They are like 4 tbf no?
Most definitions use 2011-2013 as starting range for Gen Alpha, so the older Gen Alpha kids are 13-15
On a side note, I would regularly get my silent generation grandmother to fix something on my smartphone when they first started getting popular. I miss her.
Joking aside I do actually worry about how superficial technical knowledge is becoming.
We just need to integrate conversational AI into everything, so people never have to understand tech or learn to use it
Tap for spoiler
/s
Oh it’s well fucked already.
It’s always been that way. Even most people who used the internet “way back when” have no clue how it actually functions. Terms like DNS and IPv4 are vaguely familiar concepts at best outside of professional or hobbyist circles.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that either. There’s too much stuff for any one person to know. You learn the stuff that interests you and ignore the rest, which hopefully means somebody is interested in all of it. That’s why it’s good that there’s all different kinds of people out there.
Yup. It’s the old “you don’t need to be a baker to enjoy eating bread” thing. The tricky part is that technology has been shoehorned into basically every aspect of life, so there are comparatively a lot of people who don’t know how to “bake” it. If someone doesn’t like bread, they simply won’t eat it. But that’s not really possible with modern technology, outside of near complete rejection of modernity like the Amish.
But both know how to use apps. What more can Corpos ask for?
I hate how true this is. Watching teens flail and panic at the library as they have to spontaneously learn how to use a non-chromeOS computer has been an upsettingly nostalgic reminder of one of my first jobs
The key concept conflict is they think files are inside apps (I teach some basic IT in one of my modules).
When asked to locate an excel file on their computer they point at excel and say the file is in excel. If you show them a .txt file, they’ll claim it’s in notepad.
The idea that a file is like a book, and the program is the glasses you use to read it, and their computer is the bookshelf seems to resonate well though. Then you just have to fight the clusterfuck that is Apple’s file storage, since most bring an apple device to uni.
It can be even more fundamental than that. I’ve seen people cocking their heads at the existence of multiple windows and programs running simultaneously. As in, “whoa, where’d my assignment go?” after they click on the browser. They’re used to everything running through a single window due to school computers offering everything through the browser. It’s terrifying to me.
they point at excel and say the file is in excel.
Watching them use the card catalog.
There are YouTube channels with letting the youth try to figure out old tech.
You mean the Fine Bros.? The people who tried to copyright the idea of reacting to things on YouTube and wanted to make people buy a license to keep doing what they had already been doing? Those channels?
Use a slide rule and protractor to find the card catalog. Now write your name in cursive to check out a book.
Writing cuneiform on wax tablets with styli
scoffs
Writing things down?!?
If you do that you’ll cease to exercise your memory and will grow to rely on external means.
Back in my day we built our memory.
(If you’re not familiar this was basically Socrates’ (as portrayed by Plato) view on writing things down)
That better be in Latin this time, young man!
I was born in the late 1900s, I can only go back so far.
those teens obviously were forced into consumerism by their parents and corpos
In Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch argues that there are three waves of “internet people”. The first was “before it was cool”, the second when it became mainstream (give or take the turn of the millennium) and the third when internet was already a thing. The third are young people, too young to remember the 1900s and therefore the time before internet, and old people who go online because it’s unavoidable and also more intuitive and easy than ever before.
Despite the generation gap, they have things in common and in contrast to the first and second wave (which she also subdivides but that’s beside the point). For example they never used mail as primary communication and they have smartphones as first device and most often second hand from a family member.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk and sorry if I took your shitpost too serious but there’s truth and science behind it and I couldn’t not share it.
I wish we’d refer to early internet era as something other than the 1900s. WWW ostensibly started in 95. Maybe we just call it “The 90s” and be good with it?
When we start referring to the “turn of the century” as the early 2000s, I may just outright die.
I wish we’d refer to early internet era as something other than the 1900s.
Oh feel you. Saying 1900s for the whole century feels wrong but why tho? We do it for other centuries as well so maybe it’s time to get used to it.
WWW ostensibly started in 95.
That’s already part of becoming mainstream. I use “internet” in the broader sense that includes other technology I’m not really familiar with. But some precursors of the internet were around in the 70s and maybe even earlier? Donno, I’m second wave myself. Sorry if my terminology is confusion and not correct.
