The crazy thing to consider is that Millennials are probably the only generation who grew up with computers. GenZ mostly grew up with smartphones and I can't blame them if they never had a reason to learn how to use a computer.
That's pretty damn broad. Lots and lots of people have been using computers since ENIAC. Many Boomers were programmers. You don't get the Internet without Silent Generation and boomers. You don't get the Web without Tim Berners-Lee, a Boomer.
The OP was about generational knowledge. Giving me more specific examples of Gen Xers who made great advancements in computer tech, a thing nobody in this thread has questioned, is not data about the median tech user. It's not even on topic.
Yeah, you needed basic coding just to customize your myspace page or use your calculator. You know what DOS is but aren't freaked out by GUIs. Also you were in college (maximal computer use) during the tumultuous ME/XP/Vista/7 epoch.
at my old job they would spend weeks just teaching the gen z kiddos how to delete cached data as an easy fix for the software we used glitching and also things such as clicking on icons to boot up said software
My memory is so crap. I always think i already have them and then i go to use libreoffice or something are it pops open Microsoft word for cloud demo edition or some nonsense. Sigh.
I remain convinced that's because we're the only generation who was taught.
GenZ and Alpha as "digital natives" are just assumed to know, so nobody ever explained how the magic box where you press colorful icons actually works.
Locking everything fun and awesome behind getting an Associate's Degree in CompSci was maybe not the best user experience but it was a large scale test that ten year olds would muscle through
but not knowing how to work with a zip file, something every modern OS can open natively, and being unable to discover the existence of WinRAR with Google…?
Maybe it’s because my oldest brother who I’ve always been very close to is a millennial but I’m actually shocked there are people in my generation that don’t understand what to me is computer basics. When I was 15 I made a shitty website and slapped a proxy into it to bypass the stupid filters (1/2)
On my HS Chromebook that blocked Netflix and other entertainment websites. I legit just played around with it until I figured it out and then basically made a shortcut (by clicking one button) to what would open a new window with a simple http proxy server disguised as Google.
It HAD to be a proxy that would work in browser because you couldn’t download much of anything on those Chromebooks. Literally did it in I think 3 class periods and I don’t even consider myself to be that good with computers. I was using an already existing free web proxy I found on GitHub. I tried
To explain to a current HS student that I know how to do it and it was like I was speaking another language like idk bro I didn’t even do anything fancy 😭
While Chloe is correct for not running a .exe from a discord server, their ability to search for winrar is depressing and also stop me before I go on a rant about substituting web forums, websites and actual user manuals with bloody discord.
Are you telling me that in the year of our lord two thousand and fucking twenty-four Windows *still* doesn’t come with basic zipping and unzipping utilities?
You have no idea how many people I attend on my job that can't receive emails because they never turned off the automatic backup from Google Photos, and it automatically save all the random shit they receive via their messenger, and it shares space with Gmail.
I never said you didn’t. But tally up the number of posts by Gen X talking about their achievements (of which there are many), vs. "We are always forgotten!" and it’s… it’s just sad, honestly 😕
Which parts did we invent? Because most of this was already in place thanks to the work of computer scientists as far back as the 1950's. ARPANET laid down the foundation of all of this back in the late 60's. Bill Gates was born in 55 and stole his best ideas from Xerox PARC.
you're right. we had multiple Internet browsers, open source operating systems, iPhones, torrenting, MP3s and FLACs in 1982 and your mom invented all of that
So when you said "we invented all that shit" what you actually meant was "the mozilla foundation."
Jean-Marie Hullot was born in '54. Bill Gates, '55. Bram Cohen in '75. Hey he's our age! We got torrents! Good work! Karlheinz Brandenburg, '54. FLAC is a fucking audio codec.
If they want to claim all of Gen X’s successes, that’s fine by me as long as they also own the dot com bust, and housing market crash of 2007 because their desire to be decent human beings was outweighed by their desire to literally fuck money.
They drank from hoses, chief. They read Stephen King and/or VC Andrews way too young and they are NOT to be messed with. Latchkey! Latchkey! Latchkey! (Falls on ground, thrashing, shouting something about Clear Pepsi.)
My grandfather knew how to harness plow horses. My dad knows how combustion engines work. I know how computers work and kids these days will know how _______ works.
(My current bet is on some tech that is an adaptation to global warming.)
See, this is the problem with these stupid generational labels. I'm Gen X, & my "college years" would've been done in the mid 80s.
The "heyday of email" wasn't until the general public got access to the Internet.
which is funny because they claim to be forgotten and ignored yet there has never been a time when people weren’t talking about how forgotten and ignored they are
I know I'm on the millennial side of the generational divide because I find the idea of middle aged adults bursting into conversations younger people are having to cry-brag about their parents ignoring them and how tough they are hilarious.
