This is something that I realized a couple of decades back, when my generation was supposedly the computer savvy one, after meeting a man in his sixties. While teaching computer programming to children I noticed that people tended to correlate screen time with technical ability, even when the child was a passive consumer. When I talk to children and youth today, I recognize similarities between the ones that I hold technical coversations with and my peers while I was growing up. I would not be surprised if the proportion of youth engaged with technology remains relatively stable from generation to generation.
The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
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Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#12Consumer tech has been refined and dumbed down to the point where everything just sort of magically works, and since it's "magic" you never have to dive into the nuts and bolts. By making it so easy to use, we are depriving people of their opportunities to organically learn like people in my generation had to. Exceptions exist. * Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe - YouTube || https://www.youtub…
In what way were people able to introspect into their computing devices for learning? By being able to poke around OS details or the filesystem? Doesn't it sound more important to have an IDE + fluid building so people don't have to care about the details?
It’s often useful to be able to know what goes on behind the scenes, but the hardware/software of today makes this increasingly difficult to ascertain.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#13It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" - whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers. Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes nee…
In fact, it is much harder to tinker with technology than it used to be. Not only is it more complex, but phones are also locked down so you are not really able to control your own device, or it does at least require quite some effort to do so, and can't be done using the device itself. Both Apple and Google in practice discourage people from tinkering with the device.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#14It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" - whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers. Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes nee…
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Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#15Consumer tech has been refined and dumbed down to the point where everything just sort of magically works, and since it's "magic" you never have to dive into the nuts and bolts. By making it so easy to use, we are depriving people of their opportunities to organically learn like people in my generation had to. Exceptions exist. * Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe - YouTube || https://www.youtub…
In what way were people able to introspect into their computing devices for learning? By being able to poke around OS details or the filesystem? Doesn't it sound more important to have an IDE + fluid building so people don't have to care about the details?
There's no such thing as "don't have to care about the details."
This is the biggest difference between then and now. In the 70s and 80s computing was all about details, all the way down to the hardware, which most developers understood at the register level.
8-bit amateurs grew up with simple toy machines. They learned enough detail to allow a natural transition to professional development on mainframes and minis - far more detail and more complexity, more of an OS to deal with, but with a recognisably similar outline.
Now most development is more like LEGO - clip moving parts to other moving parts in a slightly precarious way and hope nothing breaks.
It's a completely different way of thinking about computing - kit and cookbook based, with less space for original creation and problem solving. This is partly because the details are hidden and can't be changed, but also because the ethic of experimentation and creativity based on deep domain knowledge driven by curiosity isn't the same.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#16It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" - whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers. Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes nee…
Well, nowaday most people drive but can't fix their cars. Makes sense the same is happening with IT.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#17I have long thought the term 'digital native' is a sort of filter for people who are not actually technologists but avid consumers of mostly social platforms.
I (as a computer scientist) have never heard people actually working in tech refer to themselves as that.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#18I guess the first generation of digital natives (and those older who caught up a bit later in life) will remain the only one who had to touch relatively low level stuff (things as simple as a tree of folders and file endings).
I remember when one of the markers of being a technical person was using the word directory vs the word folder.
It seems arbitrary but I think the reason is that non technical users always feel more comfortable sitting at the exact level of abstraction of the interface without translating it into what it actually is, in computing terms. A folder is something you recognise, you put files in it, there's even an icon that looks like a folder - a file extension is the 'type' of the file and controls the progam that will open it. That's all you need to know.
I'm not sure those non technical users have got less technical with time, I just think the abstraction has moved up a level from the OS and file storage being something they have to think about regularly, to now apps mostly just handling storage and files for you and presenting the data through their interface (i.e. The concept of a file being separate from the app that uses it is going away somewhat).
The people that were dealing with folders and file extensions may seem now in retrospect to be more low level, but they weren't. That was just the interface/abstraction available to them at the time. I don't think they had a better model of what was going on underneath than someone today who just taps app icons etc.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#19When I was a kid, my dad changed the oil in our cars, replaced brakes and spark plugs, and if it broke down he could at least diagnose it if not fix it himself.
Now I'm grown up, and cars have changed a lot. I have a tesla, and the only thing I can really service on it myself is the washer fluid. But it's also more reliable and doesn't need constant tinkering.
This was what came to mind reading this. I was of the "tinker" generation with computers, which have changed a lot since then. More reliable, more user friendly. I don't expect my children will have the same relationship with them I did, just like I didn't have the same relationship with cars my parents did. But maybe they will be the tinker generation of something else...
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#20I have long thought the term 'digital native' is a sort of filter for people who are not actually technologists but avid consumers of mostly social platforms. I (as a computer scientist) have never heard people actually working in tech refer to themselves as that.
I've heard this term first time now reading your comment. Adding it to "list of thing I hope my kids are not".