My mother has been gone since the early 1980s, but were she still with us, she’d be 86 today. She was no mid-century housewife. She had a PhD and worked for years for the Girl Scouts, designing programs for their summer camps throughout the midwest. Prior to that But she was firmly against technology - she wouldn’t drive, she wouldn’t use a calculator, a VCR, and would have nothing whatsoever to do with computers when they became available. I suspect that had she lived longer, that attitude would, if anything, have gotten stronger.
I’m almost 60 and will admit that the hardware aspect of computers baffles me somewhat. I leave that to the younger generation. But having learned to use computers with DOS back in the early days, software is a breeze. I am very much an early adopter and sometimes have to bring my two boys up to speed on new programs or capabilities. In return, they plug everything in for me and upgrade the hardware.
I do find it humorous, though, when the young IT folks at work think they have to 'splain something new to me verrrry slooowly and in 2-syllable words.
But that’s preferences, not ignorance. I hate FB and all its kin, but it’s a necessary evil to stay in touch with my kids, unless I want to play phone tag with them (only one of them ever calls me, and rarely). I don’t have a smart phone because I have no need for one. Yet. As more and more services are available (airline ticket scanning, public trans ticket scanning, etc.), it may become an attractive option, but for now the expense of the phone and the monthly charge is just not worth it to me. I don’t like them, because we seem to be becoming a society of zombie-like creatures stumbling about staring at our hands and having little interaction with the world.
It boggles my mind that, in A.D. 2015, there could be people who use computers on a regular basis who have trouble with any of these three things.
I can understand that there are people who just don’t use computers. That’s something different. But if they use computers for work or whatever, you’d think that they’d get the hang of the very basics after a few years.
I think they are probably the kind of people with no curiosity and who celebrate their weaknesses and irrational fears. I would also not be surprised if they were suspicious of unfamiliar foods or watched Fox News.
I got myself a tablet. It’s got all of the smartphone capabilities but of course, you know, no phone. It’s STILL cheaper than an iPhone, which seems like everyone has.
You are right in your comments about preference and ignorance. I always like to tell two stories about computer ignorance that demonstrate what I mean:
First story is a 50 YO old lady. Maybe excusable, but maybe not. She came to me one day, very concerned, saying the color copier wasn’t printing in color. Huh. It wasn’t out of ink or anything, she hadn’t set it to black and white…after a little bit of troubleshooting, it transpired that she was starting with a black and white original and somehow expecting the color copier to print it in color. I asked her, How would the copier know what colors to print it in? And she replied, she thought it would just know. I sent her away, but she came back ten minutes later, saying the color PRINTER wasn’t printing in color, either.
…You guessed it. She had taken the same document and printed it on the color printer, expecting it to somehow add color.
(For the pedants’ sake, I know some copiers will add red or black or something. No, she expected it to be fully colored.)
Second story is a 25 YO recent (within the last six months) grad of a fairly prestigious college. One day she came back from one of our events with a thumb drive full of pictures. I asked her if she wanted me to download the pictures, she said no, so I left her to it. About four hours later she complained to me that the pictures were taking a long time to download. I replied that yes, on Citrix they took a long time, but let me take a look.
Again, after a little troubleshooting I discovered that this recent college grad…well, she was opening each picture on the thumb drive. Just opening it, which does take a long time on Citrix. Then closing it. Then opening the next one. And somehow she thought this was copying the files onto the server.
Just opening. And closing. And opening. And closing. And opening…
THAT is the kind of ignorance I mean. Just this feeling that computers are somehow this magical thing. Another Doper runs a computer class for seniors (or ran…can’t remember) and one of the first things he teaches is that computers in some ways are very dumb - they do only what you want.
Maybe for some, but not all. My father, who died only two years ago, never touched a computer in his life that I’m aware of. He was, however, a progressive and educated man who read constantly. He loved all kinds of food, including many I wouldn’t dare to try. He liked the idea of the internet, and often asked us to look up something on our iPhones. He liked Jon Stewart, and never watched Fox News. It may certainly have been an “irrational fear,” or some kind of stubbornness. As I reflect on it, perhaps he never thought he would live long enough to benefit from the effort to learn a new thing.
I’m 63 and have been into computers since 1971. Two years ago I got yet another computer degree, got to keep up. More and more and even more of my peer age group “don’t do computers”. They are at least as smart as I am, but the time just passed them by and they are not interested in learning now. A HS classmate of mine just last week got on Facebook for the first time and she needed a lot of help to get there.
I used to try to help them out or explain what they are missing, but now I just say, “yep, they suck alright”.
This reminds me of stories I’ve read (and am now inclined to believe) of people having a digital photo of the front of their house and taking it to someone, asking them to flip it so they could see the back of the house. :smack:
For the 25 YO, I wonder if it’s b/c computers have gotten too advance for her, and Citrix too old a system. My phone will automatically syn with the cloud and backup my pictures. I don’t have to do anything.
I wonder if she thought it works the same way with Citrix and the reason it wasn’t syncing is b/c the original file is corrupted, and that’s what she’s checking by opening/closing.
So a 25 YO recent college grad doesn’t know that to get pictures from a thumb drive to your PC, you have to copy them over? What are they teaching kids in college these days? What did she do all through college?
I am feeling old lately because I can’t get the hang of touch screens on the kids’ tablets. Especially the sliding. I will always, without fail, click at some point while sliding and it is never the place I WANT to click. Also my fingers are too fat for the keyboards. Or I don’t have a soft enough touch. I’m used to pounding on my standard PC keyboard I guess.
I consider myself one of those who doesn’t do computers much. If I want to learn something I’m more likely to hit the library than I am to Google and if I’m going somewhere I’m more likely to check a physical map than I am to MapQuest or plug in the Garmin. My finances are still on paper, I keep notes and write that way as well, and while I am making some inroads at getting into digital photography I just don’t do much of any kind of photography so its a moot point.
