This thread has really taken an ageist turn. Wow.
It has, and I’m saddened by that. I’ve encouraged my Mom to do as she wishes and I’ll support those choices.
My O.P. was not about ageism as much as it was about the stratification of technology access. If it appeared ageist, allow me to set the record straight.
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A thread that starts with an elderly women? Where complaints are made about middle-aged People being too pampered / lazy/ dumb to understand Computers, too?
I spent a bit of time on one of my programming jobs in the late 80’s teaching managers how to do things on their PCs, since I was the only person in the 110 person IT group that programmed on the damned things.
Oh, I didn’t program any of the things they used, and mostly their PCs were just connecting to mainframe stuff, but I knew PCs and I was a nice guy in doing it, so I got asked to help a few mid-upper level managers figure out what they were doing.
So they managed to
ask you for help
Listen + understand what you told them
remember it?
Wow, you got lucky not to get the type Nava described!
I have a housemate who is limited in mental acuity. Perfectly normal guy for the most part, just a bit dim.
I try to explain things to him, demonstrate things, show him again and again how the system on his iPad works, but I have two problems. One, I am not a Mac user, so don’t know the steps as well as I do for Windows. The menus are all icons and not words and Apple is, for me, notoriously unintuitive. And Two, the other problem is him; he can’t retain any knowledge, he won’t sit still long enough for me to explain the details in ways he might understand, he will talk over me, get bored, or otherwise just refuse to actively engage - even though he was the one who asked for my help. After 15 minutes of that (again and again and again), fuck him. He can figure it out himself, or suffer in ignorance, I don’t care.
The only valid excuse I’d accept. (Long-term solution would be to get a phone with a System that is intuitive for him - can he try different models/ OS?)
But being old / too lazy/ too important to bother to learn - that’s what bugs me.
I spent 10 years as a technology assistant in a school district. You’d be amazed at the level of ignorance among teens. I came to the conclusion that they aren’t any more tech savvy than any other group, they’re just more comfortable with it. Sometimes too comfortable.
When you have kids who toss tablets and even laptops around as if they were cheap paperback books and act surprised when they crack the screens or damage the HD. Not to mention kids wondering why they can’t install windows games on their school issued Mac (which they aren’t allowed to add software to anyway). And who thought if they put their browser in private mode that the web filters wouldn’t work, or that we couldn’t see them remotely (We use ARD to monitor use).
I had a student who told all his friends that he was a real l337 haxx0r d00d, but screwed up his laptop all the time. The funniest was when he couldn’t type capitals without pressing caps lock , typing the letter, and pressing caps lock again. Why? Because he got into settings and set the shift key as a hotkey for Speakable Items, and forgot how he did it.
I think some of it is because a lot of people buy into the “intuitive interface” myth and refuse to read or follow instructions. Some students would expect us to show them all the ins and outs of, say, iMovie in a few seconds and get mad when they found out it took time and practice.
“But my project is due today!”
“Well, you should have paid attention in middle school when they taught how to use iMovie and GarageBand.”
Yeah, ask me how often schools attempt to have broken tablets repaired “under warranty” when they’ve obviously been tossed against walls and used as baseballs.
Haven’t done that stuff in 7-ish years, but I still remember a few of those pictures of damaged tablets. I can only imagine it’s gotten worse.
I only recall one manager who asked me back a second time. They had to go through my director to ask for my assistance, so she may have limited that access to keep me from spending too much time away from my actual duties.
Yeah - that’s hard to grasp for many People: Computer literacy is more than just knowing how to turn the Computer on, or using Google, just like knowing ABC is not equal to knowing how to write a good Essay.
For Office work, knowing Google is not enough, you Need to know Word and Excel well - and that Needs to be properly learned, not just fooling around.
That attitude is where I see the Age difference strongest (of course, again, not 100% for Age Groups, only for a certain Segment): some Seniors act as if pressing the wrong button on the Computer will make it explode or break or whatevery (Magic box), while younger People have the attitude “let’s press all Buttons I can see, something will happen”. Obviously, both approaches are wrong - pressing the wrong button can hurt the Computer, but it’s not easy to do so by mistake.
Is that the belief of the younger Generation?
For those old enough to remember the 80s, back then Computers meant programming, and only a handful of programs available, and using them was very much Special skill. It seems this Impression has stuck in some middle-age and Seniors mind, despite today’s Computer being … very different. (In that way, it is similar to the development of cars: at first driving was very Special knowledge and difficult; today, there is computer-assistance for braking, power-steering and so on. No cranking, even automatic Transmission. But there is also not “the car” but trucks and motorbikes and tanks, all of which require a new skill set).
Oh yes, and a way to explain computers to people who don’t understand them.
“Computers don’t think. They’re like big, complex player pianos in that they only do what the programming tells them to do.”
“But can you program it to think?”
“Me? No. Big companies like Apple, Google and IBM have tens of thousands of people working on stuff like that, and we’re still not to actual thinking computers yet, despite what you read about AI. Making a computer able to beat a chess grandmaster doesn’t make that same computer a master chef, or a philosopher.”
82 year-olds grew up reading books, so buy her an instruction manual.
In defense of the aged, computer interfaces are often designed by young jerks, with perfect eyesight and a desire for a “clean” look to the program. Like the moronic trend of medium grey text on a white background. Or san-serif fonts that make it nearly impossible to tell a lower case l from a capital I.
Fuck off.
Not the best response, but hey, Bryan Eckers will be old someday too. He’ll probably spend his days ranting about how he can’t figure out these newfangled implants and is really tired of the auto-neural connection constantly correcting his “facts”.
I don’t understand this reply to me. Somehow this thread went from one older woman having trouble with her phone to all old people are incompetent. That’s ageism: Prejudice or discrimination because of a person’s age. It can be directed towards anyone but is most commonly directed towards senior citizens (one of which **Bryan Ekers **will be someday).
You may as well bark at the moon rather than expect there to be any sympathy to this in the board moderation. Women: check. Minorities: check. Sexual orientation: check. Ageism? Nope. I’ve complained about this in the past and there has been deafening silence, probably because we don’t have protected status under the law. But it’s insulting and rude, and the assumptions that go along with the comments are driven by bigotry, not fact. I would suspect that if I handed this troll a bag of tradesman’s tools, he wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do with them, even after an explanation. It’s no different than an older non-technical person not understanding how to use a smart phone or a non-musician not understanding how to play a guitar.
Because it sounds as if you call the whole thread ageist, instead of reporting one poster for making an insulting remark?