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On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place. "The box at the top where you

On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place. "The box at the top where you type in websites you want to go to." "What are you talking about? I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. I just click my facebook icon and it comes up!" These people get all sorts of confused when something happens in their browser and the new tab page's recently visited list gets cleared out...

3np 5y ago
> I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. This learned helplessness scares me a bit. It's like the willingness to comprehend stops at "tap". "What are you talking about, 'steering wheel'?! I'm not a greasemonkey, are you talking about the thing I turn to make the car turn?" Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going? Heck, there have recently been articles about STEM students that do not know how to work with a basic file directory. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
    - windowsrookie 5y ago
      I've actually been hearing and interesting theory that the younger generation is becoming even more computer illiterate than the generation before them. The younger generation was raised on iPads and iPhones where everything is easy to use and "just works". They've never had to do anything beyond tap the icon for the App they want. Edit: Was going to talk about that same article about File directories.
      - Rabei 5y ago
        I have seen this hiring, 10 years ago in general everybody fresh out of college had a good grasp of a linux box inner workings as they had fought through the install process of a Gentoo or LFS machine. Today is fairly common for me to have to explain in detail what is needed or how things work.
      - Jerrrry 5y ago
        This is true, the ease of use and proliferation of simplified and straightforward user interface conventions has had the adverse effect of making everyone born after 1998 practically unable to use a computer outside of the 4 major websites and apps.
      - lowlevel 5y ago
        I have witnessed this with younger people joining the company I work at. Most of them don't seem to have much of an idea how a computer works, why putting the internet between them and their deadlines might be bad or just can't figure out where their files are. I have to do a lot of hand holding for the first few months anyway.
      - JohnWhigham 5y ago
        where everything is easy to use and "just works" And that's unironically a good thing. To poorly paraphrase Alan Kay, you know a certain piece of technology works when it gets out of the way and becomes second nature. However we're now encountering one of those pesky questions that we never hear about in sci-fi because it's hard to solve and it's not fun for authors to write about: are we setting up future generations for failure by making technology too easy? And it's most likely "yes". I wonder out loud: are children not getting courses on how to use a desktop computer anymore like they used to in the 90s/2000s? It seems like it. Even if they never encounter having to browse a file system again until they graduate, the fact that it's at least introduced to them while their brains are still terrific sponges would be beneficial. I've never had to do long division after ~6th grade, but given a few minutes of recall, I can get right back into it because of the rote learning I had.
- HelixEndeavor 5y ago
  As self-driving cars come closer to reality, I fear your hypothetical will eventually become a real conversation someone will have to unironically have.
  - eru 5y ago
    Well, that's how progress looks like. Computers also used to be only for those willing to geek out and geniuses. Now they are used without thinking too much about them.
  - lnx01 5y ago
    I have no idea how to shoe a horse.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      Did anyone complain when people stopped being able to use rotary phones?
    - delecti 5y ago
      But if someone told you that a horse needed to be shod before riding, you'd at least know what the sentence meant.
      - jeffjeff2 5y ago
        I'm pretty sure a lot of people wouldn't understand the word "shod". It's not really a word in common usage. I just hope nobody would mishear it as "shot". That could be unpleasant.
- thrashh 5y ago
  Pretty much everyone is like this somewhere though. Not many people eagerly learn in every domain.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > This learned helplessness scares me a bit... Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another. As a matter of personal philosophy, I agree - but on the level of "empathy for users" this misses the mark pretty widely. The 'steering wheel' analogy is not applicable (but funny!) because unlike computers, everyone who drives has been licensed so there's a baseline level of education that isn't there for computing. Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. But likely the people you are making fun of here did not grow up with computing. They are older folks to whom the computer was presented as a way to solve some specific problem (eg: a series of clicks so I can zoom with the grandkids) rather than a general platform that you perceive it as. You can still say "well, there's a computer now in your life so you should learn about that" and again personally I agree, but - you gotta admit there are things in your life that you could go deeper on but you simply aren't comfortable or interested in doing so. For example, do you know the anatomy of every muscle in your body? Are you perfectly comfortable with public speaking? Are you able to articulate the nuances of policy difference between two local politicians running for office in your area? These are examples of things that you come in contact with on daily basis, and (if you are like most people) you probably did not go as deep in on as you could (and arguably should). Even if you happen to be good at these specific things you can get the larger point that people don't and can't go "deep" on everything they encounter. It may seem weird to you that to someone that thing is their computer, but those people may know things that you don't, also.
