much done.
|
| Tangent wrap-up.
|
| Maybe these "digital natives" have simply decided to
| specialize in something other than computers (and cars).
| Not all of them: I work with several folks who are
| decades younger than me, and they're perfectly
| comfortable with packet captures and bare metal
| databases.
| rektide wrote:
| desktop computing had core skills that could be developed,
| that would apply across different programs.
|
| on mobile systems, the balance of power feels very
| different. apps are each their own immersive experiences,
| each picking their own widgets, toolkits, styling,
| paradigms. many apps are a thin shell over far off closed
| services we could not understand if we tried.
|
| mobile has been a very advanced war on general purpose
| computing. the value of understanding the os, understanding
| "computing" has gone way way down in this far more black
| boxes environment. the user has been treated like an idiot,
| protected endlessly from themselves, and the technical
| underpinnings deeply deeply masked over.
|
| computing is being destroyed, especially on mobile. the
| desktop is one of the few places one has any chance to
| learn about computing in any meaningful way.
| agogdog wrote:
| No, they know less about computing in general (I have also
| taught). There are no computer skills (on any device) that
| they have that I don't also have.
|
| They don't need to know as much. The car analogy above
| seems apt. Maybe it's a good thing, who knows.
| walshemj wrote:
| Which is a problem when you get to to work in the real
| world in some cases I have seen a lot of basic knowledge.
|
| Of course its muggings here how has to perform the task of
| putting it all back together - the emotional labor to use a
| modern term.
| worker767424 wrote:
| The business world will all be app-based once Gen-Z
| starts founding companies.
| walshemj wrote:
| I've already seen some of that various agencies sharing
| work on numerous different "sharing platforms" and this
| is not internes this is supposedly big name agencies
| working for major brands.
| temp329192 wrote:
| It's probably that older people growing up with computers
| needed to do something with them (could not just stream twitch)
| and hence when you had a computer, then you was what today
| would be called a power user.
|
| Today, just millions of normal people use computers, tablets,
| phones, appliances every day and they get along fine - but they
| are not power users, since you can spend your time on the
| computer with almost zero knowledge about it.
|
| A concrete example would be that it's totally fine today to not
| know, what a file or folder is - because all you see is a feed
| or an album.
| ghaff wrote:
| For example, to run your game, you might very well have
| needed to go into your computer and make changes to your
| autoexec.bat and config.sys files.
|
| Do a lot of kids (above a certain age) actually not know what
| a file or folder is? Doing perfectly ordinary day-to-day
| stuff which is not at all technical in nature, I find I have
| to save and open files all the time.
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's a common problem when people have tied up their sense of
| self-worth in tweaking with janky, broken stuff, rather than on
| the things you can create with that. See also bitter, mediocre
| photographers who revile folks for being "fauxtographers"
| because they're making a living from photography on Instagram
| instead of fucking around with expensive lenses and Photoshop.
|
| My kids know a lot less about the internals of a tech stack
| than I do, but they create a lot more things with the tools at
| their disposal than I do. Unlike the author, I think they're in
| a better place than I am.
| Animats wrote:
| The complexity today is so great that understanding the entire
| system requires a vast amount of knowledge. The Commodore 64
| was notable for being totally described down to the hardware
| and bit level in a 1 inch thick book. People who grew up with
| that could fully understand that little device.
|
| With a modest amount of effort, you could totally understand an
| AMPS phone, the last generation of analog cellular. It was a
| two-way FM radio controlled by a tiny CPU, no more complex than
| a Commodore 64.
|
| Understanding a modern phone is a huge job. Even at a general
| level. There's a 90s data center worth of compute power in
| there. About four radios. A GPU. A 6-axis inertial guidance
| system. Several cameras. A rather excessive amount of software.
| A web browser, which is itself overly complex. Voice codecs.
| Voice recognition. Quite possibly a machine learning system.
|
| That's a lot to understand. It is also not useful to the end
| user to understand it.
| II2II wrote:
| I suspect a better measure of technical proficiency is the
| ability to shape the technology to reflect your own needs.
