I think the question is at want point is it okay to hold it against them? I know when I started teaching–15 years ago–there were a lot of the “old guard” who just didn’t do technology. In the last 10 years, however, being able to really use a computer has become more and more central to being able to do your job–there are databases and data analysis tools you need to be able to understand. You need to be able to use a document camera–overheads are all but gone. Old-school scan tron machines aren’t being replaced–there are cheaper programs that let you scan with your phone.
When this changed, there were a lot of people who just didn’t see it as a reasonable demand and they’ve never really gotten comfortable with anything past email and a web-based grade book. Everything else they go to someone else to do, or it just doesn’t get done in their classroom. And for people who are a few years from retirement, I’m okay with this. I may well not be as flexible and ready to learn a new system when I’m in my 60s either–I don’t know. It’s part of the general “respect for elders” I think I owe, and that I hope to benefit from someday if I need it.
But when it’s people in their 50s, and you’re facing 15 years of doing their data analysis for them, or hooking up their computers every fall because they don’t know how, or having to send everything in an attachment because they don’t understand how to use any sort of cloud system, it’s really annoying. And when people in that range seem to feel entitled to not learning technology because it wasn’t part of their job description when they started, it’s extremely frustrating.
I also get fairly frustrated when people get a lot of scaffolding because people think they are on the verge of retiring, so it seems reasonable to humor them, and then they don’t retire. We have two teachers over 70 who have done this, and I can’t help but think that both of them fail to appreciate that the only reason they’ve been able to work so long is that other people have silently shouldered the burden of learning/adapting for them.
Last Monday we found out that our team lead thinks “internet” is “what you see in IE”. She thought that Chrome connected to IE in order to be able to show you the same information as IE.
We work in IT and use VPNs regularly. We asked what did she think that was, magic? The answer “noooo…” but she didn’t explain what exactly did she think it was. Magic, probably, at least in the “stuff I don’t understand” kind of definition.
She’s in her low 30s.
For some reason, Spanish medical schools are still graduating people who haven’t been required to use a computer as part of their college work. Every year when my local hospital gets the new residents, they’re Requested and Required to sign up for the township-offered course officially called “computers for retired people”. This was already going on 15 years ago and it’s still going on today. They use cellphones with more computer power than the servers my quantum chemistry team used back in the 90s, but they don’t know how to open a document unless it’s a WhatsApp attachment.
What do you mean by “technology”? Because I can program in any language you can give me a manual for, and I can figure out how to accomplish any task in nearly any app you put in front of me… but for the life of me, I don’t understand Twitter. I mean, yeah, I understand it on a technical level; I just can’t understand why a communication protocol defined by its limitations and incapacity for nuance is so popular.
This country (USA) Has been inventing technology for 200 years, not understanding technology seems more a case of denial and trying to exist in a bubble.
Other countries have been inventing technology for 1000’s of years
To my surprise, I find that younger people often understand much LESS than I do about technology (PCs, video, networking, etc.) I’m 64 years old and I have a thorough understanding of directory structure, media formats, and IP networking. Newer devices dumb everything down to the point that many users don’t understand the basics. It’s often just “drag and drop” to them.
This certainly isn’t true of EVERY younger user, but I cringe when somebody gives me a blank look when I tell them to look in the “X directory” or “X folder” to find the appropriate API.
I work in the IT department of a very large law firm (2,000+ lawyers).
I can tell you that for some (not many) lawyers, it’s actually a point of pride that they don’t know how to, and refuse to learn how to, use a computer. For anything. Anything at all.
They’ll give their secretaries access to their email (or actually have the IT department give the secretary access), and have the secretary print out their emails. They’ll hand-write a response on the printed email, and have the secretary enter it and respond. This, by the way, is a security nightmare.
They will refuse to have a PC and printer at home, and when they decide to review some documents at night, or on the weekend, call up the office, have someone print out the documents, and send them by messenger to their home. Very expensive. It goes on the client’s bill. Why clients put up with this I don’t know.
It’s mostly men (for whatever reason, the women don’t seem to do this) in their fifties. Partners, of course – an associate could never get away with this (and there really aren’t any fifty-ish associates, anyway). I’ll give the really old guys a pass, but the fifty-ish guys? This is ridiculous.
They’re not so old that computers came along too late for them to learn. It’s just a status thing. Like early medieval monarchs who thought learning to read and write was beneath them. That’s what clerks were for.
I have been using a computer for 35 years and feel comfortable with them. But I can only barely make a phone call with my cell phone. My old one did only phone calls and was easy to use, but the company stopped providing service in Canada last winter (with no warning) and I had to get a new one. But the instructions are shit and I have no idea too use the fancy features including how to store and use numbers (which was a snap on the old phone). I am really pissed about this since it is more costly than the old one and I have to pay for a lot of features I don’t know how to use. Really pissed.
I see this all the time and it is so frustrating. I’m not frustrated with the users who don’t know the technology but with the people who do and who’s job it is to keep things running. Nobody ever taught these people how computers work, even at a surface level. The person who said they sent they had to send their new employees to a basic class probably doesn’t realize what a great idea that is and ow much time it’s going to save the company staff.
Anyone who’s over about 50 and went to public school never learned any of this. If they were lucky they had a tiny room with six terminals and a dot matrix printer, which was full of computer nerds every hour of the day. At lunch, after school, during free periods - every terminal was in use with one or two people waiting for their turn. And if you wanted to practice basic skills you’d be ridiculed by some 110 lb kid with a Myst disc in his hand.
