You make it sound like all older people knew. I work in IT and most users, regardless of age, do not know anything about computers. They don’t know how to navigate file systems, they don’t know where they saved anything, they don’t even know what the recycle bin is sometimes.
I once had a user plug a power strip into itself and then didn’t understand why there was no power.
Hell, they don’t even know how to read. I lost track of how many times I had this conversation:
“There’s an error message on my screen.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s an error message on my screen.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.”
This was painful to read. I’m a developer and have colleagues who can’t read. “It failed! It says that I need to clear all changes before I can branch, how can I fix this?” “Well clear the changes and then branch”. It’s just learnes helplessness, people want to sit back and let someone else do the thinking.
I work in IT, and nothing against you, but a bunch of devs do write horrible, useless error messages. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an error message that just says “an error has occurred” and you’re left to figure out what error.
For example, I have a smart air purifier that absolutely refuses to connect to my WiFi for some reason. You have to do the stupid ad-hoc/direct connection from your phone’s app to the device, then the device connects to WiFi. I follow all the steps on the app, it fails and then just says " an error has occurred, please try again.", it worked fine on my parents WiFi though!
I have a Canon printer that is WiFi enabled (also has USB) and it’s the same thing. I tried using their damn app on Android, OS X, Linux, and Windows and it would just be like “An error has occurred”.
I work in IT, and nothing against you, but a bunch of devs do write horrible, useless error messages. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an error message that just says “an error has occurred” and you’re left to figure out what error.
If the error message is that stupid, I’m 100% with you. I suspect that’s the result of a direct instruction to developers to dumb down the messages to avoid creating distress in users, which is idiotic.
However, final users in a corporate environment should be taught that if they get a message with a lot of information, and they don’t understand that information, it’s not for them, and they need to leave it alone or take precise notes of what the message says, so somebody from IT who does understand it can act on it. But most users act like the error message is radioactive or they’re participating in a competition of who can dismiss the message faster: when support asks about the error, they say hey don’t know because they have dismissed it.
Almost every finished product I’ve seen has a generic error message like that which makes it extremely frustrating when you’re technical and actually want to attempt to fix the problem. I had the same issue with a WiFi connected Canon printer. As a dev myself, I know how difficult it can be to write a useful error message for every edge case, but it’s not that difficult to be a bit helpful lol
Regarding users hatred of error messages: when I worked in my University’s computer lab about 15 years ago a student complained that she couldn’t download a file. I went with her to see what the issue was and had her show me what she was doing. She’d attempt to download the file, quickly dismiss a pop-up, and then angrily say “see?! It’s not working!!”. I told her to do it again, but not dismiss the pop-up so quickly so I could see what it said. Of course, it was asking for permission to save the file to the HDD and she kept clicking “no” 🤦♂️
I told her to do it again, but not dismiss the pop-up so quickly so I could see what it said.
I shit you not, I’ve had a user do worse.
I’ve done the same exact scenario as you with one difference. I told her the same thing you did. And then. She closed the message again. While I was pointing at it, and asking her to read it out loud.
I.
Pointed. At the screen. And said read this out loud.
She moved her mouse to my finger.
And closed the message.
I.
Can’t.
Hahaha for some people it’s just a habit I guess.
Or for some, like my mom, it’s learned helplessness. She always misplaces her phone and keys (not because of dementia or something like that, just lack of attention) so my brother bought her one the Bluetooth tracking tags (air tags, but for Android). Since I work in tech, I’m always the one to set everything up. She said “Set it up for me, I don’t wanna know how to use it…” as if it required zero user input after I had set it up 🤦♂️ I just looked at her and said "… if you lose you keys and need to track them down, how do you expect to find them?!”
She said “Set it up for me, I don’t wanna know how to use it…”
The only proper answer to this is Then I won’t do it. We’re done. Don’t ask me again.
“There’s an error message on my screen.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.”
“I just clicked it off. But I need this to work, I’m late on my project. Can’t you just fix it without asking me all this technical stuff?”
You’re in the same boat I am. I’m doing IT support and one user couldn’t navigate their file system to save their life. They almost exclusively used “file open” dialogs to get to their files. They seemed to have zero understanding that using word’s open file dialog to open a PDF file with Adobe, was strange.