| That could happen at a much lower level on the Commodore 64
| since it was a much simpler machine, yet that should not
| invalidate the proficiency of a JavaScript programmer simply
| because they work at a much higher level.
|
| Put in other terms, even those who absorbed the Commodore 64
| programmer's guide didn't truly understand the machine. They
| may have known how to write software for it and even how to
| exploit the various chips, but that manual only provided
| surface level details about the electronics.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Understanding a modern phone is a huge job.
|
| I've tried (well maybe not phones, but other things). There's
| a lot of stuff and large chunks of it are either
| undocumented, do not provide documentation unless you are in
| a contract with the company or are very superficially
| documented. On top I usually ended up finding I could not
| fully comprehend how A worked without comprehending B which
| required C which required D, etc.
| wisty wrote:
| Gen Y / Millennials usually know a fair bit about computers.
| They grew up as internet connected desktops become a mainstream
| thing.
|
| Gen Z usually seem more like Boomers who can maybe do wonderful
| things with the video-telephone thingy but don't know a lot
| about it.
| II2II wrote:
| Some speculation here: there is a certain percentage of people
| who are interested in technology for its own sake in any
| generation and it that percentage is relatively stable. So yes,
| I agree that treating kids as computer wizards is an
| exaggeration and claiming that they are ignorant is wrong.
|
| That being said, the "digital natives" claim really rubs me the
| wrong way even when it is confined to the subset of people who
| are genuinely interested in computers. It leaves the impression
| that the younger generation has little to learn from the older
| generation. The flow of knowledge should be going in both
| directions.
| oraphalous wrote:
| Yeah... I agree, and would argue further that there is a
| specific kind of mistake being made in this post that I see
| many in tech make...
|
| That of believing that living lower down the stack makes you
| superior somehow...
|
| Here's an example of someone I think is clearly fucking amazing
| but arguably lives much higher up the stack than this guy...
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Fixed link:
| https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22370260/codemiko-
| twit...
| terenceng2010 wrote:
| I kind of miss the day when everyone is chatting on the phone and
| ICQ, MSN and you need to be in a certain time for certain people.
| Nowadays, my brother who is a digital native just chat with his
| friends all day long with Discord, which is something that I just
| can never do.
| megameter wrote:
| All that comes to mind is how people who displayed deep technical
| knowledge online, back in the 90's, were often misanthropic,
| tactless stereotypes who loved hacking because they wanted power.
|
| To the extent that people who are now in their 30's and 40's
| "learned computers", it was mostly to get the printer working,
| load a game or bypass school security. Young people today do the
| same things, just using slightly different mediums. If you
| started earlier you might have learned more about your 8-bit
| micro's hardware, if you started later, more about servers and 3D
| graphics. It's just stuff.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > were often misanthropic, tactless stereotypes who loved
| hacking because they wanted power.
|
| It's not like the SV techbros of the 2000s and 2010s are any
| different from that POV. We used to complain about the power
| wielded by the local BOFH sysadmin, but that's nothing compared
| to present-day "tech" monopolies.
| abootstrapper wrote:
| "Oregon Trail" generation here. I'm more tech literate than my
| older and younger family members. But I also made tech my career
| so I'm not sure if this is a fair anecdote.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Same, same, and same.
|
| I think there's a tendency for anyone who halfway gets how
| computers work to end up in tech, because halfway getting how
| computers work pays much better than almost anything else
| that's anywhere near as easy to get into. About the only reason
| not to is if you can't stand sitting in front of a screen
| reading and typing arcane crap all day (a sentiment I very much
| sympathize with).
|
| If you're an Excel whiz and kinda understand how to navigate a
| filesystem and how that relates (and how it doesn't) to what
| you navigate to in a web browser, then you're not that far from
| being a Javascript jockey, which pays better than most mid-tier
| or lower office work, even entry-level. So mid-tier office
| workers, and others at or below that pay level, are _usually_
| not much more than barely competent at using computers, because
| if they were better they 'd rarely stay in those roles.