  - Majromax 5y ago
    > Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant.
    - xyzelement 5y ago
      > For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant. That's exactly right, the car industry has done a remarkable job maintaining interface compatibility for over a century despite massive implementation changes. Someone who knew how to "hit the brakes" on a 1908 Model-T will be able to do it in my 2021 Toyota. Despite the fact that my car has regenerative breaking (and ABS and other things) which means that how the pedal does its thing is totally different. Even the new additions over the basic interface feel pretty optional. EG, my car has radar cruise control but someone can drive the car for 10 years and not notice that button. If you want to drive my car the same way you drove the Model-T, you pretty much can.
- ronenlh 5y ago
  I had a computer illiterate boss once. He said “please understand it, I’m disabled”
- danShumway 5y ago
  There are a lot of things that contribute to learned helplessness, but in my opinion one underrated cause (for computers) is lack of security. Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think people underestimate how powerful concepts like the recycling bin are, history, etc... in making people feel a bit more confident about experimenting. How to translate that stuff to completely computer-illiterate people is a big challenge. But my experience is that when people feel like it's really easy to revert mistakes, they tend to experiment more and they tend to be bolder about trying to solve their own problems. And in the opposite direction, as they learn more that computers are dangerous even in specific areas, that can bleed over into other contexts and make them scared of trying things in other programs and with other devices. When I see people who aren't willing to try and figure out what a URL bar is or who are scared to move files around or organize a directory or bookmarks, I sometimes wonder what the rest of their computer looks like and if they're channeling anxieties with other programs. Of course, that's only one aspect of the problem though, it's an issue with multiple causes.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    > Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think this is correct. Turning the steering wheel never randomly creates a bunch of new problems for the user that they don't understand. It works the same way every time over the course of the user's entire life. I've probably made millions of turns of a steering wheel and all it's ever done is turn the wheels. The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users.
    - 3np 5y ago
      > The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users. I think the big problem here is everyone of the big players “giving up” and trying to obscure and abstract as much as possible rather than make things clear. Most people understand a phone number +[country] (area) (number). Basic URL parts like (http/https)://(server)/(address) is not that much more complicated, is it really? Google and Apple have really set the trend here in making it feel more difficult for users. Things like “unified bar” and hiding the address are just two concrete examples in two decades of “making it easier”.
- pkulak 5y ago
  It feels to me like they're scared to try, because they still might not get it, and then what does that say about them? But dammit, if my relatives just tried, even a little bit, things would be so much better.
  - sseagull 5y ago
    They are also afraid of breaking things, which isn't entirely unreasonable. I think we've all had relatives do something and then be unable to "get it back". Task bars deleted, icons deleted, etc. So they don't try to venture too far out because past experiences make everything seem fragile.
    - conductr 5y ago
      It's true. What I don't get is the reluctance to seek out learning opportunities. They won't watch a video, attend a class, read a book, none of that. It's like picking up a hobby if you're computer illiterate. They spend all the money on the device and expect what exactly? Yet if they bought a DSLR they would know it's a hobby and they need to learn a thing or two. They'd invest in learning like people do with any hobby.
      - throwaway472927 5y ago
        It's a cliché at this point but they don't want a hobby, they just don't want to be an outcast from society (especially in the last year and a half)
        conductr 5y ago
        I guess hobby isn’t the best word. I suppose it could be a chore too. I have to learn all kinds of stuff to DIY pool maintenance. Either way, it’s an endeavor.
- asdff 5y ago
  It's really because most adults don't have time to tinker like we did, being children and adolescents with computers. When I grew up in the windows xp era, I became the family tech support, and not because I was smart or anything. Just because I had time on my hands, being a child with little responsibilities compared to my parents, to go through the control panel and click every single button and option just to see what it did, so when something did go wrong I had some idea to guess where the fix was to be found. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't mess things up more often. Fast forward to today, and there is a lot of common software that I struggle with like my parents did 20 years ago because I don't have the time to fiddle like I did 20 years ago. I can't do much of anything on windows anymore, after years of using macos and unix, that knowledge has left my brain and I don't have the time to get it all back.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Tech has gone to great lengths to convince people to be illiterate. "There's an app for that" was the worse form of handicap and users were heavily incentivized to seek premade solutions rather than trying to solve their own problems
david422 5y ago
This is my mom. Trying to walk her through steps on the phone like logins and lost passwords is a nightmare. I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.
