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11% of Americans don’t use the internet

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Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#51

Post by jMyles »

simmons wrote: post #8
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #3

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

I don't know if people or specifically children were happier in the 80s/90s, but after spending a couple of weeks with my 10-year-old niece, I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube. It wouldn't be so bad if children were using the Internet to do something constructive or educational. Of course, plenty of people from my generation spent their chil…

> I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube.

...is that so bad? She has an incredible world of content at her fingertips; what's the virtue in refraining from involving herself in it?

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#52

Post by mindcrime »

dijit wrote: post #40

Certain parts of my family do not operate on the same timescale as me wrt tech. It's not just a generational divide in my families case. To me, tech is all-emcompassing, I follow new developments as if it's second nature. To the more tech literate of my family they see the stuff that comes out as usually unnecessary in most cases but upgrade to have the new hotness every second major cycle (iphone 4->6 for example).…

It's really not an age/generation thing at all. There are plenty of millennials who know shit about computers, while there are "old farts" like Bill Joy, Brian Kernighan, James Gosling, Rob Pike, Patrick Winston, Gerald Sussman, Bjarne Stroupstrup, etc. who know more about computing than most of us will ever know, and are more comfortable with technology than most kids out there today.

I think it's always been the case, and probably always will be the case, that some people intuitively embrace / grok technology, and some don't. Stereotypes aside, I haven't found that age has much to do with it.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#53

Post by cm2187 »

simmons wrote: post #12

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starti…

What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#54

Post by rayiner »

magduf wrote: post #2

Old people can use the internet just fine if they want to; my 80-year-old mother happily uses it to buy all kinds of stuff, to pay her bills, to keep up with family on Facebook, etc.

My dad is in his late 60s and belongs to a generation of non-tech office workers that had to learn to use computers without mice for word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#56

Post by hackujin »

pnloyd wrote: post #47
ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #45

It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (…

A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.

A lot of jobs require literacy and a phone number.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#57

Post by holygrail111 »

trumped wrote: post #42
neverartful wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.

at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...

African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#58

Post by dmead »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #55

This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...

whats the exchange rate with wikipedia articles?

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#59

Post by DavidAdams »

pnloyd wrote: post #47
ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #45

It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (…

A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.

This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.

Re: 11% of Americans don’t use the internet

#60

Post by xvector »

SamUK96 wrote: post #41
simmons wrote: post #12

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starti…

Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. Part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing [citation needed, I know]. Part of me thinks that the easy way now where we can do IRS forms (and everything) online and to our door of our houses, will make us weak. There is some old Roman bit a…

> part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing

And yet we are growing closer together every day because of the internet. Technologies like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime enable human interaction like never before. As VR becomes mainstream, along with eye and face tracking, we can expect interaction over the internet to feel 99% as authentic as interaction in real life.

> There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times

Contemporary moral systems look down on suffering. As engineers, we should strive to create a society where suffering and "hard times" are eliminated. The end-goal is everyone being able to enjoy life with tragedies and hardships eliminated.

This is not to say that we should get rid of all intellectual challenges - just that (by any contemporary moral system) it should be the end goal to rid ourselves of suffering.

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