|
| I don't find that younger generations are much more inclined to
| "get" computers in that way than, at the very least, Gen X and
| Millennials are/were. And the main thing driving younger kids
| to learn actually-useful computer skills seem to be the same as
| before--PC video games & modding. Dunno what will happen if
| those stop having a unique appeal compared with mobile and
| console games. Probably universities will have to get used to
| most of their best CS candidates _not_ having already done half
| the university 's job for them, in self-directed free time from
| ages 8-18.
|
| I do get the sense that a hell of a lot of kids are better at
| video production and photography than in our generation, but
| the tools they have for that are so much better, easier to use,
| and cheaper, and there are more incentives (YouTube and such)
| for them to at least give it a try, that it'd be surprising if
| that weren't the case. Smartphones, free YouTube how-tos, free
| non-terrible video & photo editing software, and much faster
| computers, completely changed the accessibility of getting
| hands-on with those things. You can do more experimentation
| with, say, lighting, in 10 minutes now than you could in an
| hour with your folks' old tape camcorder.
| ghaff wrote:
| I spent way too many hours in a darkroom in high school and
| college. While it was fun, I'd never want to go back to all
| the time spent messing with chemicals.
|
| Video of course was even worse. In fact, I was somewhat into
| film at the time but the overhead of dealing with heavy tape
| camcorders and editing was more than I could deal with. I'd
| definitely have done more if I'd had access to even an iPhone
| and Final Cut Pro X.
|
| Good photography and good video are still hard of course. But
| so many barriers have been removed.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Seriously, the amount of practice and skill-improvement a
| kid could get in an afternoon of trying out angles, cuts,
| and shot-movement, just trying to imitate some director or
| DP they like until they're getting similar results, _all on
| their iPhone_ , is incredible.
|
| Just a little more work and they can post a highlight reel
| of their practice session, to be viewed by anyone in the
| world. After a few times doing this, the work might even be
| looking pretty good, with nothing more than a smartphone
| for the _entire_ process.
|
| Repeat a few afternoons for various other aspects of
| technique, and you'll have had more and better practical
| experience at some aspects of production and editing than
| people who'd worked at it for months or more the 80s or
| 90s. The learning feedback loop is so tight now.
|
| I mean, _damn_. That 's cool.
| ghaff wrote:
| Oh, and by the way, they can watch a video on YouTube in
| which someone does a detailed walk through of Tarantino's
| framing and angle choices in a scene.
| ghaff wrote:
| While the author's point is probably valid to some degree, it's
| not really what digital native means. [1] It was popularized by
| an education consultant so understanding it primarily in the
| context of consuming media and interacting with computers of all
| types is likely the right lens. It's not really connected to
| being able to program and having a lot of under the hood computer
| knowledge.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native
| motohagiography wrote:
| Talk to kids about cryptocurrency mining and suddenly you have
| teenagers who understand Merkle trees and zero knowledge proofs.
| They understand mining rigs and GPUs, which are about as ground
| up as anyone in the PC generation ever got. They also use
| raspi's, there are real advantages to learning reverse
| engineering (Hackaday is evidence of this), and I'd even say
| ethereum is the new netbsd.
|
| The abstractions we spent the last 30 years on (operating
| systems, protocols, etc) will fade like musical genres. There
| were literaally people who spent 5+ years of their lives learning
| OS/2, SCO, VMS, Novell, and others. I"m optimistic about kids.
|
| Also, there are demographic issues. Consider that aptitude is
| Pareto distributed, which means the population lull between
| millenaials and the younger zombie apocalypse generation creates
| a smaller total sample of people in that range, so you don't
| encounter as many upper percentile people in that cohort because
| there just aren't as many of them. Any minority demographic is
| necessarily going to appear less exceptional because even if the
| distribution is the same (pareto), you're going to encounter more
| of the long tail cohort, and fewer of the very tiny exceptional
| elite in that selection. This guy is on about a group of kids who
| have the same aptitude distribution as older folks, but since
| there are fewer of them than the mega generations like X, Y, and
| M , he's ignoring their exceptions and focusing on their long
| tail.
