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A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

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Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#291

Post by owlmirror »

daniel-alex wrote: post #268
unethical_ban wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was the idea that single-clicking in the desktop is a select action, while a double click is an "open/navigate" action. It makes sense to me.

Until you have someone double-clicking on browser links (and other things) because that's how you open stuff in a computer, as I've seen multiple less-experienced people doing it.

well, I always found it a hassle to select texts in web documents for that reason. want to search a word in a hyperlinked headline? meh, the browser decides to open the link. even worse on touch enabled devices. double clicking stuff to open it does make sense, especially if they are more than just buttons.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#293

Post by Double_a_92 »

It's too real. My niece once told me that she doesn't like using Word on her Laptop because it's better on the iPad... Because they keyboard is more like on her smartphone there.

I was like "WTF" internally... And she's writing her first CV and application letters like that.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#294

Post by Double_a_92 »

2bitencryption wrote: post #210
nickserv wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worry with toddlers and touch interfaces is precisely because at that age they should be exploring the world, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling... By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not against tablets, j…

this is once of those things where I'm 90% confident it isn't actually harmful to a young child... ...and yet if I had a child, I wouldn't expose them to tablets at a young age, just because that 10% is scary.

But I guess it's more because of the content, not because it will learn that certain surfaces are swipeable.

E.g. it's probably quite bad to just let your kids watch random youtube playlists all the time.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#295

Post by jakecopp »

kqr wrote: post #216
disqard wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little older than you (prolly couple of years). I remember how when I was a teen and coding a lot inside the Turbo C IDE, it became second nature to press F2 frequently (to save). Around that time, while working on math homework (on paper), I'd occasionally experience brain farts, where I would think of pressing (not reach for) the F2 key. FWIW, I have decent handwriting today, and even exchange correspondence with…

I have, on more than one occasion, reached down and wiggled my pencil in order to avoid getting a screensaver on the sheet of paper I was working with a couple of minutes ago.

Or when handwriting on paper and feeling incomplete without Vim keybindings...

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#296

Post by Double_a_92 »

btschaegg wrote: post #75

An interesting part in the article: > Lena-Sophie Mueller, of the German nonprofit Initiative D21, pointed out: “Timetables (for railways) are no longer available in paper form. More and more services are based on the Internet [...]” This has been going on for quite a while. I distinctly remember being stranded in Düsseldorf a few years back. I was at the train station, looking for a train (I knew the destination but…

All the stations I've been to have digital displays with all the trains in the next hours.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#297

Post by carlmr »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #48
codingdave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the age of the child. A toddler who is still exploring the world is one thing. A 14 year old who swipes at a book is a problem. (I don't know the age of the children from these anecdotes.) On the other hand, a toddler who explores the world as if it is a touch screen has been given way too much time on a touch screen. So there is definitely a problem there.

I highly doubt you'll find a 14 year old who swipes at a book... kids very quickly learn context and rules of physics. It's much harder when some screens are touch screens and some are not, however, but I see adults trying to swipe non-touch screens all the time (mall displays, ads, iMacs etc.)

I think that's mostly a function of many touch screens not being obvious about being touch screens, and some non-touch screens having interfaces that look like touch.

We have some older machines for getting train tickets and some newer ones. They probably didn't want to scare anybody off, so the interface still looks almost the same. It used to be buttons next to the screen, now it's a touch screen.

Of course you see people trying to touch the old ones. There's no signifier on the new ones (except the lack of buttons) that shows that they're different, so without a bit of thinking you don't know which affordances there are.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#298

Post by omnibrain »

jccalhoun wrote: post #243
falcor84 wrote: post #147

The first example provided in the article (indeed the first sentence) is “How do I double click?”, and I want to focus on this. As a kid in the 90s, I just took double clicking as a necessary evil. But after many many opportunities of trying (mostly successfully) to teach it to both the elderly and to kids, I've gradually grown to hate it. It's such a horrible gesture, difficult to perform, complicated to reason abou…

I think it was Windows 98 or maybe ME where Microsoft tried to make everything a single click. People hated it so MS went back to the double click method.

The desktop enhancements (Active Desktop?) that came with Internet Explorer 4. You could install that on Windows 95 and get "almost Windows 98" that way. I liked it and kept it this way for years to come. In Windows 10 it's still an option you can turn on but one day I just did not bother to turn it on on a new installation.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#299

Post by skgoa »

UncleEntity wrote: post #214
ssivark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids should be weaned off tablets just like infants are weaned off milk and induced to use their teeth. The thing that really bothers me is, as Alan Kay says: The ipad interface is designed for 2-year-olds and 82-year-olds and being forced upon everyone in between. See, eg: https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab... It is a de-evolution of problem-solving culture in the sense that people are disc…

> While that does simplify computers so that more people can use it in the short-term, it also strips away the whole purpose of computing, which is to empower people with a more advanced tool. Back in Sumeria they used to go on and on about how this newfangled writing thing would destroy civilization because it took the personal element out of interpersonal communication. Just because the majority of people don't con…

> Back in Sumeria they used to go on and on about how this newfangled writing thing would destroy civilization because it took the personal element out of interpersonal communication.

I remember reading an old rant by someone (I want to say letter sent to a newspaper) who complained that the grammophone will destroy music.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#300

Post by ImaCake »

kashyapc wrote: post #222
ldjb wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often encounter people having issues double-clicking. Actually, a lot of people have trouble just single-clicking, so double-clicking is even more of a challenge. A lot of people just can't get the knack for clicking twice in quick succession. And the inconsistency between when they should single-click and when they should double-click causes a lot of confusion. I think it probably would make life easier to get rid…

The other week my Dutch language teacher (he's ~55) wrote an email "I would like to try Linux, can you please assist?" after learning about what is open source and libre software. I was pleasantly surprised to receive his email. So last week I went to install Fedora 28 on his new laptop. It all went smoothly. No, that's a lie; I had to do a little scary command-line surgery while he watched me do it (and heard me ass…

Maybe Ubuntu would be more appropiate as a first time distro? I use Ubuntu because I end up frustrated having to google a million issues whenever I use any other linux distro. I grew up on windows desktop and can't really see any but the most determined ipad user from sticking with ubuntu let alone anything else.
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