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Does anyone else find this disturbing?

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"Smart kids" doing astrophysics but they can't figure out folders? Pretty ridiculous.
 
Honestly, no, it's not disturbing. Just a different system.

None of this stuff is intuitive. It's not even obvious. It's all trained behavior. Even smart people have to be trained.
 
Yup. I find it very disturbing. But not as disturbing as my 18 year old daughter thinking she's an "ADULT". Therefore, she knows EVERYTHING!! She thinks she can party every single day and still succeed at University. Can you say EPIC FAIL?! First semester, all Fs. What a waste!! I'm told she didn't attend a single class.
 
I don't find this disturbing; it's the same situation we were in 40 years ago, when kids had to be taught what "disks" and "drives" and "files" were. A teenager who grew up starting with a 2010-era smartphones/tablets might have never touched a computer, let alone navigate a filesystem. If the kids are indeed smart, then 2 hours of instruction on how to use the software to perform their assignments will be enough.
 
I'm no rocket scientist but I didn't need 2 hours of training or even the user manual to figure out Windows 3.1 when I was 7. GUIs are supposed to be intuitive.
 
I think the issue is that someone raised on phones/tablets has been shown an ecosystem where every application only has visibility to its own file store. Such a person could download something to a phone to $random_download_directory, then open an application, not see their files, and not know what to do.
 
I dunno--I recently read a conversation on Reddit where the overwhelming "expert" opinion was that MLC SSD drives were inherently more reliable than traditional hard disks. I asked if anyone had a functional 40-year old MLC SSD...

I guess that I'm just old and grumpy.
 
Unfortunately people have been well trained to use computing devices for consumption rather than using them for actual work. People post on twatter, read facefook, buy dresses from online stores, and they never see any "files". Even when "files" are involved, it is always something "in the cloud".

The absolute worst part is they are all well trained by their corporate overlords to expect everyone else do things the exact same way.

Even Microsoft wants to bury the desktop. They started with the big f-up called Windows 8. Trying to make everything look like a toy cell phone. And at every step they have made everything on the PC demand more and more reliance on their cloud crap.

Although I remember sometime around 1997 upgrading an office PC and telling the user to "copy all of their files and folders to..." only to hear: "stop right there, you are talking Japanese!" (There was some reason I could not do that for them) And this was on 95 or NT 4 where they had no excuse not to know what a file or folder was. Morons.

This world gets dumber every day.
 
Honestly this was a problem in the mid 90s when I started doing IT and that never went away... The problem then was the grown-ups not the kids being the real issue.. Most of the kids grasped it.. But today... these kids .... My kids argue with me all the time about stuff like this and think I dont know what I am talking about, while they have very few computer skills.. And typing, forget that.. they cant type! Or spell. I mean we had Apple II's in school, we used typing tutor programs to teach us typing and took computer classes (mostly geared towards BASIC, but still fundamentals of files and folders).

Its sick but Im not surprised.... as I have known this for a while. This is what happens when you coddle a generation... This is what happens when microsoft removes all access to your own computer so the "OS" can handle everything for you.. Started with XP (I know there were things beforehand going back to 9X but XP was the first to do it big time).

But yeah. What a sad state of afairs. As I get older I really question WHO would be able to take care of me and the elderly when our time comes..... I hope to god its robots..
 
I think the issue is that someone raised on phones/tablets has been shown an ecosystem where every application only has visibility to its own file store. Such a person could download something to a phone to $random_download_directory, then open an application, not see their files, and not know what to do.
I agree and throw the X-Box types in there too.
 
In watching and comparing some older friends of ours (wife and I are nearing 50 ourselves) - we've noticed some key differences.

The first set always bitches about the world going to pot, wah wah, kids can't even read analog clocks anymore... etc.

The second set partially embraces the new - appreciates the good parts, doesn't worry about not understanding every change.
It's not their world anymore. They get it, they roll with it.