| CalRobert wrote:
| There's something to be said about growing up using devices that
| are made for creation and not just consumption - the barrier to
| go from "this is a cool web page! How can I make one?" is a hell
| of a lot higher on a phone than a computer, or now vs. the
| mid-90's (if only because the standards are so much higher).
|
| But this guy is just being a jerk: "Digital natives my ass, all
| they do is stream videos on YouTube and Twitch."
|
| Which is a shame, because it crowds out what I was hoping would
| be a more thoughtful discussion about devices created purely for
| consumption, or perhaps walled gardens, and how they don't afford
| people the same opportunity to learn as general purpose
| computers.
|
| I wonder if early car enthusiasts felt the same about people who
| learned to drive when you no longer needed to know how to fix
| your car all the time.
| tasssko wrote:
| I am hopeful we will see a creative renaissance in technology
| in our children. You can do more than consume with your phone
| today. Our children have ipads which are hybrid computers at a
| young age and are learning to access information more readily.
| They are general knowledge whizzes and learning to do more than
| just consuming. The software is better and with cloud services
| the average child will probably never see a data center or
| build a PC however they most definitely will use airtable and
| probably build an app in the cloud. The world for them will
| have opportunities at higher levels of abstraction. At least i
| hope that is the case.
| havelhovel wrote:
| I think the line about streaming is less of the author being a
| jerk and more of the author resetting the dialogue concerning
| the average tech know-how of Gen Z relative to previous
| generations. Of course for every IT geek in the author's
| generation, I'm sure there are at least two in Gen Z, which the
| author could have acknowledged.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I wonder if early car enthusiasts felt the same about people
| who learned to drive when you no longer needed to know how to
| fix your car all the time.
|
| I don't think you need to go back to early car enthusiasts. A
| lot of people would argue that at least being able to do basic
| car maintenance is a life skill everyone should have. I don't
| necessarily agree but I do think it's useful to understand at
| least the basics of how a car operates.
| ggggtez wrote:
| The car is a black box. Gas goes in, vroom comes out. If the
| box stops working, I pay someone to fix it.
|
| You might argue I'm not car literate, but I'm not sure that
| is particularly insightful, as the type of specialized
| knowledge is not actually relevant to doing almost _anything_
| with a car that people want to do.
|
| Similarly, while coding is great and all, I'm not sure that
| not being able to code is the same thing as not knowing how
| to use a computer effectively.
| ghaff wrote:
| I won't argue. And I grew up at a time when cars were less
| reliable (and my first clunker certainly wasn't). I do
| think some basic things like changing a tire, jumping a
| battery, and at least knowing how to check fluid levels is
| useful. You don't always have something go wrong where you
| can easily just call for help.
| kannanvijayan wrote:
| Yeah, I grew up in the same era as the article author, and I'm
| honestly much happier about the state of access to resources
| these days.
|
| The modern "digital native" that I categorize is the legions of
| young people getting started in programming the vast number of
| rich environments that exist today.
|
| Yes I remember the times upgrading my 486DX-33 to 8Mb of RAM,
| installing slackware from floppies, figuring out whatever dark
| magic was needed to run Duke Nukem 3D over IPX networks
| simulated over dialup, and heady and critically important
| discussions about the role of Amigas, coveting the barmaid in
| LoRD on the high school BBS, running unauthorized star wars
| MUDs on the high school computer network and getting dragged in
| front of school boards because you ran "nethack" once (in
| fairness it was likely also the pornography being accessed and
| distributed leveraging the school T1 lines as well but in my
| defence I was 14).
|
| It was a time and a place, and there's certainly value in
| reminiscing. But these new kids will create their own time and
| place, and demanding that they somehow pay homage to my
| experience as being "more authentic" seems a bit pleading.
|
| And to be honest we downplay the limitations of our times. Free
| and accessible development environments? Not on the standard
| desktop PC operating system (until DJGPP came along anyway, and
| even that had severe limitations for a while for building
| native windows apps). If you were a super nerd who went out of
| your way and downloaded an obscure little free unix system
| developed by some finnish guy named after a peanuts character,
| you got a compiler. And then if you scrounged around random
| docfiles spread out across dozens and dozens of random howtos,
| you could sort of learn how to program C, or python or perl.