The bell curve of Gen X computer knowledge is higher and tighter. You have kids from 1970 who program COBOL and kids from 1966 who are "how do I open PDF?"
I honestly think it's fine. I had a desktop that by the end, I replaced everything inside at one point. Buying a new system was so expensive then, that you had to do that if you were a broke young adult. My kids don't know how to do that, and it's absolutely fine. They don't need to.
I think Gen z is bi-modal. Some kids grew up with programming courses and readily available IT knowledge, others grew up with great UIs and design language and don't need to know that stuff.
Checking back in on this after a day and it's wild to see who interpreted your statement as being a condemnation of any & all not categorically "Millennial" vs those who recognize that you're talking about degrees of broadly shared experience within an age cohort
Like yes, anyone of any age can individually be knowledgeable. And yes, the foundations of one generation's knowledge set is always founded earlier to some degree, but that's not what the original comment was here folks!
I've been making this same argument for a while. Something about you also being in the process of growing up while personal computers & the Internet start to achieve critical mass. More everyday experience than any younger cohort, no less everyday experience than any older cohort.
no, a very small segment of that generation did. many more millennials actually used them in a way which required more knowledge than using a smartphone
Hilarious, in that this directly refutes your assertion.
In this chart, PC consumption peaks before the so-called millennial cohort is even of age. Guess who built the boxes and wrote the software before your generation was still filling your diapers...go on, guess.
I think people in general are just lazy/stupid nowadays and can't be bothered to learn how to use a computer. Heck I get people asking me how THEIR car works at the gas station, I'm doubling down on too lazy to learn! 🤪
Not really. It's the environment created for them. My daughters school does teaching on tablets and requires them to have one at home for homework purposes but education cutbacks mean that via the implementation of tablets and remote learning they don't have to pay properly qualified teachers in IT.
I worked IT for a few years. Had almost this exact conversation with callers at least once a week when they were dumb enough to fall for obvious malware but also questioned the validity of MalwareBytes.
Some of my favourite customers when I worked tech support were actually literal boomers who worked in tech in the early days and needed something fixed on our end. Best conversations, unfailingly polite, happy to learn if there was a tool they didn't know about. Usually women, but not always.
That's because for a while, women were given all of the computer tasks, because they were seen as glorified typewriters. It was with about gen-x that home computers were gendered as being "for boys" and you start to see a shift in who uses computers after that point
I’m friends with one of the two people who wrote the popular The Hobbit game back in the mid 80s. She said they did about an even amount of work on it, but he would often get credited with all or it or assumed he was “the lead.”
Yeah, that's the way the grift works. You get to convince yourself that you're oh so very clever for posting something that pisses people off, and any response of any kind feeds that narrative.
Yeah, that's the way the grift works. You get to convince yourself that you're oh so very clever for posting something that pisses people off, and any response of any kind feeds that narrative.
Yeah, "grift" is the wrong word, but I couldn't think of one that referred to that tingling that some very small people feel in their gonads when they convince themselves that making people mad is "clever."
Someone on there was shame-scolding people that these were 14-year-olds and I replied that when I was 14 I was using basic HTML to code my own fanfic websites. And I wasn't the only one.
When GenX was 14 we still lived in an entirely offline world using the command line. The youngest of our generation may have had HTML but the oldest were using punch cards in college.
Personal websites just aren't a common way to interface with the internet anymore. Outside of professional portfolios and blogs (neither really a thing most of gen z are doing) nobody has much of a reason to have one. Making a website is also way more complicated than it used to be.
I don't know if I'd call it the downfall. There are still sites that provide this level of customization. It's just not a feature most users care much about.
That’s not the point the point is at 14 I was *teaching myself* basic coding language for fun. When you say it’s too complicated because someone is so young it’s a disservice to them because young people are capable. They’ve just been hamstrung somewhere.
It's not that they're incapable. It's that they've never had the motivation to learn, and if they grew up using devices rather than computers they may not have had the opportunity to learn. Analogy: I'm married to someone who learned to ride a bike in his 50s because he moved to the Netherlands.
In this country, riding a bike is the standard way you get places and it can be very inconvenient if you can't (motivation). ALSO, the country is absolutely full of separated bike paths and other safe places for a learner to cycle (opportunity).
This really gets at it I think. Outside of hobbyists people don't NEED to know much about computers. And nobody teaches it because "everybody knows how to use a computer!" It doesn't help much that the default reaction to lack of this knowledge is smug condescension.
Oh yeah, I don't mean it's too complicated for kids to understand. But the relative complexity and cost (both time and money) of having a personal webpage nowadays is way higher than a social media account, which serves the same function for most users and is what these kids grew up with.
Basically, apps abstract everything away. You don't need to build to interact. If you wanted to tinker with one to make an improvement, typically, that's not an option.
