Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

(However, when I dismiss an error too quickly, it's usually followed by an audible: "oh crap. I hope that's in a log somewhere.")

For us it was the economy. Upgrading was too expensive.

I don't think in IT there is much a child can do wrong. Only giving up personal information should be prohibited mostly. Other than that, its pretty safe. I managed to light computer on fire only once.

Getting a user interface correct is exceedingly difficult. How would one know what a toaster is for if they had not seen one being used?

Computers are layers and layers of abstractions built to deal with an important resource, information. We've done a good job of burying the fact that at the lowest level we are coercing an electrical charge on a microscopic wire through a p-n junction the way we want. Hardly anyone needs to understand how to create their own incredibly tiny p-n junctions, nor understand what the hell a p-n junction is.

However, at the larger macro levels, there is still much work to be done.

Something as necessary as WiFi still causes a great amount of confusion. Why not alert the user that their wifi is off? Better yet, why not just pop up the wireless selector when someone opens anything that requires a remote resource if they are not connected?

If we were really good at designing things from the start we wouldn't have these problems. People don't need to know about the file system and how it works any more than they need to know about the change in voltage inside their electronics.

The curious among us will always dive deeper into the layers of abstraction and ask how and why. This is not unique to just computers.

The modern world around us is tantalizingly complex. Things like plumbing and water have been solved and "just work". The interface is very obvious and simple, and through a little bit of experimentation, one can figure out a water faucet with very little risk of failure or consequence. How we interact with water in our homes is pretty much solved. Assuming, of course, you live in a society with running water and plumbing. (Some still dont, it's amazing how often the first world forgets this)

How we interact with information is in the process of being "solved". Once our interface with information is "solved" it will be understood and there will be very little need for the major technical skills we require today to interact with this resource.

In the meantime, you are probably gainfully employed because of your ability to understand the current interface with information. It is your job to make this interface better for everyone.

These sites were blocked because pASSword was a "bad word." The filter would also catch most queries that would tell you how to circumvent the filters. (Back then, just using HTTPS versions of sites was usually enough to get past them.)

The best part was: while searching about proxies / changing proxy settings was disallowed -- the computers themselves were dumb terminals that could connect to a remote server using VNC, RDP, and some proprietary Citrix protocol.

If you knew how to switch TTYs on Linux (Ctrl+Alt+1-7) you could get to a debug menu where you could enter any IP and protocol combination you wanted. (TTY2 had a root shell running busybox... the machines were imaged each time you booted though.)

For my last two years I simply connected to my home machine running VNC and browsed the Internet completely unfettered. (Plus I could remotely control my machine: so many times I would start long running downloads at the beginning of the school day.)

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Back then, though, these filters were laughably naive. I'm amazed that it was deemed acceptable to use a system that has to be _overridden_ for students to research for their science classes.

So I should lie to them? Because that's what I would be doing. The truth is that I can fix their computer. To make that a truthful statement it would have to be, "No, sorry, I won't fix your computer." Has a bit of a different ring to it, doesn't it?