The examples listed (not knowing how to use a keyboard, not knowing how to double click and not knowing what a 'cell' in a spreadsheet is) were all extremely common among my classmates back in highschool (and this is talking about the 90's here, so computers were in fairly widespread use at this point).
>It is sad though, that young people appear to be less computer literate in terms of creating content (as an overall percentage of previous generations).
Previous generations? How many generations back do you imagine widespread computer use to go?
Jerry Pournelle was considered cutting edge for using a word processor to write as early as 1977. Adobe Illustrator is from 1987 and Photoshop is from 1990.
There haven't been a whole lot of generations in the 41 years since the Apple II was released (about 2 generations, given 20 years per generation).
I can tell you that kids from my generation (baby boomers) had almost no computer literacy. Most of us never even touched a computer until adulthood (if then).
My grandparents and some people in my parents' circle of friends are not computer-literate. And by that I mean they don't know how to use double click, what a file or browser is, or even how to use a touch focused device. They are utterly unfamiliar with the abstractions and UIs computing devices afford.
Even in my generation many kids didn't have PCs or devices with interfaces more complex than an NES until later in high school.
That is different today from what I've observed. It's true that for many the first computer is not always a PC as I would have had, but a smartphone or a tablet. But does it matter? They are able to harness the power of computing devices to get things done.
Needing to know how computers work internally, or making use of traditional computers with mice, keyboards and monitors on a desk, these things were never really the definition of "computer-literate".
> The overwhelming majority of the audience is now computer-literate and can be counted on
HIGHLY disagree. From what I have seen in the professional world and in school systems, just being able to type on a regular keyboard and use a mouse seems to be premium features to ask of a human, let alone navigate completely alien user interfaces and concepts they were never taught like files and folders, or what the hell the save icon is even depicting (or what it means).
>40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing.
You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past?
Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Compared to regular people (e.g. office workers) from 40 years ago that just used DOS and some word processor or POS or accounting program, there's just no comparison.
> In the future, kids will be less and less exposed to keyboards, and productive computing in general.
I'll go out on a limb here and say that this isn't a new thing at all. It's just that, in the past, fewer students had access to computers, and those who did generally understood them better. Now, it's not that the average high school student doesn't have access, but that the vast majority don't have any interest in how the machine works. It's the same percentage of the total who are interested and good at computing but it's just that a much lower percentage of the computer users are good computer users, in my experience.
High school "computer science" classes in my area seem to teach "you always need to type public static void main(String[] args) for your program to work", as opposed to teaching students what that means. As with in the past, the students who are really good at computing do most of their learning outside of school.
> She would tell me stories about how impressed her peers were with seeing her do something as basic as copy and paste, and navigating files + folders.
> There is a generation of kids that have only ever grown up on tablets + the web, so; the desktop + office app market + ecosystem is ripe for disruption.
I'm not aware of any generation for which being comfortable with those things hasn't put one in, at least (I'm being very conservative), the top 20% of computer literacy. Most people are bad at just using a computer—given how long it's been a problem, there's either a lot of essential complexity there that cannot be mitigated or avoided to improve usability, or we as an industry have just done a terrible job designing desktop operating systems for regular people. I don't think tablets et c. have much to do with it.
> In the 1980s and 90s, knowing about computers was also a way for kids to "rebel against old people".
Growing up in the 1980s, knowing about computers was actively encouraged by all the adults in my life (parents, teachers, etc.)
While some of the particular uses of that knowledge may have been rebellious, actually gaining the knowledge itself was not.
> It was us who could teach our teachers how to use and program a computer, not the other way around.
For the people for whom that was true, IME, computer knowledge often wasn't the only thing it was true about.
> That's gone now.
No, to the extent that it was true in the 1980s and 1990s, its still true now. Most adults (including most teachers) still don't know much about computers, and its seems just as common for young people to be able exceed the teachers they are likely to have at skill with programming current computers as it was in the 1980s or 1990s. And there are plenty of rebellious applications of computer-related knowledge for the young.
> I have a very similar anecdote. I had a long conversation with a friend who is a high school science teacher. She told me that computer literacy has plummeted in the last ten years.
I suspect it is the same progression as any other new technology that undergoes mainstreaming. Take automobiles for example. In the early days if you owned a car you either made yourself something of an expert (and if you were an early buyer you were probably kind of an enthusiast already) or you hired one. Today outside of enthusiast circles they are just an appliance: you get in, turn it on, and go do whatever it is you need to do.
> You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past?