When we start referring to the “turn of the century” as the early 2000s, I may just outright die.
I used the phrase “turn of the millennium”. Sorry if old people thought I meant 1000 CE.
We didnt vote for Æthelred the Unready! Were an autononous collective.
I grew up when the internet was already a thing but I didn’t really get to use it until I was a teenager. We had a family computer with space cadet pinball on it, and as a small kid I didn’t know how to surf the web, I only knew how to play the games like solitaire. I knew you could connect your DS (It’s not a Gameboy, mum!) to the internet for online multiplayer, but it was too complicated to figure out without a grownup’s help. When I got a bit older, I got My own laptop for schoolwork and discovered the internet. I got hooked on webcomics and Reddit. I had a dumb phone for emergencies, which was later replaced with a smartphone on a prepaid plan, with too little data to use it for the internet. So I browsed the internet from the Ubuntu desktop I built at home. Eventually I got a monthly plan and joined the 21st century, but it was a long way getting there.
Technically I fall into your third group, but I don’t have anything in common with these kids.
I feel so powerful. I can develop in JavaScript, PHP and actionscript. All the hottest languages of the year 2000
I once wrote a game with hidden folders and txt files
I mean, both JavaScript and PHP are still widely used.
RIP Flash
I’m pretty sure PHP has died 16 times since then
PHP is Michael Meyers
They keep trying, but they have yet to find a decent replacement
Modern PHP isn’t too bad though, especially with modern frameworks like Laravel. A lot of the bad parts of the language have been deprecated or removed over time.
A lot of the “PHP bad” crowd haven’t used it in 20 years.
I agree. I’ve only really used it for basic templating but things like twig made that a breeze
There’s a push by younger boomers to change the name to “Jones” apparently.
Everyone just thought the same thing in response to that too.
Change the name of what to Jones?
Boomer. It’s a dumb as it sounds.
Zoomers too
Dude, I’m an electrical engineer born in 02.
dude, i was 1 year away from finishing high school when you were born. Holy shit I’m old.
That’s not possible, you’d only be …
Oh.
Yep, the future is now, huh?
Get off my lawn.
No… I thnk your brain might be wrong.
Oh well, I dont respect Time, its an odeious concept.
*Oedipus
Pretty sure they did mean Odious, but to be fair Chronos did kill his dad….
The oldest zoomers are 29 rn
Wow, they’re almost people
Hm
Life begins at 30
…and ends at 35. It’s hardly fair.
The average gen-z person knows more about computers than the average millennial.
From experience, they mainly know how to navigate, not troubleshoot.
Also, bold statement. Millennials had to learn on computers that weren’t always user friendly. It didn’t always “just works.”
Lol. Lmao, even.
Are you sure you have “gen-z” correct? We’re all adults now
I spent 8 years doing tier 2 IT support with a tier 1 helpdesk staffed primarily by gen-z who were just entering the work force. Yes, I’m very sure.
Your generation fucking sucks at tech.
You’re talking about people that could be as young as 14. Do you really think a 14 year old knows what a filesystem is? What a CPU architecture is? Knows how to clone a project from GitHub and build it? Could they identify RAM slots on a motherboard? Could they install an OS? Do they know what a subnet is?
Then you run into the problem of generalizing about a wide spectrum of ages. I’m older genZ, and have experience with all of these things as part of hobby projects and my career. Obviously the iPad kids haven’t.
Boomers are reliably feeble with technology across their entire age spectrum. Gen Alpha has very few experienced enough because of their circumstances and age gap.
when i was that age (for the things that existed in your list), I did. I knew that stuff.
So I was on the internet in 1995 and was visiting BBS’s for about 10 years before that so I’m good with computers. I feel for my parents and the young ones because I’m a basic when it comes to phones and tablets, if shit goes beyond touching what I want to do I’m full on lost
Gen alpha is six years old, they’ll get there
Most definitions use 2011-2013 as starting range for Gen Alpha, so the older Gen Alpha kids are 13-15
Isn’t that Gen Beta?
nah some of them are already 10 years old
(I know 2 of them, that’s more than 1, my 16y.o. gen-z kid wishes to distance themselves from these “alpha babies” and so I am scientifically proven correct)