|
| I look at today's technical environment, available to the entry
| level student in some technical field, and the available
| breadth and depth of tooling, the amount of documentation and
| tutorials, all available for free, and it's amazing. If you're
| someone looking to build something interesting, there are a 100
| different more opportunities to do that today using accessible
| tooling than there ever was when I was a kid.
| danShumway wrote:
| Totally agreed. I'm going to be a _lot_ less charitable than
| you, because to me this is some pretty obvious gatekeeping and
| I don 't have patience for it.
|
| This attitude was around for a while when Linux started getting
| easier to use (I feel like it's gotten a bit better, but maybe
| I'm just a part of better communities now). It's the same
| attitude that came up occasionally in game dev around Unity.
| It's pretty predictable and pretty tiresome. I don't think the
| author is a bad person or that they hate kids, but I think this
| kind of attitude is something that shows up regularly in
| technical communities and it's worth forcefully stamping out.
|
| This article as it's written isn't interested in education,
| it's purely inwardly focused on describing how hard the author
| had it growing up, and how rewarding it was, and how great they
| turned out, and how everyone else who didn't have that same
| experience is a poser. It's purely designed to put younger
| generations down and denigrate them rather than reach out to
| them in any kind of thoughtful or meaningful way.
|
| The author isn't proposing any solutions. Forget solutions,
| they're not even identifying problems. There's nothing of
| substance in this post other than bragging. No mention of how
| proprietary hardware incentivizes lock-in. No mention of how
| laws have changed. No mention of how software gets written
| today and how our toolkits affect accessibiliity. No mention of
| the rise of SAAS and how that affects people's ability to
| modify the programs they run. No mention of education
| challenges. Just nothing at all.
|
| The only reason this blog post exists is because the author is
| mad that some kids are getting more attention than they did.
| And while it's worth talking about increasing barriers to
| creation, the author doesn't seem to be equipped to do so, and
| their targets of ire (streamers and content producers, arguably
| some of the more technically involved youth communities out
| there today) are poorly chosen.
|
| > "If anybody is a digital native, it is me. I did not just
| grow up with computers, I grew up alongside them."
|
| We get it, you're very smart. I'm super proud of you for
| installing Windows from a floppy disk. Do you want a medal?
| Should we all clap for you? Round up and scoff at the people
| who didn't appreciate your generation enough?
|
| Notice what this article never says. It never says that a
| reduced hacker ethos in younger generations is a problem. Its
| primary concern is not that younger kids aren't engaged enough
| with technology, or that they're not hacking their devices. The
| primary complaint this article raises is that younger kids are
| _called_ digital natives, a title that the article is concerned
| they don 't _deserve_.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > "this is a cool web page! How can I make one?"
|
| I sympathize with what's been lost, but what happened was
| people realized they didn't actually want to build a web page,
| they wanted to converse on a forum and share pics, and be
| entertained. Sure, you could publish anything you can imagine
| that's less than 4 MB on Geocities, but I'd rather have
| Wikipedia.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's more like "That's a cool YouTube career, how do I make
| one?"
| worker767424 wrote:
| (Perceived) fame and fortune are pretty standard
| aspirations.
| qsort wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with consumption devices, but they are
| not computers. You are using a computer if and only if you are
| programming, otherwise you are using a glorified television or
| a glorified typewriter. There's nothing wrong with that. The
| vast majority of people want exactly that. We shouldn't fight
| it, nor we should believe we are better or smarter.
|
| But that's not tech literacy.
| ggggtez wrote:
| But isn't it though? Does someone literate in film need to
| make movies? Why can't someone be literate in tech without
| writing html?
| yak_shaver2000 wrote:
| What an odd form of gatekeeping. To what end?
| qsort wrote:
| I am specifically not attempting to 'gate-keep'. You don't
| want to code? Don't. I'm not going to force it down your
| throat.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You're gatekeeping who qualifies as "using a computer",
| and using a really odd definition to do it.