The cusp'ers between X and Y are specifically known as the "Oregon Trailers" - young enough to be willing and able to maintain computer literacy, old enough to know a world without Internet.
thats me, and tbh, a lot of my peers are still computer illiterate , might as well be boomers. yes most of us know how to operate the basic software, but that feels like the extent of it.
spot on. I learned to type in high school, I learned HTML via building geocities pages and talking online to Gen Xers in IRC, I learned how to build and fix computers thanks to Leo Laporte and his shows "The Screensavers" and "Call for Help" I learned DOS command lines from my Dad.
so back then it wasn't looking up tutorials or stackoverflow it was one on one interactions with people to learn this stuff or people visually showing me how to do things.
I mean sure Gen X gets a lot of flack for being "forgotten" but man without them and late boomers I wouldn't know more than half the stuff I know now. I think we Millennials just take it for granted and expect Gen Z to just know it because we "think" that's how we did it.
a bunch of millenials are like this too. most people really don't use their computer for anything other than basic browsing, office software and the occasional game of minesweeper. anything more advanced than that needs to be taught.
Same here about 20 years ago! Legit the best value in computing I have ever had. One time license, still updated, still fit for purose no AI/NFT/Block Chain bullshit. Just that interface I know and love.
It's really like the 0.1% of boomers, the 1% of gen X, the 90% of millenials, and the 1% of gen z.
We had the perfect storm of the dawn of the internet age, janky but improving software and systems, and a lack of streamlined GUIs that forced us to sink or swim to be a normal teenager
I paid for WinRar aabout 20 years ago and still use it today. It's probably the best value I have ever had in computing as it still consistently works for what I use it for, gets updated and is a one time license.
Chloe is right to not run a random exe someone posts in a discord and wrong not to be able to trivially find out how to decompress the provided file themselves.
My dad was a "computer guy" in the 90's, but he was always too burned out on them from work to fix anything or teach me.
As a result, I had access to all the equipment by 5 (95), but had to mostly teach myself. Trial and error or observing him. I taught my mom how to use the internet when I was 7.
i AM very proud of this kid for not downloading a random exe file they dont recognize. Hopefully its a learning opportunity that winrar is a safe and steady program that we’ve been using for decades lol but im sure they’re still suspicious. Its tough out there
As a younger GenXer I’ve helped so many millennials do this when they were in their early 20s. The first time was a class where not one university junior (around 2010) understood the basics of saving Google docs. (I was setting up a project where as their professor I could edit in a shared doc.)
False. I'm a boomer and I've worked in computing since high school, had a long, successful career in profession IT. I explain bugs to customer service when necessary and why they need to escalate to level 2.
Based on this, you are not wrong. I get the feeling I'm going to have to teach my grand children about computers as much as their Gen Z father will have to.
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GenZ and Alpha as "digital natives" are just assumed to know, so nobody ever explained how the magic box where you press colorful icons actually works.
Their solution is to make a new email.
"But what if I need something from there later?"
"You have 3.4 GB of multiple of the same video showing a stock photo of a baby sleeping with a flashing 'good morning' message on top"
"she just left us there! Alone!"
Bro you were 13 years old.
i totally forgot.
Jean-Marie Hullot was born in '54. Bill Gates, '55. Bram Cohen in '75. Hey he's our age! We got torrents! Good work! Karlheinz Brandenburg, '54. FLAC is a fucking audio codec.
Surely it’s just the children who are wrong.
(My current bet is on some tech that is an adaptation to global warming.)
These delineations are arbitrary and only serve to harm all of us.
The "heyday of email" wasn't until the general public got access to the Internet.
The before generation literally built the box and wrote the software.”
The before generation literally built the box and wrote the software.
Citation missing and required.
In this chart, PC consumption peaks before the so-called millennial cohort is even of age. Guess who built the boxes and wrote the software before your generation was still filling your diapers...go on, guess.
Every damn time.
"What? You *deliberately l* ran a program called MalwareBytes?"
This a boomer.
Good grift if you're into that, I suppose.
Fun if you're into that sort of thing.
Fun if you're into that sort of thing.
Like, I don't know here.
Making everyone's internet experience look exactly the same was the down fall.
Tha KS Facebook.
And I really can’t fault someone who says “I’ve been told my entire life not to install .exe stuff because it’s bad” refusing to install an .exe.
We had the perfect storm of the dawn of the internet age, janky but improving software and systems, and a lack of streamlined GUIs that forced us to sink or swim to be a normal teenager
Winrar not needed.
Sent money in for a lot of those shareware devs back in the day :)
As a result, I had access to all the equipment by 5 (95), but had to mostly teach myself. Trial and error or observing him. I taught my mom how to use the internet when I was 7.
Zoomers are very technically adept at phone apps. But show them excel and their brain explodes.
Signed, a (late) boomer
Were a large segment of your generation computer programmers? Was computer use widespread in your generation from the age of five?