Rare is the case when I ask someone else to use their computer for me other than now and then passing off an on-line purchase to my wife. 85% of my computer use is here and the other 15% split between some e-mails (although I do many more phone calls and letters than e-mails; those I pretty much just read) and a couple cartoons or YouTube. But in my defense, until lately I was still on dial-up and my last job was basically nothing but computers ------- so to me even this is too much like “work” yet in my mind.
I really don’t find it that much of a bother being different in this way. Slightly in terms of communication when people assume I’ll respond to their text or e-mail or Facebook or whatever but the people I actually care about either get used to me or fade off and I can live with that.
Interesting topic. I have two friends I keep in touch with from a small town American high school who don’t do computers. We are 70.
They would like to, I think, but they are embarrassed that they lack the basic computer vocabulary. Words like desktop, cursor, and icons, which seem so simple to those of us who had to use computers early on as part of our business or for personal reasons, are like foreign language to them. They joke about it, but I know they are too proud to admit their ignorance, and have given up even trying. One mentioned that her grandson tried to show her how to use his laptop, but she was frustrated that he couldn’t use “real words” to explain what she needed to do.
Both of them communicate by snail mail and phone calls.
As a fellow still in the process of getting his elderly technophobe parents moved 400 miles to a new location, I can attest to how maddening it can be processing simple documents for and with people who have elected not to keep up with technological change. Yeah, they were pretty close to 70 when the internet became widespread but they’re also not the least bit curious about things they don’t already know. How can people go through life like that?
I was always pretty weak at maintaining cars but that never stopped me from utilizing one every chance I could to go exploring and satisfy my curiosity about the world around me. I have pretty weak computer skills, too, by today’s standards, but would never think of not utilizing my pc to dredge up new and interesting stuff. Every day. Take my tv if you must but you’ll have to fight me for my internet connection.
I remember when I went to college (just a few years before the person you’re talking about), and figuring out how to easily transfer files was still a non-trivial problem (obligatory xkcd, from a few years later.) I remember my usual solution to get a file I was working on at home onto my laptop was with a firewire cable, or a USB drive for a lab computer. Couldn’t even email a file to myself since there wasn’t reliable web mail for the first few years.
I started using dropbox at the end and it was a complete revelation. It seemed to completely take over all the corners of academia that I’ve inhabited since, oh, 2008 or 2009. If the person you’re talking about has lived with automagical cloud syncing of every file between every device they own and access, I’m not entirely surprised that they’re thrown by the concept of manually telling a computer to transfer a file.
Imagine trying to explain to the minimally savvy windows user how to transfer files with the command line…
The first thing to keep in mind is that social media sites/methods are fundamentally narcissistic. I mean, twitter is basically a “LOOK AT ME!” kind of site where you post some pithy, idiotic or inane dinky statement about whatever you’re doing. Facebook is much the same, but with longer things. Instagram is just like a thousand other online photo sharing sites, but with inbuilt tie-ins to social media and some craptastic photo filtering. I mostly only keep up on Facebook with my friends- I read their stuff and forward/post things that I have found to be important or funny. Most people though, post inane crap about where they are, what they’re eating, or what they’re doing. I have no need to know that my cousin ate ancho-chili rubbed, mesquite grilled chicken breasts with rice and beans that he made himself.
Hashtags are like adding your own search/metadata terms to a social media post. So if you’re posting something, and it’s about 2015 Women’s World Cup Soccer, you might put #USAWOMENWORLDCUP or something like that as a hashtag. Then, when someone sees your post, they can click on that hashtag and see everyone else who tagged their posts with that hashtag. That’s pretty much it. They tend to be used as more of a statement about the content, instead of actually useful elements of metadata. (the DB geek in me is coming out)
I’m 42, and while I get these things, I don’t much participate.
Reddit is just a huge message board with some interesting self-organizing features. The AMAs are just “ask me anything”- we have the exact same basic thing around here with “Ask the <insert person>” threads we know and love. The Reddit ones are just more sensational, because they have celebrities and luminaries in their fields doing them instead of regular folks. I actually enjoy some of the AMAs- particularly the ones with actors and musicians. You get a better feel for the person based on what questions they answer and how they answer them.
I guess that makes sense. BUT, again, has she not had to transfer any files during college? Hell, I graduated in 2014 and I had to transfer files (powerpoints for example) on a flash drive to bring in for my presentation.
I was thinking about this over again at lunch. Some things, while not necessary, just befuddle me. I bought this lotion (Amir’s argan oil, it’s great). My coworker loved it and asked where I got it. I told her, Amazon.
She said…she didn’t have an Amazon account! And could I give her a bottle and she could pay me? I just stared at her. Really, no, you don’t need an Amazon account, but it’s kind of amazing that you wouldn’t take advantage of it, at all. Plus she has four kids, all over 25. Do none of them have an Amazon account either? Can none of them buy her the lotion?
But that, I understand, if you don’t need it, you don’t get it. It’s the “I don’t know how to edit things in Publisher or in Powerpoint” that annoys me. Sorry, cupcake, all of our presentations are done in one of those two things. I don’t care if people don’t like them, you should at least have some ability to go in and poke around and see if you can LEARN, and then I’ll be glad to help you (and I do!). It’s the shut-mind people I cannot stand and don’t understand how they retain their jobs. I cannot say about my job, “I don’t want to learn that.”
But having learned to use computers with DOS back in the early days, software is a breeze. I am very much an early adopter and sometimes have to bring my two boys up to speed on new programs or capabilities. In return, they plug everything in for me and upgrade the hardware.