I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer.
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@jalefkowit Really?
Wanna go back to fucking around with IRQs and config.sys?
Installing Windows 3.1 from floppy disks?
Removing and re-adding TCP/IP from your dialup adapter in Windows 95 every week?
Screwing around with BBSs and BTX?
Getting printer drivers delivered by snail mail?
Bluescreens on a daily basis?
Reading the 300 page manual for Word Perfect?
All without Google?I think measured by the possibilities a modern system delivers it has become incredibly easy to use.
@thechris @jalefkowit But in those old days most people didn't need to use a computer. Now everything involves a computer, everyone has to deal with the government websites.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit as a non technically oriented, middle aged person, it is much harder to get computers to do what I want them to than it was 20 years ago. I haven't marinated in technology, but I've watched it develop from a distance since the 1980s. Now I have to mentally suit up for battle to get anything done online. Sure, I understand why people say it's easier now, but it's also burdened with stuff I don't want and can't easily escape. I'm looking into getting a non networked PC.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit it’s an long read but https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/ brought home some of these points to me very well.
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and FWIW it's questionable whether computers really were harder in the past.
@KentNavalesi @jalefkowit but you didn't have to use them for every damn thing
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@KentNavalesi @jalefkowit but you didn't have to use them for every damn thing
@akamran @jalefkowit True.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
In the past the people behind the tech weren't purposely trying to fuck you.
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@thechris @jalefkowit But in those old days most people didn't need to use a computer. Now everything involves a computer, everyone has to deal with the government websites.
@jtb @jalefkowit If those websites are shit, that's not today's conputers' fault.
But he blocked me anyway because I dared to have a different opinion, so fuck this. -
I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit Even when we *have* spent our entire lives marinating in it, so much of modern computing is still impossible to navigate.
Youtube accounts have 4 separate "settings" sections, many of which have identically named settings, some of which control the same settings, some of which are entirely separate from one another.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit Same but for watching television.
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@jalefkowit Even when we *have* spent our entire lives marinating in it, so much of modern computing is still impossible to navigate.
Youtube accounts have 4 separate "settings" sections, many of which have identically named settings, some of which control the same settings, some of which are entirely separate from one another.
@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit As someone who's proficient with tech, living together with my mother who very much isn't, I'd say that modern tech is failing both power users and inexperienced users.
It's all designed to fit the average skill level, instead of providing learning and explanation.
I fondly remember the old Windows Help system, which is part of how I got as tech skilled as I am now in the first place. Nowadays users are just expected to already know it, know how to google it or to just go fuck themselves. -
@KentNavalesi I spent too much of my life trying to configure sound cards on MS-DOS, so I wouldn't say the past was perfect either
I just like to think we can always do better.
@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit I'm at the stage now where I'm starting to think that giving someone a 20 minute primer on Linux then letting them get on eith it has to be easier than constantly fighting with their firewall, antiviral, and shifty OS every week.
Personally, ive found several problems with Win11 recently that require opening Powershell as admin just to do something that used to take a couple of clicks with a mouse - something that the Windows evangelists always said was stopping people moving to Linux.
I'm now seriously considering a 2nd SSD for dual booting into something, possibly Mint. -
@jtonline @NatalyaD @jalefkowit TOO MANY ARE ALREADY AFFLICTED WITH WINDOWS
@DJDarren @jtonline @jalefkowit
I worked with a neurodivergent student who DID literally throw their laptop out of the window. That was a tricky arrange-a-replacement cos the funding entity considered it deliberate damage and we had to really bash into them that it was disability related behaviour.
And a lot of work was done with laptop 2, "whatever happens, do NOT break this laptop, cos you won't get a third".
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@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
@jalefkowit I've been sharpening the pitchforks.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit It's gotten to the point where I often *can't* help non-techy people with computer problems anymore, because I haven't used either of the major proprietary OSes since the 00's - so, even as someone who has spent basically their whole life being the Computer Person in a lot of my social circles - the ecosystem most people are in is so divorced from anything I use that beyond basic stuff I can improvise through, I've lost the ability to really do community tech support.
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@ajroach42 It's hard for *me*, a professional nerd who gets paid to understand this stuff. I have no idea how normal people haven't come for us with pitchforks and torches yet
For the same reason they haven't come for kayfabe panto politicians with pitchforks and torches. Ego-value is vested in a lifetime of this being something other people are competent at, at least are supposed to be competent at. (Cf. James Scott, Seeing Like a State.)
The complexity and confusion is embraced as proof that, absent those brief inescapable interactions with the monolithic fetish object that is "computers", as broad hand-wavy category, it's largely someone else's problem.
Heck, myself was writing poetic-satirical short stories in middle school, well before AOL was even mailing out free floppies, about how computer touchers we becoming a priestly class, the mystery of the machine serving the interests of both the touchers and those who called on them for exorcisms.
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@NatalyaD @jalefkowit @DJDarren doh, v was a much easier description than upside down ^!
I've had more recent opportunity to type it... And I knew what you meant, which is all that matters.
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I occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
@jalefkowit It is so true. I used to do support for a legendary in his field Professor Emeritus, who was slowly losing his critical faculties - Microsoft's constant changes to their software was what finally drove him to quit for good. Today I just about lost my shit trying to help a blind user navigate Windows 11 for the first time.
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@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi The 70s micro and early DOS PC and Mac era, really the whole floppy/tape era, had another thing going for it: If something went wrong you just turned it off and on again. Nothing you did on your BASIC coding disk could break your homework disk. None of this "if my kid plays with my phone for a minute my e-mails will be deleted, $200 worth of burritos will show up at my doorstep, and my co-workers will receive ten photos of their potty" situation.
