Comment on Lemmy is a tech literate echo chamber
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoYeah but like, its not just a personal experience or anecdote.
My brain had to bridge the gap between two different worlds. The year 2000 is was similar to 2025 than the year 2000 was to 1990.
And 1990 was more similar to 1965 than it was to 2005.
We didn’t experience a smooth technological transition; it was an abrupt and whole cloth transformation, and by 2005… well… things actually haven’t change that much since 2005. They’ve changed, but the change isn’t nearly as radical as the change from 1995 to 2005.
Technical transformation follows a consistent pattern of tool innovation, radical adoption, and then, effective stability for long periods of time. Some generations bridge a gap between tool kits and some don’t. Gen-X largely missed out on that transformation. Z caught the tale end. Alpha is growing up in a period of, well, at least platform stagnation.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As did past generations with new technologies. No car- cars everywhere. That generation could rebuild a transmission whereas it’s a mystery box you have a specialist fix for you.
No TV, TV everywhere, tubes in tvs, then transistors. My much older brother in law can identify and fix any TV at the component level. Like identifying a bad capacitor and not only replacing it but understanding the circuit to know that a larger ufarad capacitor will not only work in that part of the circuit, but prevent a future problem.
I suspect that like me, your TV repair knowledge ends at matching cables on the back to ports and replacing batteries.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Then why is it that several, peer reviewed, scientific studies have shown, repeatedly, that millennials are better with all forms of technology than boomers, X zoomers or alpha?
Fleur_@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
The classic “several studies show” followed by exactly 0 mention of any studies.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The studies are on all forms of Computer Technology, not car transmission or TV repair.
The people that built the home computer and the Internet were all Boomers! Woz is a boomer. Vint Cerf is a boomer.
BassTurd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Most people, regardless of age, have never been able to rebuild a transmission. That has never been a generation defining skill. It was only car enthusiasts, and more specifically motorheads, that has those skills. Did more older folks know how to work on their cars then today’s youths? Likely. At the same time modern cars are vastly more complex that cars of old. Almost none of those old hats would know the first thing about rebuilding a modern transmission, and the ones that do probably don’t have all of the special equipment needed to do it. If we include gender to this equation, what percentage of women in the general population do you think knew anything about working on cars? There were some, but I’d wager that is a really low percentage.
Your much older brother is an anomaly. There are exactly 0 people that I know that are 50+ years old that would know anything about fixing a TV. That is not a skill that a relatively large amount of people ever learned. I know many people that could identify a blown cap, and maybe with the advent of YouTube, could maybe figure out how to desolder and replace that component. Like with the cars, having skills in electrical engineering was never a generation defining trait.
Computers from the early 90’s+ have always been more complicated than old cars and TVs. Being able to do basic things on early PCs required more skills to the end user than knowing how to drive a car or use a TV. It was all new and nothing like anything before them. Cars were preceded by other ground transportation and TVs by radios for many years and knowing how to operate them at a basic level has always been relatively simple. Computers continued to evolve at an exponential rate in capabilities and complexity and if you grew up with them in your prime years, you had to be able to keep up.
Driving cars and using (dumb) TVs is very similar to how it was 70+ years ago. The invention and roll out of these to the masses took place over decades from when they first became available and during that time they were basically the same devices to the end user. Turn a switch and the TV powers on and you turn a knob to change the channel. With a car, you put in the key, put it in gear, gas in the right break on the left, maybe clutch on the far left. That is all most people needed to know, with specialist knowing more. That is very different from computers. Just turning on a computer didn’t do anything useful. It wasn’t intuitive to figure out and required reading a troubleshooting. That’s what every user had to experience, not just the specialists. The 90’s through 00’s brought with it significant changes in computers. It was a true technological renaissance and it took place over about 10-15 years which is when millennials grew up. That short amount of time and that much change isn’t remotely comparable to the slow and simple changes of past technologies.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes and you are a techie surrounded by techies. You didn’t see the millions your own age who used computers in the 80’s and 90’s without ever understanding them. I ran a mid sized ISP in the mid and late 90’s which meant training and supporting the help desk staff to handle the phone calls. I’m very aware of how stupid the average Millenial was about technology. I hired many smart kids. But they were rare. My company had a relationship with a private school where we’d get some high school students to work at my ISP and it counted as their “computer class”. There were maybe two kids per class of 100 students each year that knew how a computer worked rather than just how to click the buttons on their Mac or Windows.
There were more computer techies in the 90’s. There were more motorheads in the 50’s. Computers are more complicated now such that even an average techy can’t modify an iPad just like an average person can’t fix a car today because of its encapsulation of complications.
Wrong generation. I’m 50+ (Gen X) and have no idea about how to fix a TV at the component level. Because I grew up with TV’s everywhere like kids today grow up with iphones everywhere.
TV repair was a thing. Radio shack and even Woolworths (Walmart of the 1950’s) had a tube tester so that people could walk in with the tube from their TV and test it without paying for professional repair.
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Average people knew more about repairing TV’s than today!
Again, it’s not “everyone”. It’s the techies of each generation. It’s the same subset of the population that has the interest and skills to understand things. The only thing that changes is the popular technology that the techies focus on.