It broke my brain for a minute watching it all unfold. So much so that I didn’t even try to correct their methods. I was just like, “okay”, and moved on.
It’s not like the person was new, or a temp worker or anything. They were middle aged, and had used that exact system for years in this manner, and saw nothing wrong with how they did things… Look, if it gets the job done, okay, and that’s probably the main reason I shut up about it, but the way they were doing it was so backwards and slow… They definitely were not stupid, they at least had some level of university and they were working in a legal field. They just did not “get” that there’s a much better way to accomplish the tasks they were doing and had no interest in figuring it out more than they already had.
Definitely one of the more painful moments of my career, but certainly not the only demonstration of how people are willfully ignorant when it comes to computers and technology.
I hate hearing “I don’t know computers” or “I’m not very good with technology” … You use it every day. There’s some fundamental that you should have picked up by now. Being “bad” with technology is not an excuse. An infant is bad at walking, then they learn and figure it out, which is more than I can say about you Janice.
They don’t know how to navigate file systems
that’s a thing we see with gen z especially nowadays, because of the advent of tag-based file management in iOS.
To be fair, there has been people unable to navigate file systems at all times.
Well, my computer knowledge extends back to some form of MS-DOS when I was 4 years old. Back then, you either knew how to operate a command line interface or you didn’t know how to actually use a computer to do anything on your own.
Now the entire world uses computers for almost every single job. And yet, we live in a time where people are not proficient with the tools they are using to live and work.
If your mechanic said, “I’m not much of a wrench person” you’d take your car elsewhere.
If your typical office worker said, “I’m not much of a computer person” , 90% of their colleagues would nod, grin, and say “I know right! Computers are so dumb! So hard to use!”
There was a program call “Nero burning ROM”. A pun I understood much later
Well fuck me, that’s a name I haven’t heard for close to 20 years and it didn’t twig until just now.
Ah fuck, I remember Nero, and I know why it is called Nero (because Nero and the burning of rome), but I never connect the ROM to ROME.
The logo was literally the colosseum on fire…
Oh I know about that, just the connection of Rom and Rome.
Ah, ok. Makes even more sense knowing that Nero is a German company, and the city is literally spelled Rom in German.
Yeah I’m not gonna lie this is me. I’ve burned iso’s to CDs before but I really not get it. The cds I had could only be burned once and then got write protected and I didn’t know how to undo to. I’m just gonna stick with my flash drives
The boomer in me still remembers Nero Burning ROM 😬
I remember many years ago when I was going through a box of my burned CDs and games and realized I could just download any of them whenever I wanted. Plus my computer didn’t even have a CD/DVD drive any more. End of an era.
The only rule was was to use ALL of the 700mb. I paid for that 800k, you bet your ass I’m gonna use it.
I just saw a post on Reddit two days ago that said “During the 80s, did kids really just go outside and run wild for hours or is that just in the movies/TV?” and the same feeling hit haha
We still did it here in the early 2000s and 2010s, and I know it’s still done nowadays where I live. It’s easy to do in non-car-centric palces
Yeah, but the major difference is that kids in the 90s and earlier didn’t have cellphones, we just peaced out and our parents hoped that we came home alive/unharmed.
Bold of you to assume it’s not the same now. I didn’t have a cellphone until Inwas 12 or something and I distinctly remember playing “lay on the ground while a guy on a bike runs you over”
I didn’t have one until I was like 14, but that was the late 90s. I guess it can still be the same out in the more rural parts of the country, but the suburban parts of the country have definitely changed.
I mean I lived in a rural part of Italy (read: small town) but I live in a city now and I do see kids playing in the square. Usually they’re playing real life Among us or something judging by the “HE IS THE AMOGUS RUN!” screams.
American suburbia and places that imitate it are car-centric hellholes that are unsafe for kids and the American (or respective) government would do well to carpet bomb it and then build something decend in its place.
I just bought an external CD/DVD read/write. When I built my most recent PC it didn’t have external bays, and I didn’t even worry about it. Changing my tune.
I have a lot of older games on CD, music files, and movies.