|
| Now, the rest of your point is, who cares? Do with that
| thing whatever floats your boat, it's fine if you don't
| program. That point is valid. But when "that thing" is a
| computer, and they're "doing" something with it, that
| qualifies as "using a computer". At least by the
| definitions the rest of us are using.
| qsort wrote:
| That's just a debate on the semantics of the sentence
| "using a computer". Maybe your definition is better, I
| don't particularly care.
|
| The point I'm trying to make is that I percieve a very
| clear conceptual difference between "using a computer to
| program" and "using a computer to do other things", and I
| would tend to believe an effort to improve computer
| literacy should attempt to point people to the former
| rather than the latter.
|
| Do you believe those things to be the same? I have a
| strong intuition that they aren't, but I'm very willing
| to hear a counterpoint.
|
| Once again, I'm specifically trying to avoid any kind of
| value judgment.
| ghaff wrote:
| My counterpoint to
|
| >I would tend to believe an effort to improve computer
| literacy should attempt to point people to the former
| rather than the latter.
|
| is why? I mean sure. If they want to become programmers,
| then they need to learn how to use a computer to program
| but I'm not sure why that's any more about "computer
| literacy" than lots of other tasks.
|
| I use computers for lots of things on a day to day basis,
| including many "creative" tasks, and almost none of those
| involve programming. Programming is a specific way that
| you can use a computer and it may imply deeper knowledge
| of the underlying system than making a video, but so
| what?
|
| For that matter I could equally argue that a pure front-
| end developer isn't _really_ computer literate because
| they maybe don 't understand kernel schedulers, security
| model, processes, interrupts, etc. work. Oh, and how
| about TLBs, cache eviction policies, dynamic resource
| allocation, etc. at the CPU level?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > You are using a computer if and only if you are programming
|
| Maybe my definition of programming is quite narrow, but I
| wouldn't consider using CAD software, spreadsheets, or
| (physics, space, etc) simulation software as programming, yet
| I would consider the ability to use them a degree of
| computing or tech literacy. I would certainly consider them
| very far from only being a consumption device.
| temac wrote:
| The thing is that computers are useful for so many things
| that I find even just attempting to define what is "tech
| literacy" difficult and bound to endless discussion, and
| well the result is this blog post and the following debate
| here.
|
| It's like you would like to claim "desktop literacy" for
| the noble tasks that can be performed on a (e.g. wooden)
| desktop, traditionally it being let's say copying
| evangelical scriptures, and are angry against those
| ignorant young folks that don't give a fuck about the bible
| but find writing novels cool, and let's not even talk about
| the peasants that merely use their "desktops" to cook and
| eat (and in the background you have a pen maker who listens
| to the copyist rant, with a small smirk)
|
| At this point the vague "tech literacy" term is not useful
| anymore, and the problem is just that more precise
| terminology is needed to communicate efficiently.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| All of those are heavily algorithmic in nature, so
| understanding algorithmic complexity makes it easier to
| understand how and why the software handles the way it
| does.
|
| For example, joining together many separate 3D objects is
| extremely slow if one just selects all and does an union,
| since the algorithm needs to check all pairs of objects for
| overlaps in 3D space.
|
| That may not be immediately apparent to non-programmers,
| but to programmers, it will feel like an intuitive
| consequence of the problem and the inevitabilities of its
| solution.
| qsort wrote:
| How many people are at the intersection of (a) being able
| to competently use CAD software or specialized software for
| physics or engineering and (b) being unable to write a
| simple script?
|
| Literacy isn't about reading all the time, it's about being
| able to read if you want/need to. Same with computer
| literacy.
| moshmosh wrote:
| > There's nothing wrong with consumption devices, but they
| are not computers. You are using a computer if and only if
| you are programming, otherwise you are using a glorified
| television or a glorified typewriter.
|
| _Looks at all the creation-related tools on his iPad and
| iPhone, none of which involve programming_
|
| You sure about that?
