
Parents Are Dumb and Kids Don’t Know Anything About Computers Anymore - ingve
https://medium.com/@seibelj/parents-are-dumb-and-kids-don-t-know-anything-about-computers-anymore-b59e974d052c
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dalke
I think every generation has made the same claims about the dumbing down from
the previous generation.

This piece paints the early 1990s as a golden era where you had to, and thus
did, know about the computer at a low level. (And yes, I remember finding the
DIP switches to change IRQ settings.)

But some of those of the previous generation would complain about how kids in
the 1990s didn't know how to open up the box, and wire in new hardware, nor
understand the circuit diagrams ... which no longer come with the computer.

Those of the first microcomputer generation, of the 1970s, would complain that
those of the 1980s had no idea any more how to put things together themselves,
like from an Altair kit, or go to Homebrew meetings and share schematics.

My uncle once drove me around in a Model A truck. The engine isn't sealed. The
owner was expected to open it up an clean it every year. In earlier models,
there was a door in the firewall to adjust the carburetor while driving.
Obviously, we are now dumb, and know nothing about cars any more.

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WalterSear
Your argument would make sense if computer knowledge had been replaced with
something else of utility, in younger generations. What has it been replaced
with?

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dalke
Nearly all of that 'computer knowledge' I learned in the 1980s - DIP switches,
IRQ lines, BIOS calls, how to undelete from a FAT16 directory, etc. - is
transient knowledge that is about as useful now as learning to start a Model T
by hand crank.

So here's a real example of utility. The son of a friend of mine, about 12
years old, uses his iPad to make stop motion animation. He once made a movie
on the plane, and totally amazed a seatmate.

Could you or I have made such a thing in the 1980s? No. Well, not without a
lot of expensive equipment.

Sure, there's no utility if you define "utility" as being able to understand
hardware (or how to rebuild a Model T engine or a carburetor). But it's
excellent utility for someone who wants to go into animation. He could be a
co-founder of the next Aardman, for all we know.

The vast majority of kids with computers in the 1980s, btw, mostly used it to
play games and do school reports.

Compare your experience to the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S in the 1960s and 1970s, who
started with their own vacuum tube computer, had a teletype to dial into a
PDP-8 until DEC donated one to them, and more. Do you think the kids of 1990
really learned something of utility compared to that?

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jnevill
When I was a kid we would spend days picking out the perfect site for a water
mill. We'd toil getting a mill dam set up and some of the finest carpenters in
town would build a great water wheel that would supply enough power to run the
saws. Kids these days don't even know how to direct the flow of a stream and
yet they are off creating a furniture with their table saws and electric
compound miters. Their parents are dumb and the kids don't know anything about
saws.