Every generation of olds thinks it's all going to hell -
  • Cars? witchcraft!
  • Tractors? heck, no, horses will be used forever!
  • Rock & Roll? Ah, it's poisoning the minds of the youth!
  • Keep that computer off my desk, it's just a fad
  • Social media? oh, no, you'll be judged on what you posted as a teen in a job interview when you're 40!!
It's all good...
(except the wife's Honda touch-screen UI... argggg)
:)
 
Well at least i know im going to die of a massive stroke or cardiac... from being unwilling to accept all the awful... awful things that the public has embraced with a deathgrip.. like illiteracy, terrible music, and what passes as socializing these days...

...where the hell are those zombies?
 
In watching and comparing some older friends of ours (wife and I are nearing 50 ourselves) - we've noticed some key differences.

The first set always bitches about the world going to pot, wah wah, kids can't even read analog clocks anymore... etc.

The second set partially embraces the new - appreciates the good parts, doesn't worry about not understanding every change.
It's not their world anymore. They get it, they roll with it.

Every generation of olds thinks it's all going to hell -
  • Cars? witchcraft!
  • Tractors? heck, no, horses will be used forever!
  • Rock & Roll? Ah, it's poisoning the minds of the youth!
  • Keep that computer off my desk, it's just a fad
  • Social media? oh, no, you'll be judged on what you posted as a teen in a job interview when you're 40!!
It's all good...
(except the wife's Honda touch-screen UI... argggg)
:)
Your last bullet is correct. Companies are absolutely looking at your social media before they hire you. People have lost their jobs over stupid tweets.

I don't really think this is about embracing new. Windows isn't getting rid of folders. It's more about people lacking problem solving skills to figure out a basic task, even with the entire internet at their fingertips.
 
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Yup. I find it very disturbing. But not as disturbing as my 18 year old daughter thinking she's an "ADULT". Therefore, she knows EVERYTHING!! She thinks she can party every single day and still succeed at University. Can you say EPIC FAIL?! First semester, all Fs. What a waste!! I'm told she didn't attend a single class.
My Sympathies. Its my fear as well as my Daughter is starting college this year.
 
I don't see the problem to be honest. Each generation starts off at a higher level than the one before. For example when I went to college we had to design fractional distillation columns using engineering paper, drawing intersection points, and using calculators when these days there is a program that will size one for you in seconds. Is it worth the effort to do things by hand when there is automation that does it for you and you have higher order things to design and figure out? The real problem we will all face is when the app you learned to use in college gives you a wrong answer or can't do what you want and you have no idea how to get around it and the older guy who did was laid off or died. Common sense is learned generally from people teaching you how things work when you get stuck or by you figuring it out yourself after you fail or pawning the problem off to a consultant.

Same thing with computing, how low level do you need to know how things work to get the job done?

So what if kids can't read an analog clock , can you read a sun dial? Kids can still tell time. The good thing is that kids can be taught to do things if needed if they have average intelligence, it gets much harder to learn when you get older.

As far as kids partying every day and still getting good grades in college, I am sure that is what is going on these days. If the check keeps clearing you will get a degree unlike when I went people with good money flunked out at high rates every year. Look at high schools and how many valedictorians with 4.0 GPA they have graduating each year compared to when you went to school and had one.
 
Time to teach computer history MS-DOS in k-12 at some point alongside the dewy decimal and other real world organization methods that I was just expected to use and do
 
My Sympathies. Its my fear as well as my Daughter is starting college this year.

My son got put on academic probation his first semester; expelled second semester. He didn't have the discipline. Same thing happened to me my Junior year, so I certainly didn't hold it against him, but we had to try because I was committed to giving him that chance (he would have been the third generation of our family to go to college). So yes, I'm 25K in debt (he could only get 7K in loans) for no degree, but it's ok, I knew that could happen and I don't hold it against him. He's now an EMT and loving his job, and that makes me happy.

I guess this was meant as an empathetic response to your daughter starting college. Set a threshold of Cs or better, and if that isn't met, college isn't for her. No harm no foul.
 
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