The games I actually own, that can’t be randomly shut off by lack of support. Music files not tied to a streaming service. Movies I can rip and put on my own home media server.
That old tech is still useful. It’s from an age before you “rented” your music, movies (blockbuster notwithstanding), and games.
I don’t like this binary choice between “not owning things” vs. “owning them on physical media”. You can own things in digital format, y’know? All media I have on my drives is also not tied to some service since it’s all DRM-less. I did buy some things on Steam, but for each such game I have a DRM-less version that I do truly own. And a stash of external drives takes up way less space than CDs and is way more convenient to use.
Especially since some physical media also has bullshit like DRM.
To be fair, CD/DVD burning peaked and declined extremely quickly in comparison to most other media technology. We went from nobody having a CD burner to most people ditching DVDs for blu ray and/or streaming in what, 15 years?
The IPod killed CDs i think is pretty established
There were other attempts, like the Diamond Rio
But because of iTunes, the ipod made actually getting songs onto your device as easy as clicking a button and apple got into bed with the recording industry so they didnt get shut down hard like everyone else that came before them and you didnt have to be labelled a dirty pirate.
mp3s were quite disruptive and contentious ahh Napster
Mp3 players killed cds, the ipod came later and killed mp3 players.
What mp3 player had any success compared to the ipod?!
In 1998, the first portable solid-state digital audio player MPMan, developed by SaeHan Information Systems, which is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, was released and the Rio PMP300 was sold afterward in 1998, despite legal suppression efforts by the RIAA.
There really werent any clear mp3 players standouts available to the public because of letigious RIAA
But there were many portable cd players that could play mp3 discs when the ipod came out.
Sonys minidisc player was cool, but an absolute flop from success standpoint, we wanted reusable media, burning cds was often a frustrating process.
Ill say it again the RIAA was absolutely (litigiously) against any device they couldnt get their fingers into and apple was happy to work out a deal with them with itunes. The next best thing was napster from a user standpoint(though scourexchange was better imo but lasted about a minute)
Cds were the main way artists released music because rhe RIAA didnt support mp3 anywhere they didnt have to, it took years for people to really switch over to itunes, but they did and streaming took over from there eventually
Not sure why im getting downvotes, but please correct anything you disagree with
A lot of gen z knew/knows how to burn cd’s.
This is like those street interviews of x type of person(women, conservatives, gym bros, Americans) that they only show the absolute morons and try to paint the whole group this way.
Honestly so tired of this kind of post
It’s getting to the point where I can’t help but roll my eyes sometimes.
The fact that so many computers don’t even have disc drives anymore almost makes this point completely moot. Most people use smart devices or radios for music now. For me, I like using them because I’m still salty about a crappy CD player that I used to have that loved scratching the ever-loving shit out of CDs. I had a Walkman that used to do that too.
Did anyone ever bother teaching these kids how to do this?
If you don’t have a CD player or even a disc drive, you’re probably not going to prioritize learning how to use a disc drive to rip a CD. I bet most of the people who laughed at this don’t know how to put information on a floppy disc, but that’s fine apparently. It’s almost like technology ages over time and becomes less popular.
And then there are some cough some of my classmates cough that barely know how to save a word document to a different location other than the default documents folder or how to full screen a presentation quickly (i.e. not having to go to that tab and then clicking full screen, the faster way just just to click F12 (idk rn if that’s the correct one) or the shortcut in bottom right)
I could never imagine them working out how to put files on a CD, bet they don’t know how an optical drive looks like, and funniest thing is, every singe one that had problems like this was an iPhone user, just shows how technologically uneducated the average iPhone user is (as you can guess I do not live in the US, and not like I live in a wealthy country, I do still live in Europe though)
barely know how to save a word document to a different location other than the default documents folder or how to full screen a presentation quickly
I was in IT support and I was seriously asked to “support” a (l)user that wanted me to let her know where was a Word document she had saved a few minutes prior. Flabbergasted, I just could ask “didn’t you check where did you put it when you save it?” Her answer: “What do I know about that? I didn’t study computer sciences.” 🤦♂️
I’m old enough to remember a time before CDs existed.
