The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.
The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#22The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.
Exactly this. We think we are tech savvy because we are better than them at our tech. That tech was plumbing for your dad, and it’s something 90s-00s for me. My kids do stuff better than me that I don’t even consider tech but it probably is.
That’s how you become an old person that know nothing about tech - you keep being good at tech and don’t consider the stuff you aren’t good as to be tech. Eventually that other tech is all there is and you are now your dad.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#23When 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 "ti…
Although I would like to think that the next generation will be renowned for the "tinkerers of something else that comes out", it is also true that industry and society has changed a lot in that regard. Back in your parents day, your dad was able to have a holistic view on his car and repair many parts also because it was more simple back then. And it was also possible to repair TVs, toasters, lawnmower and whatnot. This has just completely changed for many reasons. Things are becoming more complex and more "consumer-friendly". But in fact "consumer-friendly" nowadays feels more and more like keeping the user limited (or maybe even stupid) to never even try to ask questions/put the technology into perspective finding new use cases for him/herself or even fixing things for themselves (think about Apple policies...). So I do believe that for "tinkerers" to have a come-back a completely new era would first have to evolve again.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#24The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.
Exactly this. We think we are tech savvy because we are better than them at our tech . That tech was plumbing for your dad, and it’s something 90s-00s for me. My kids do stuff better than me that I don’t even consider tech but it probably is. That’s how you become an old person that know nothing about tech - you keep being good at tech and don’t consider the stuff you aren’t good as to be tech. Eventually that other…
Tech savvy is a misnomer a lot of the time. Because it is not technology that is hard to learn as such, but the flaws. It always annoyed me when I was younger that people would think you are smart because you could brute force a printer setup. When in reality it is because I probably had nothing else to do so I could "learn" by banging my head against the wall.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#25It'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.
It might be harder to tinker with The Device, but tinkering kids these days are not bereft of options. When I was a teenager I remember badly wanting a "386 single board computer" which I saw advertised in the pages of Popular Science for hundreds of dollars. Imagine the things I could do with a whole computer small enough to hold in one hand! It could breathe new life into my projects and bring my tinkering to a whole new level! Sadly this marvel was beyond my budget at the time but today you can buy dozens of such boards for a fraction of the price. Boards with a dizzying array of integrated peripherals teenage me wouldn't have even known what to do with. Today there are uncountable open source projects you can download immediately to run on these boards, whole sophisticated stacks which can be imported now and torn apart to be stitched back together tomorrow. A tech-interested teen today can buy devices with their pocket change that have more power and flexibility than any of the platforms I had access to as a kid.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#26It'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…
I'd put the top more or less at the rise of Linux, the BSD's and similar systems. While fiddling with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT might have given people the impression that they were 'programming' their PC's in reality all they did was find the right incantations to get their games to work. Porting one of the free OS's to new hardware is at a different level from shoving some drivers in high memory to make room for Doom.
A bit of this lives on in porting e.g. newer versions of Android to hardware which has been left behind by the manufacturer without a shred of documentation or care. If and when one or more of the alternative mobile operating systems get a foothold this might open another avenue for this type of hacking.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#27When 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 "ti…
Although I would like to think that the next generation will be renowned for the "tinkerers of something else that comes out", it is also true that industry and society has changed a lot in that regard. Back in your parents day, your dad was able to have a holistic view on his car and repair many parts also because it was more simple back then. And it was also possible to repair TVs, toasters, lawnmower and whatnot.…
Indeed. Things become more consumer friendly, i.e. more general public friendly, but less power user friendly. This happened with cars (they have many electronic components that aren't as easy to repair as it was in the past, when everything was mechanic) and has been happening with computers for some time, regarding both software and hardware (walled gardens, dumbed-down operating systems with fewer and fewer configuration options[0], simplified UIs, etc).
[0]: I can only talk about Windows, which is what I use extensively. I noticed that there are many things that I could do in Windows 7 (sometimes using non-Microsoft tools, like Open Shell) and that are not possible any more in Windows 10.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#28It'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…
Yup. There was a time I could write out a win.ini file from memory and understanding all the options. Today, doing the same on any platform would be impossible.
It's been many years. Computers have gotten far more complex and reliable. My uncle knew how to rebuild his car engine, I don't. Same thing.
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#29I 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 th…
I think language is not the best indicator, because I think one should obey the masses to keep communication efficiently, even if it hurts a bit sometimes. (drone = quadcopter, autonomous quadcopter = autonomous drone or something, app = mobile app, AI = ML/DL/if)
Re: The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent
#30I 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 always assumed it was coined by a manager somewhere who was impressed by his teenage intern's ability to set up his email. There are a lot of people who aren't just not technical but actively phobic of computers, I think 'digital native' is more like knowing how to drive than knowing how to fix a car.