

Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age? - spudlyo
http://db.tidbits.com/article/10493

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Locke1689
An interesting post, greatly harmed by this little note:

 _(Linguistically, this same devolution has happened with the Web itself.
Although it's TidBITS house style to capitalize "Web" - a proper noun that's a
shortening of "World Wide Web" - it's commonplace to see even professionally
edited publications lowercase the word, thus de-emphasizing the fact that it's
a unique thing. I think they're wrong: "Web" should always be capitalized, as
should "Internet.")_

Linguistically, no one cares. This is so unimportant a point that it just
points out how pedantic the author is. Just because someone doesn't know the
origin of a word doesn't mean that they can't use that word correctly and to
good use. That's like complaining that people spell the word "medieval"
instead of "mediaeval" and trying to argue that it must then be impossible to
understand the Battle of Hastings.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yep. Complaining about the natural evolution of language is a sign that you're
being a crank.

But at least language cranks are good for a laugh, because in the throes of
rationalization they invariably make up these _hilariously_ broken rules.
Today's rule seems to be that "unique things should be capitalized in English
usage", which is certainly how the World should be. Why, my Mother would
cringe if she saw such terrible usage.

Or maybe I'm misstating the rule: It's "if your word was once part of a proper
noun, its proper-nounishness should be preserved henceforth". Which means that
whenever I accidentally drop my Sandwich, or a Hamburger, or even a
Frankfurter on a pile of Xeroxes I should use a Kleenex to clean up the mess.
And you have to really watch out for those backformations, lest you write Crap
when you really mean to write crap. (Though it looks like "crapper" -- or
should I say Crapper? -- might in fact be derived from a proper noun, if the
following link is 100% correct... which, frankly, is not too likely.)

<http://www.theplumber.com/crapper.html>

~~~
RyanMcGreal
_Complaining about the natural evolution of language is a sign that you're
being a crank._

+1 (coming from a reformed ex-crank).

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larryfreeman
Enjoyable article, I would suggest a different interpretation of the Google
interview results.

The Google video data suggests to me that we are in a "pre-literate"
technological age (assuming that we judge literacy by a person's knowledge of
standard web technology). I'm not clear that there was ever a time when people
in general knew this stuff. (I still get a kick when I hear nontechincal
people describing a web address: "H-T-T-P-colon-...")

Nontechnical people often don't know terms like 'browser' because they don't
have to. The reason why IE has such strong market share is because most people
use Windows and they just use the browser that comes with their computer.

I say "pre-literate" because as technology gets easier to use and applications
become more relevant to people's lives, then people will know much more than
they do today (simply compare the twenty-and-under crowd to the fifty-and-over
crowd as an example of what's coming). If current trends continue, then the
next generation will continue to be more technically savvy than their parents.

~~~
rationalbeaver
My anecdotal experience leads me to argue to opposite case. As the article
notes, "the better technology works, the less we'll learn about how it works."

My grandfather (almost 90) knows what operating system and browser he's using
because he bought his first PC in the early 80s when you had to mess around
with DOS. My dad is the same way, as am I. My sister, who is 6 years younger,
has no clue. By the time she started learning to use a computer, most of the
technology had already become invisible (for example, she never learned how to
use a modem because by then we had DSL - always on).

Now, my sister is certainly web savvy, very comfortable with cell phones,
texting, social networking, etc. But she's got no clue about any of the
underlying technology. She doesn't need to know, because it just works. So I
agree with you that upcoming generations will be more comfortable with the
uses of technology, but I think that most of them will be clueless about how
it works.

~~~
larryfreeman
It sounds like your grandfather was and is technical.

I'm talking about trends about nontechnical people. The question for me is
whether nontechnical people are getting more technically literate.

Literacy to me is about the deeper patterns. For radio, think AM/FM/Satellite
and radio waves. For the telephone, think electricity and sound waves. For
television, think about the broadcast spectrum and channels. These concepts
become part of the literate vocabulary only afer the technology gets better
established and people get better informed.

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dant
I think the core argument here is that if the majority of the users don't
understand the implementation details of the software/hardware they're using,
then selling them new stuff might actually involve spelling out the benefits
in practical terms that users can relate to. I really can't see the problem
with that.

I also can't see why the Car analogy is somehow invalid because cars only do
one thing. For years having a car was essential for living in many (not all)
modern cities, without a car you couldn't get to work, visit family or buy
groceries. It was an essential tool for living in much the same way as
computer will be in coming decades. People did not generally understand the
inner workings of fuel injection, anti-lock brakes or catalytic converters,
but that didn't mean engineers weren't able to introduce those things. They
just had to articulate the performance/safety/economy/environmental benefits
in terms that people understood and cared about. The same will be true for
computers.

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csomar
So we are not facing this problem only in Tunisia, but also NY have the same.

Casual people don't know a lot about computers, worse I talked few days ago
with someone that studied Computer and Multimedia (as they call it) and he
don't know how to use a web browser (even don't understand it).

But this can turn at your BENEFIT

1- If you are working for a developer (let say an application) he'll check the
code and then know if it's good or bad. Casual people won't and then with poor
programming knowledge you can make more.

2- programming with Flash is easy, casual people don't know the difference
between Flash and HTML; you can design their site with Flash and charge more
money than your competitors do.

3- Culture of fear: They are always afraid from viruses and spyware which
makes a huge profit to Anti-virus companies and you also.

Many advantages to pull from those people. It's like doctors, when patients
don't know medicine.

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DanielStraight
Aside from the fact that saying post-anything makes me cringe, this was good.
I see a new law on the horizon:

"Anything sufficiently innovative will face an uphill battle due to the
technological illiteracy of the user base."

It may need to be phrased more neatly though. ;)

~~~
jbm
Kudos on the post-anything sentiment; to steal a quote from a monster,
whenever I hear post-something, I want to reach for my Browning.

~~~
clistctrl
to quote another famous person, "Post-industrial Barbarians"

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10ren
Who defines what words mean? The people who created them, or the people who
use them? I can't see any pressure to reverse the trend shown in this video,
and so I predict that "browser" will come to mean a search engine (but don't
worry, there will remain a vestigial secondary technical meaning of, a kind of
software application for accessing the web.)

But it does illustrate Chrome's positioning challenge: how can google _have_ a
browser, when it _is_ a browser?

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tedshroyer
If Chevy or someone made a new motor and asked most people "What engine do you
use?", it seems like there wouldn't be many people that knew what was in their
car. Average people care about features like "miles to the gallon" for cars or
"has email" for their computer. They don't care about the name of the part
that does it. They just want to hit accelerator or double click on something
that brings up their home page.

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decklin
I was with him until he blamed the Macintosh. If "basic computer skills" are
things like saving a file in a particular path, what is bad about an interface
that makes that abstract concept more accessible to most people?

(But I guess I'm thinking of the original, spatial Finder, not the current
one. I am not an Apple user.)

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c00p3r
For the several millions of people Internet = Facebook. For tens of millions -
Internet = Google.

What browsers you're talking about?

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Alex3917
This post was ridiculously good, I hope more people vote it up so that it gets
wider exposure.

~~~
gruseom
Really? What do you think is good about it? I took a look (based on your
recommendation - the title itself turned me off) and all I see is overblown
non-sequiturs.