Face it, techs are terrible at teaching people stuff. On the phone it’s click this, click this, click this. Now click on the three lines. (Three lines? They’re lines all over the place!)
Then when they get really frustrated they come over and do it for you with a scowl on their face. No information is passed along, which means the same ritual is going to be repeated the next time something happens.
Techs, learn some people and teaching skills. If I asked you how to type “Cat” I assume you’d say “type C-A-T”. Good job. When you say type CTR-ALT-DEL how in the hell are they supposed to know you mean all at once?
Definitely. I spent more than a decade working in electronics retail and saw lots of senior citizens who’d been working with computers ever since they were giant reel-to-reel monstrosities, and plenty of “Millenials” who were very much of the “Lol my boyfriend does all the tech stuff for me” mindset.
What I found interesting was the number of people who had done really complicated things as part of their careers - including flying WWII aircraft and driving steam engines on trains - but could not wrap their head around how RCA cables work - despite the fact the technology was around when they were in their 20s.
My mother is very good with computers. Not great, and maybe a bit timid with some aspects, but generally once she figures something out she’s good to go when left to her own devices. She’s 74 next week.
On the other hand there are some people I know, especially those who are on the poverty line, who have never owned a device, and only have an old phone, so computers are mysterious objects to them. These are my contemporaries, my age or even younger, with other priorities in their lives.
On top of that, I am surprised that most of the people I have known throughout my life have barely any online footprint when I google them. I’m sure they’re around, but aside from Facebook (which I can’t search as I am not joined) they must be in dark corners I can’t access. Some of these people were very tech savvy when I knew them, so it’s really weird. Maybe they’re just very good at maintaining anonymity, but it seems to me they’re just not doing much online. It’s a surprise.
I guess so. And some of them will have changed their names after marriage, I suppose. But if you search my username you’ll easily find my real name, and a lot of references to my 20 year trail through the internet. I just figure the same ought to be true of at least a few of my High School friends.
Really depends on your interests. I find most people my age and over (I’m 54) who don’t do computers really aren’t interested all that much.
But as I’ve told any number of people, the entire reason 7-10 year olds are good with this stuff is that they read the screen and are willing to try things to see if they work. My 78 year old mother can look at her email screen for an hour and then call me and ask me how to attach something to an email, even though that button is right in front of her.
Actually, this is my observation as well.About a decade ago, I worked for a small criminal defense law firm, basically doing all the odd & ends jobs (secretary work, some IT stuff, running stuff down to the courthouse, basic research, serving subpoenas, assisting at court, transcribing overhears, etc.) and there was this one lawyer in his late 50s who would give me all his motions and correspondence to type up on the computer handwritten on a ruled, yellow legal notepad. I never saw him once touch the computer.
As I said previously, for me, it’s absolutely not unusual to find someone in their 60s who simply does not use computers. There’s a slew of them in my family. They’re all blue collar types and never had much need for one, even though they bought me two when I was a kid. My folks don’t even have a cell phone, and while we bought my dad a GPS many years ago, we have to program it with the address he needs to go to for him when we visit. And he’s not a dumb guy. He was a tool and die maker who used a lot of trig in his work, and when I was a kid, he was constantly tinkering with electronics projects from Radio Shack and stuff he found in one of those Popular Science or Popular Mechanics or some kind of magazine where they had hobbyist projects for things like ion generators and 555 timer circuits and things of that nature. He’s still constantly soldering up stuff like homemade nightlights and various LED projects, but just never got into the whole computer thing.
For people around my age (55) I think it’s a combination of consciously maintaining anonymity and not really caring about maintaining any kind of online footprint unless it’s necessary for business. I wouldn’t say people who were tech savvy in the '70s-'80s have retreated to dark corner or lost their tech lust. I think it’s more that they use their tech chops for work and for pursuits other than social media. I spend way too much time online but have little need or desire to leave some sort of beacon for people to find me.
I’m a teacher at the community college level and one of the biggest hurdles I have in my classrooms is computer literacy. Everyday I will run into students who will save their work on a computer and have no idea what they named it, the file type, or where they saved it. I’ve had students save homework files onto equipment we are using like GPS receivers or cameras and wonder why they can’t find it later. One of my pet peeves with the local high school education is that they don’t require some sort of personal data management.
One thing that I’ve not seen mentioned in this thread is that old people can also lose their tech skills.
My Dad bought one of the first iMacs back in 1998 and really enjoyed using it. E-mail, internet, finances - it was great for him. He especially liked it when he discovered that he could connect with old friends, exchange genealogical charts with cousins, and so on. He was in his early 70s then.
Fast forward a decade and he was starting to lose his tech skills. He couldn’t remember which app did what, kept forgetting his log-in info, and so on. He kept blaming the computer for being so hard to operate, but that wasn’t it.
I tried giving him a pre-paid flip phone before he went on a trip, and he just couldn’t figure it out.
This was the guy who was always interested in stereos, had a honking big rotating antenna to get better TV reception when I was a teenager, and had one of the first satellite dishes in our town: the old ones where you had to know a bit about celestial latitude to line it up by a remote manual control.
So, when an older person says they don’t get technology, I don’t blame them or say they are being tech-phobic. After a certain age, some people will begin to lose their tech skills.