Yes. Aptitude with screwing around with a GUI isn't very relevant.
40 years ago, computers were at best used by clerk type people for specific tasks at a terminal. Accountants were using tabulation machines, written materials were on IBM selectrics.
The people engaged in professional work with computers were mostly programmers or others doing "data processes" or working with business analyst types to model business process around workloads that could live with the available computing resources.
> If anybody is a digital native, it is me. I did not just grow up with computers, I grew up alongside them.
Yes, this. I grew up and grew with technology as a member of the Oregon Trail Generation. Of course, kids these days will learn to operate with the greatest and latest abstractions and will continue to awesome things. The folly is calling the whole generation "digital natives." Just because you are exposed to (consumption based) technology, it does not mean you understand it at some foundational level. It is similar with cars - I've driven cars all my life, but working on them? I'm terrible at it.
> people in sales, marketing, or in management positions -- have grown up with computers.
This doesn't mean anything. Have you watched some 15-22 year olds interact with computers lately? (I'm 23, for reference). They don't hunt and peck on the keyboard in stereotypical fashion but they're just as clueless for anything besides basic interactions. They -are- essentially tech illiterate once they step outside of google sheets, etc, or the web browser in general.
I'm tired of hearing people say "digital native" like it means anything with regards to tech literacy. We're going to have another generation come in and take power that has zero idea of how computers function. At least we understood this and factored this in about the last generation- now we just assume the new generation knows things because they grew up using apps.
If anything, the new generation is more illiterate on average, but with better mechanical facilities and understanding of typical modern UX for apps.
>You seem to be insinuating that, used to, people were "more literate" and are becoming more ignorant.
No, I'm saying the goalposts moved - a lot. The same way widespread reading and writing moved the goalposts back in the day.
>How does not understanding how computers work limit people?
It puts them in the class that considers computers to be magic, like not knowing how to read and write put people in a class that considered industrial machinery and accounting to be magic.
In a world where computers do all the high paid jobs..... thats as low a class as being generally illiterate.
To put it really simply
"computer illiterate"
Is now a thing.
Actual written definition being: not able to use computers well, or not understanding basic things about computers
> I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.
Same. It's like the one high school class I use every single day. Do they even offer typing in high school anymore?
> What happened to the millennials, though, is that about the time we started to hit that age of discovery, technology got a whole lot more featureful, and software developers did a very bad job of coaching users on how to use these features.
> Adults didn't know how to use them, but kids knew a lot about them. And the conclusion that people mistakenly drew was that kids just fundamentally understood computers better than adults, when it was merely that we actually understood only the tools we used.
I don't think your premise supports your conclusion.
In fact, what I think it supports is more of what I have observed: that millennials and on down (at least that subset of us who have chosen to go this route) recognize that experimentation is the way to learn about computers and similar things.
What I have observed about older generations (at least that subset that is technology-averse) is that for most of them, the reason they don't know how to do more with the computer is that they're scared of it—mostly, they're scared they'll break it.
You and I know a) that most general experimentation won't break it, b) how to actually break it, and c) how to avoid doing that, so we can poke around at the parts we don't understand enough to learn how to do pretty much everything we need to know.
> Fucking nobody cares about being a power user, about messing with their computer.
No, people care only to have somebody that cares around, so that they can solve their issues. Do you think people with macbooks etc never encounter issues with software/hardware and all just work automatically always without having to care about anything? This is an illusion, and in the end of the day you (or someone) has to put the extra work.
It is similar to what happened to electronic and other devices through the years, everything becomes more user friendly but also more complex and opaque the same time, so younger generations were getting more and more clueless how these devices worked. I do not know how things will go now, but I see the same trend as computers, I do not see the older generation becoming technologically illiterate luddites (ok I do mot use tik tok so maybe that makes me one) as much as I see that the the big part of the younger generations not knowing much more than touching stuff on a screen. I do not see that the proportion of more technically adept people increased at all. But yeah, maybe there is some new neurotechnology thing or whatever at some point that changes things, but not something I see with present tech.
I'm sure that some do, and most don't. Most kids 30 years ago didn't have similar thoughts either. Few people are meant to be programmers, engineers, etc. Were you not shunned as a nerd for having an interest in how computers worked?
How is this different from previous generations?
The examples listed (not knowing how to use a keyboard, not knowing how to double click and not knowing what a 'cell' in a spreadsheet is) were all extremely common among my classmates back in highschool (and this is talking about the 90's here, so computers were in fairly widespread use at this point).
The new digital divide is just like the old one.
reply