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| It is the simulacrum of tech literacy.
|
| Just like an Office 365 subscription is a simulacrum of a
| horde of calculators (people) with mass-produced calculators
| and typists on mass-produced typewriters, which were
| simulacra of noblemen scholars, pens (mass-produced simulacra
| of quills) and papers (mass-produced simulacra of expensive
| parchment)... which themselves were simulacra of prehistoric
| humans making cave paintings.
|
| So do you really feel the need to tabulate, calculate and
| write today?
| _jal wrote:
| That's.... a bizarre frame I don't think I've ever heard
| before.
|
| Does this mean that my laptop undergoes some sort of
| miraculous transformation when I type :wq and open my
| browser?
|
| What if I'm watching video in the background while coding -
| does my laptop then enter some superposition-state?
| qsort wrote:
| I don't see how this is strange, I think I failed to
| explain myself.
|
| The defining feature of books is that you can read them,
| and books are useful because they have that property. You
| are literate if and only if you can read a book, regardless
| of whether you are reading a book at the moment.
|
| The defining feature of computers is that they are
| arbitrarily programmable machines, and computers are useful
| because they have that property. You are computer-literate
| if and only if you can program a computer, regardless of
| whether you are programming a computer at the moment.
| ghaff wrote:
| A book is more or less _only_ useful for reading. Well I
| suppose I can stack some books if I want to elevate
| something on my desk but pretty much.
|
| Whereas a computer can do many different things. Yes,
| it's because it's an arbitrarily programmable machine but
| if I choose to use software written by others rather than
| programming it myself I'm not sure why that's a lower
| use.
|
| In fact, I can program but rarely do so. Usually I'm
| using a computer to do tasks like writing, working on
| photos, etc. My day to day use is sort of irrelevant to
| the fact that I can do some programming. So I guess I'm
| not computer-literate.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Agree. Plus, anyone who has gotten into streaming knows that
| there is a learning curve which introduces the streamer to all
| sorts of hardware and software. The best streamers often invent
| specialized solutions for their needs.
| matwood wrote:
| I think you're applying your incomplete idea of what it means
| to create. Now phones/tablets let people say 'that video is
| cool, let's make one.' Same with pictures or other digital art.
| When I look at the creator options available in my pocket, I'm
| amazed.
|
| If anything, back in the 90s having to learn to create web
| pages was a _barrier_ to creation. Video? Forget about it.
| Digital cameras were just coming around, but were still super
| expensive. I have some old pics taken on my flip phone from the
| early 2000s and they are...really bad. Instead I had to spend
| hundreds of dollars are completely separate device to be
| creative. And that device still didn 't do video.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Creating high quality video or photos still poses a far
| higher barrier than simple text. The acquisition hardware
| (camera) is a trivial step, it's everything else that
| involves a huge amount of work.
| jkaptur wrote:
| I agree with you personally. For _me_ , it's easy to gather
| my thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, and I'd rather
| learn Markdown and Hugo (or LaTeX!) than edit a video.
|
| But that isn't some kind of law of nature - it isn't true
| for everybody. There's a significant group of people who
| find it much easier to use video or voice and powerful
| tools have arisen to help them.
|
| For example, the TikTok video editor gets people started
| quickly and lets them learn as they go. I'd really
| encourage you to watch a tutorial to see how easy and
| surprisingly powerful it is.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I also think its much faster to get information back out
| of text than it is to watch a video.
| matwood wrote:
| It's a trivial step now. At no point did I say it wasn't a
| lot of work. But instead of having to create a web page to
| show off my creative works, I can focus on the work I want
| to do - take/edit/share pictures.
|
| I just get annoyed when people call these devices
| consumption only. I could say the same thing about
| computers when many people only play games on them. These
| devices are what the person makes of them.
| tasssko wrote:
| I agree with you, as a parent i witness how my child uses
| his technology. I did think to mention that we might have
| biases, as technologists our world view is dominated by
| technology. My child has a ipad and i have a few
| computers and game consoles in house. By observing me my
| child sees how i use technology.
| alex_young wrote:
| While I feel similarly, this strikes me as a nearly perfect
| example of No True Scotsman.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| The phrase digital native is silly, like petrol positive to
| describe the 1900+'ers. Being exposed to apps won't make the next
| generation supperior. But having parents from the previous
| generation surely will without any doubt at all.
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