To play devil’s advocate, I imagine your view isn’t too far removed from folks who know to work on their cars being aghast that no one knows how to fix their own any more.
Computers are tools, and the more complex they become the harder it is to learn how to use and repair them.
I guess my point was more about it being an issue in professional settings as well, where the people should be technical.
One of technology’s biggest achievements is making it such that someone who doesn’t care how something works doesn’t need to worry about that in order to use it.
The company I work for is run by a guy who wishes it was the '70s still, so it’s been an uphill battle to introduce some level of technology into our workflows. We’re getting there bit by bit, but I still get regularly blindsided by people who just don’t know how certain technologies work, and worse; don’t really care to learn. I’m talking about people who don’t know how to scan a QR code to access a form we need them to input data into, that kind of thing.
That shit keeps me honest, and helps me to remember that while I might know to use SSH to run tasks on a little server I have at work, most people barely know more than how to access Facebook. But that’s fine, because some of those guys in the workshop can do things with an engine that mystifies me.
Millennials have technical skills, Gen Z has basic trades skills, big part of Boomers built their own houses. Every generation has its base skill that eventually becomes obsolete.
Aye, we’ve almost all learned digital skills. And as time passes the skills required to perform digital tasks reduces as user interfaces and automation improve. What many of us don’t have however is digital understanding.
This is from a speech by the founder of lastminute.com and now member of the UK’s House of Lords
We have let these things come upon us, but it is not too late to wake up. If we want to change this dynamic and shape the future, we need to recapture some of the internet’s original promise and more of its positive transformative power. That means we need to understand – at all levels of society – what our digital world really is. We need to address the challenges that already exist and preempt the ones we don’t know about.
We live our digital lives this way because we have the skills to do so. 91% of us in the UK have the ability to use the internet. This is a remarkable achievement – and it’s important to continue the work to close the remaining gap and include those who are still without the skills or the access to use the internet.
But we also need to move beyond skills to understanding. Nearly all UK internet users have the digital skills to use a search engine, but only half know how to distinguish between search results and adverts. Around two-thirds of our digitally skilled population can shop and bank online – but a third don’t make any checks before entering their personal or financial information online. More than 1.4 million of us work in tech-related jobs – but, as the recent WannaCry attack showed us, hardly anyone is investing the time, resources or expertise to keep our systems safe. The list goes on.
Becoming a nation of people with digital understanding will be different and more complicated than becoming a nation of people with digital skills. For starters, digital skills are tangible and teachable: download this app, program this device. They also reinforce the idea that digital is something we do – time-bound and transactional.
But in a world where we spend more time online than we do asleep and where everything from our televisions to our kettles can connect to the internet, digital is something we are. Understanding is not a race to be run and won. It is a lifelong process of learning, one unique to each of us.
The full speech is available here. It was given in the House of Lords and is obviously directed towards UK parliamentarians but the concepts apply globally. I recommend reading the whole thing.
It’s always been that way. Even most people who used the internet “way back when” have no clue how it actually functions. Terms like DNS and IPv4 are vaguely familiar concepts at best outside of professional or hobbyist circles.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that either. There’s too much stuff for any one person to know. You learn the stuff that interests you and ignore the rest, which hopefully means somebody is interested in all of it. That’s why it’s good that there’s all different kinds of people out there.
Yup. It’s the old “you don’t need to be a baker to enjoy eating bread” thing. The tricky part is that technology has been shoehorned into basically every aspect of life, so there are comparatively a lot of people who don’t know how to “bake” it. If someone doesn’t like bread, they simply won’t eat it. But that’s not really possible with modern technology, outside of near complete rejection of modernity like the Amish.
Early Gen X here. I think there is something about having at some point to figure things out for yourself. Even if you don’t need to do that anymore, you have experienced the process of finding out for yourself (e.g., configuring TCP/IP the first time).
I think there is value in experiencing the process at least a little bit.
Joking aside I do actually worry about how superficial technical knowledge is becoming.
To play devil’s advocate, I imagine your view isn’t too far removed from folks who know to work on their cars being aghast that no one knows how to fix their own any more.
Computers are tools, and the more complex they become the harder it is to learn how to use and repair them.
I guess my point was more about it being an issue in professional settings as well, where the people should be technical.
One of technology’s biggest achievements is making it such that someone who doesn’t care how something works doesn’t need to worry about that in order to use it.
Oh aye, I do get where you’re coming from.
The company I work for is run by a guy who wishes it was the '70s still, so it’s been an uphill battle to introduce some level of technology into our workflows. We’re getting there bit by bit, but I still get regularly blindsided by people who just don’t know how certain technologies work, and worse; don’t really care to learn. I’m talking about people who don’t know how to scan a QR code to access a form we need them to input data into, that kind of thing.
That shit keeps me honest, and helps me to remember that while I might know to use SSH to run tasks on a little server I have at work, most people barely know more than how to access Facebook. But that’s fine, because some of those guys in the workshop can do things with an engine that mystifies me.
Millennials have technical skills, Gen Z has basic trades skills, big part of Boomers built their own houses. Every generation has its base skill that eventually becomes obsolete.
People these days couldnt even manually resolve an IRQ conflict!
Aye, we’ve almost all learned digital skills. And as time passes the skills required to perform digital tasks reduces as user interfaces and automation improve. What many of us don’t have however is digital understanding.
This is from a speech by the founder of lastminute.com and now member of the UK’s House of Lords
The full speech is available here. It was given in the House of Lords and is obviously directed towards UK parliamentarians but the concepts apply globally. I recommend reading the whole thing.
We just need to integrate conversational AI into everything, so people never have to understand tech or learn to use it
Tap for spoiler
/s
It’s always been that way. Even most people who used the internet “way back when” have no clue how it actually functions. Terms like DNS and IPv4 are vaguely familiar concepts at best outside of professional or hobbyist circles.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that either. There’s too much stuff for any one person to know. You learn the stuff that interests you and ignore the rest, which hopefully means somebody is interested in all of it. That’s why it’s good that there’s all different kinds of people out there.
Yup. It’s the old “you don’t need to be a baker to enjoy eating bread” thing. The tricky part is that technology has been shoehorned into basically every aspect of life, so there are comparatively a lot of people who don’t know how to “bake” it. If someone doesn’t like bread, they simply won’t eat it. But that’s not really possible with modern technology, outside of near complete rejection of modernity like the Amish.
Early Gen X here. I think there is something about having at some point to figure things out for yourself. Even if you don’t need to do that anymore, you have experienced the process of finding out for yourself (e.g., configuring TCP/IP the first time).
I think there is value in experiencing the process at least a little bit.
Oh it’s well fucked already.