Well, it can still occasionally be useful or even required to print something. But not frequently, so pretty much everybody’s out of touch. I haven’t owned a printer at home for like 20 years.
Shocking news coming in: Gen Z doesn’t know how 8-track players or VCRs work.
My Mom couldn’t get the mouse to work right her first attempt. She was waiving it around in the air making circular motions and stumped why nothing was happening on the screen. My 4 year old will prolly never know what a mouse is…shrug. My 14 year old hit the sweet spot; grew up on a tablet but is now an avid PC/Switch gamer. She can even makes her own mods and skins in Minecraft…while looking stuff up on her phone and watching a show on the tablet all at the same time. I get exhausted just watching her. What does all this mean? Hell If I know, I’m not even sure what day it is but you need to get off my GD lawn.
Unless your mom is a bit older in her 80s or 90s, that’s unusual. People in their 70s know how to use computer mice in 2023. They were under 50 when Win95 came out.
When my father was transferred to the Coney Island MTA supply room he was terrified. He would have to use their computer system. Teaching him how to use a mouse and keyboard was… interesting.
He became a wiz at it. To the point that he was the go-to guy for the yard when he retired. And since the guy taking over the job was an asshole, he took all of his notes and shortcuts home with him.
Do not underestimate my mother’s willful insistence on refusing to learn anything.
Were we separated at birth?
The problem is that there has been kind of a wilful ignorance at certain levels of the fact that using a computer is a skill that for most requires education or training. The stereotype of the kid who knows more about computers than their parents evolved into the concept of “digital natives”, which was often used to wave off any formalised computer literacy programs.
I also remember a couple people picking up the mouse and moving it in the air their first time trying. If you don’t know it’s contact based, that’s a plausible mechanism.
I helped a couple set up their first PC in the 90’s, and the husband was holding the mouse like a Jeopardy clicker.
When I was in catholic elementary school in the 1980s our school library got an Apple IIGS. It had a mouse.
The librarian of our catholic school was a nun and NOT at home with technology but was giving it her all. She was trying to show us how the mouse worked and was explaining that it controlled the pointer on the screen. If we wanted to move the pointer, we had to move the mouse in the opposite direction that we wanted the pointer to go. I asked her why she just didn’t flip the mouse so that we could move it the direction we wanted the pointer to go. She didn’t answer, but the next time I saw that computer the mouse was positioned for proper use!
Verily, verily, I say unto thee: If thou seeketh to move the cursor to the left, thou must move the mouse to the right, and if thou seeketh to move the cursor to the right, thou must move the mouse to the left. Let these words be inscribed upon the tablets of thy heart, and be thou obedient to this divine instruction. Mayest thou follow this decree with piety and diligence, for it is the will of the Almighty. So mote it be.
Like most things, the kids who are not exposed to things don’t know how they function. The good thing I have found is most young kids you take the time to go through the basics with are usually pretty fast on the uptake and it doesn’t take long for them to become proficient or better. This cannot be said for the older generations, most are a nightmare of constant support to the point it has been a real consideration for me to even acknowledge I know anything.
I once heard that the reason that Microsoft bundled Solitaire and FreeCell with Windows 95 was to help train people on clicking, dragging, and other mouse usage. Educational entertainment, or train-ment, as they called it back then.
(I don’t know what educational purposes Pinball and Minesweeper served.)
Pinball originally educated you to pay $30 for the Windows 95 Plus! Pack. Minesweeper has a hidden message you can only decipher if you play it in a dark forest under the new moon. That message isn’t educational, though.
I think that one thing that benefits children exposed to technology, and helps them learn it faster than old folks, is a lack of fear.
A lot of old folks are afraid to just try stuff with computers, because they know computers are expensive and they don’t want to break them.
But really, I remember having discussions with my Dad after he needed me to fix something with his computer. He was like, “How did you know to do that?” and my answer was, “I had no idea I needed to do that… I just screwed around with it until I figured it out.”
And I’ve seen the same thing in some of my professional work. I work with a guy who is not an engineer in the classic sense… he was actually trained as a marketing guy in college. But I kind of annexed him onto my team, because he had what I considered the essence of being a good engineer… he wasn’t afraid to just try different things, and see what happened. Some of the solutions he came up with weren’t how I would have done them, but he never just hit a wall and gave up, which I’ve seen many people do.
Little kids don’t know what they’re supposed to do, or aren’t supposed to do… they just do stuff, with little regard for the consequences. In some things, this is bad. But when you’re trying to figure stuff out and learn new things? This can be extremely useful. And honestly, when it comes to troubleshooting computers, a lot of it is just fucking around until you find out.
Well, troubleshooting skills usually poke and prod at specific things in certain order to get feedback to work with and it’s a valuable skill when done properly.
You’re totally right. When I was a little boy I learned to fiddle with config.sys and autoexec.bat by reading the MS-DOS manual. Had a whole menu system with different settings for games like Ultima 7. There was no stackoverflow or google to search back then. I remember my Dad being really impressed, it’s kind of a cherished memory.
I read the Que DOS books for fun. They were lightly written by John C Dvorak I think before he got too crusty.