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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

#91

Post by brianberns »

LaikaF wrote: post #67

My Grandfather is one of those 11%. However I suspect he's a bit different from the others. Up until the late 90s he was programming Fortran and COBOL. He started during the Korean War or just after I believe. Towards the end he was mostly doing contract work as one of the few people who could still work on them. But after he retired technology stopped for him. The latest innovation he'll use is a DVD player. The onl…

My father is like that, although not as extreme. He was also a professional Fortan programmer. I showed him Visual Basic 6 when he retired in the mid-90s and he's still using it today for all his programming projects. He uses email and will websurf some, but has no interest in a cell phone or anything else invented in the last 15 years or so.

Oh, but he really wants a Tesla. He's in his mid-80s. :)

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

#92

Post by jdietrich »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #26
soared wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.

Grew up with kids TV in the 70s and 80s thanks :p I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. Walkmans in the 80s, yes; games, yes; TV, definitely as mentioned. All of those have cropped up in the news more than a few times while they were topical. Maybe UK radio got a different reaction to the US?

>I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember.

You're far too young to remember. There were two distinct moral panics about radio; the first in the 1930s when radio first became popular in the home, and the second in the early 1960s when transistorisation allowed teenagers to have radios of their own.

Until 1967, the BBC did not have a pop music station. Until 1973, commercial radio was illegal. The pirates who filled the demand for pop radio in the interim were hugely controversial. A great many column inches were spent fretting over the corrupting influence of foreign broadcasters, beaming salacious rock and roll music into the bedrooms of British children.

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

#93

Post by wuliwong »

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…

I've never heard that quote before but it's pretty solid. :)

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

#94

Post by Rjevski »

DavidAdams wrote: post #59
pnloyd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More than libraries, I wish there would be really affordable computers.

We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive.

Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.

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

#95

Post by gurkendoktor »

azernik wrote: post #30
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!?

Judging by the article, this number is only going to go down; the numbers are in the 2-3% range for everyone under 50, and are made up by a whopping 34% offline in the over-65 age bracket. I would also be strongly suspicious of childhood nostalgia were I in your shoes.

There are at least some signs that our childhood nostalgia is not misplaced:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behin...

(I don't live in the US, but I'm afraid this trend will arrive here soon enough.)

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

#96

Post by mmirate »

nine_k wrote: post #61
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you spent your life becoming very efficient in a particular environment, there's an incentive to keep this environment from changing, and not to expend any effort to learn a new environment. That learning capacity can be more efficiently spent elsewhere. (An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important thin…

It gets better: there are places selling their software via hardware appliances that run RHEL6.

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

#97

Post by Rjevski »

novia wrote: post #88
jMyles wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm not the OP, but having also watched a ten year old consume YouTube videos... they tend to stay far far away from anything remotely educational. For example, this is the kind of thing that the particular kid I know watches: https://youtu.be/5O66ssNpg_A 22 million views. So basically nothing is gained from watching these sorts of videos. But what's lost? Maybe the opportunity to connect with family members?

Define educational.

Watching stupid Call of Duty videos as a teenager is what allowed me to learn English (I am not a native English speaker) and I now owe my entire career to that.

On the other hand, proper “educational” stuff has yet to make me a penny.

Just because it doesn’t look “educational” (or should I say boring) to you doesn’t mean the kid isn’t learning stuff by watching (or listening to) the video. Chances are, those people are doing real-life stuff that is never taught in school and they would otherwise try to figure it out by themselves via trial and error.

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

#98

Post by soperj »

nine_k wrote: post #61
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you spent your life becoming very efficient in a particular environment, there's an incentive to keep this environment from changing, and not to expend any effort to learn a new environment. That learning capacity can be more efficiently spent elsewhere. (An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important thin…

>there are still places running RHEL6 in production

We just got off of RHEL5, so I can understand why there are people still running 6.

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

#99

Post by cm2187 »

megaremote wrote: post #85
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser Do you need to now IP protocol to use the internet? Old people generally don't like change, they have things set up as they like them.

If you need to configure a computer, understand the difference between an email and a webmail and imap, what is a certificate and why it matters, you need a basic understanding of how these things work.

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

#100

Post by novia »

Rjevski wrote: post #97
novia wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but having also watched a ten year old consume YouTube videos... they tend to stay far far away from anything remotely educational. For example, this is the kind of thing that the particular kid I know watches: https://youtu.be/5O66ssNpg_A 22 million views. So basically nothing is gained from watching these sorts of videos. But what's lost? Maybe the opportunity to connect with family members?

Define educational. Watching stupid Call of Duty videos as a teenager is what allowed me to learn English (I am not a native English speaker) and I now owe my entire career to that. On the other hand, proper “educational” stuff has yet to make me a penny. Just because it doesn’t look “educational” (or should I say boring) to you doesn’t mean the kid isn’t learning stuff by watching (or listening to) the video. Chance…

I edited my comment and added a link to a typical video. The child watching this is already fluent in English.
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