One commonality I’ve noted in several different RightWing LoonyTunes ConspiracyTheories is some omnipresent vague stuff about technology. I’m not the most computer-savvy guy myself, and far from the youngest, but it seems to me that the words “server” and “laptop” and “hard drive” and “e-mail” are tossed around in most RW LT CS because computers scare old people—they didn’t grow up with the technology, they don’t understand how it works, and they do understand that it can do strange things that affect their lives, so all nutters have to do is mention anything technological, and attribute it to Hillary or Hunter Biden and voila! Proof positive that the evil libs have achieved their perverted goals in mysterious ways that can never be explained. There’s no debunking possible, because they don’t get technology, don’t want to, and are happy to assume that it controls the world. Even “Jewish Space Lasers” fit into this thesis with the added feature of a soupcon of antisemitism tossed into the mix. Can anyone predict the next technological term of art that will send the RW LT CT world into a tizzy?
Wait until they find out about Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and NFTs!!! (OH, and AI! Don’t forget AI!)
…and deepfakes…
Or, as I like to say, OOGA BOOGA BOO!
Don’t forget microchips in the Covid shots.
…I don’t want Bill Gates injecting ME with blockchains!
“QAnons of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your blockchains!”
Don’t forget packets and algorithms, which are also technological magic words.
“It’s a series of tubes!”
The assumption that being young equates to computer literacy appears flawed.
“You’ve heard it before: Today’s kids are “digital natives,” raised in a world of technology that they know like the back of their hand. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily true about Generation Z (the demographic cohort following the millennials born in the mid- to late 1990s).”
“Results were recently released from the International Computer and Information Literacy 2018 study, and they were sobering: Only 2 percent of students scored at the highest levels implied by digital native status, and only another 19 percent of the 42,000 students assessed in 14 countries and educational systems could work independently with computers as information-gathering and management tools.”
Indeed. Millennials and Gen-Zs might be completely at home in the reality made possible by advanced technology, but there’s no reason for them to understand the technology itself, any more than there’s reason for me to understand the intricacies of fuel injection and catalytic converters to comfortably drive a car.
So you probably don’t have to be especially old to get sucked into conspiracies about Hillary’s email server.
But my question is, why are these same people completely uninterested in the actual and far more dangerous cybersecurity fails committed by Trump and his cronies? (Never mind, I know the answers.)
My assumption isn’t that kids are all tech-wizards, but that they’re not intimidated and frightened by technical language the way old people are.
You tell a young person that something is on a server somewhere and they go, “Ok, cool, whatever.” But an old person is likely to freak out: “A what? A server? That sounds sinister and spooky and just what evil-hearted libturds want to do all of us, put us on a server.”
I belong to an astronomy club comprised of mostly old guys like me. We have a website with perfectly good forum software installed, but all the social interactions are done by email and a mailing list. Anyone with a response uses Reply All, and entire threaded conversations are carried out over email. Meanwhile, the member forum sits virtually unused, except for some astrophotography images which are too large to circulate by email, so they post them on the member forum, then send out links by email, because nobody looks at the member furum otherwise.
It’s maddening.
Yeah, someone who grows up with technology that is “just there” is not going to necessarily grok how it came to be there or why it does what it does the way it does – and in many cases is not going to be interested in the teacher telling them “the right way to use it”. Or will pay as much attention to what the teacher says about this as they have paid to what the teachers have been saying about, oh, the shape of the Earth, the germ theory of disease, evolution, what a percentage or a fraction means, reproductive health, history, etc. all this time.
And hey, even a whole career of being tech savvy is no recipe for not ending up eventually as the old codger telling the kids to get off your lawn. Time passes us ALL by.
The big problem is that both the ones who don’t get it because it’s too new and mysterious for them, and those who’ve just grown up seeing it as an unexplained “it’s just always there” black box, are vulnerable to misinformation. Clarke said “any advanced enough technology will become indistinguishable from magic”; too many have registered in their minds, “advanced technology is magic”.
Being an old fart who still uses a flip phone (and will soon have to upgrade to a 4G or 5G flip phone), I agree with the premise of the thread. That said it is not JUST the technology, it is also who is using it and for what.
Many of the old farts I have known for decades have embraced the newer technology when they use it to share their message of love and acceptance (as long as you comply in every detail with the group think we bring preloaded) through their churches and quasi-political church groups. In those cases technology is a gift from god like manna from heaven. But yes, when a progressive mind uses the same technology – (Gasp!) – it is viewed as described above. To most of my former Christian, conservative associates- the things listed in the OP and the next several posts (some of which I have no no understanding of despite being familiar with the terms [note to self: look up Blockchain later]), is treated like that one episode of The Twilight Zone where the star of the episode is boarding a spaceship to visit the planet of friendly space invaders after trying to translate a book entitled To Serve Mankind and only then finding out - - - It’s a COOKBOOK!!!
It turns out some on the right have a double standard – don’t be shocked!
When WE use technology – a miraculous gift from the heavens that we need not understand.
When LIBS use technology – an evil conspiracy built by those who are trying to destroy traditional family values and send us all to H, E, Double toothpicks!
I think most ignorance on the part of anyone is willful. We have a neighbor who is our age (75) who refuses to even own a computer. Well, okay, but don’t bitch because you’re having problems getting anything done.
I think people believe that folks my age have never worked with computers before, which is odd. I’ve owned a PC since the early 80s and have used them in offices from the time when they were just dumb work stations with little functionality. I have a smart phone, an iPad, a desktop, and a laptop. I was trained in MS Project, PhotoShop, and AutoCAD, and I can troubleshoot most computer issues, but occasionally need to consult with the Dope or other online help.
Now, I’m not fully tuned into newer tech, mainly because I have no need for it and not because I’m incapable of learning it. Screed over.
Seriously. I was writing code in the 70s.
Not necessarily old. I remember how Oliver North was surprised to find, after deleting a bunch of incriminating emails, they weren’t really gone.
Yeah, I took a FORTRAN class in college in 1973 or thereabouts, but didn’t do very well in it. Man, that was some clumsy stuff.
I liked Fortran. But my first job was writing in COBOL.
I’m 71. I’ve been working in computers my entire adult life.
I’m sure the language is fine for a programmer, but I was taking the class as a requirement and all those punchcards took a lot of time away from other studies. Get one letter wrong and your whole program failed.
Well, “right wing” tends to mean “ultra conservative” which, by definition, tends to reject anything new. “I do it this way because this is the way it’s always been done!” Similarly old people tend to get stuck in the “way things used to be done” and that those way will always be the way things will be done.
It’s kind of like my dad is always giving me stupid outdated advice on working in corporate America. It’s like “yes, thank you for your insights from having worked 40 years for the same ‘Greatest Fortune 500 Company in the World’. But maybe consider that the business world may have changed a bit in the almost two decades since you retired, given that your former employer is now considered a case study in failed management strategy in business school circles.”
Yeah, my dad is in his 70s and can use Zoom and email and text with no problem. My in laws OTOH seem to invent ways of fucking up the laptop my wife gave them, at which point I need to spend an hour figuring out how to fix it.