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An edit of xkcd 2501, “Average Familiarity”:
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked “who still uses google these days?”)
made with this neat tool
All my work computers are provided by the companies I work for and per their rules I can only take and store notes using their approved software and on their servers which basically means I work on a locked down Microsoft ecosystem. Access to third party productivity software is simply not possible outside of certain role specific specialist software.
I would guess literally millions of employees have a similar setup so it’s not that we are tech illiterate per say, but more accurately in the corporate world this option doesn’t exist so there is no point trying.
Outside work my productivity tools consist of a Moleskine notebook with tasteful check paper.
I have worked at places like that. The issue is real. But I have also asked for apps to be audited to get on the approved list. Again not always possible.
But I still think the general issue stands. There are a lot of people unaware of software. I even know developers who have never learned their tools and built muscle memory but instead just used whatever came with their computer because they aren’t out there looking.