- somedude895 5y ago
  Same with my mum. It's really insightful to try to see things through her eyes. For example not understanding context like which app she's currently in blew my mind at first, but totally makes sense.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it. Really? I don't believe there exists a task I theoretically could perform if I knew the steps, that I would be unable to do if those steps were being explained to me by an expert. Even if it was gardening or cooking (two areas I have extremely little interest in). In my mind, this very concept doesn't parse. On the other hand, I do know people like this, and I hate helping others with computers over the phone. I believe this has nothing to do with one's intelligence or familiarity. More like some kind of general intellectual or emotional "closedness" - an instinctive refusal to do things out of one's comfort zone, even if one is guided step-by-step, and refusing to take those steps causes a huge loss. I have no idea how this comes about, as it's totally alien to me, except that I see it in most people.
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    There are some tasks that require finesse, like hovering a helicopter, riding a bicycle or even balancing a clutch. Most people can't do those initially no matter how much an expert explains it - until they build up the muscle memory. Cooking and gardening are like that but to a much lesser extent. Of course typing into a URL bar is nothing like that.
kiryin 5y ago
I think it's sad whenever I see people that are very proud of just how tech illiterate they are and just how little they understand computers. It's like teenagers who brag about how badly they scored on on their exam. In many aspects it's the same exact situation, change for the better wouldn't require much work, and this sort of behaviour only discourages others from even trying.
nend 5y ago
Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well. It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what google is, etc. They've been using the internet since I was a kid in the 90's. I'm sure most of us have examples of this in our lives, being the de-facto "computer person" in the family. It is what it is at this point. For whatever reason, if you didn't grow up with computers, it's incredibly difficult to understand them as an adult. Which still applies to huge swaths of the worlds population.
- xattt 5y ago
  I wonder if there’s any stories of anyone suddenly becoming technoliterate after feigning ignorance after a number of years.
  - Avicebron 5y ago
    Anecdotally, my grandfather ~78, works very hard to understand how to navigate and use the computer they have, not sure to the extant you would call "technoliterate", but certainly he puts in the effort to learn how to navigate and use the device without asking for much help.
- jeffasinger 5y ago
  Interestingly, I think we're seeing less people grow up with general purpose computers, and instead just have an iPad or an android tablet, or a chromebook. I wonder what things will look in 20 years.
  - entropicdrifter 5y ago
    At least chromebooks have the capacity to become general purpose computers by installing Linux. But yeah, anyone who doesn't grow up with a Raspberry Pi or the like is gonna have a hard time.
baktubi 5y ago
The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page. Ergo it’s actually bad UX design. Thinking desktop UX if that was an “Amazon app” there would be ONE singular search bar. To make matters worse, Windows has a search bar in start (usually at the bottom); browser has a search bar (at the top); some websites have their own search bar; file explorer has its own search bar. You get the point: bad UX design enforced by assumptions made at each layer of the OS/browser/website. Many out of the control of users and developers alike. Nonetheless, it’s overcrowding the UX with redundancy. Historically speaking, users had an ability to “find stuff” on their system but it was never by an implicit “search bar”; users had to explicitly do something like: file -> find prior to entering search query. The web browser was the one with the search bar (having one job: entering URLs not search terms) and when websites had a search feature it was typically placed in the middle of site or somewhere else (typically reserved for search terms). Modern UX can be ridiculous in ways devs put too much emphasis on these “automatic” components. Like the annoying page header that suddenly scrolls with content and takes up 1/3 of the page. Ack! Don’t even get me started.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page. I assume this is deliberate. Amazon doesn't want you clicking on URLs that don't point to Amazon. A search bar that doesn't do an internet search, but looks like a browser search bar, would seem to fit the bill. I believe Amazon will fade away, once that bald guy reaches the orbit of Saturn. It's basically just an online shop with low prices - I can't see any USP. Incidentally, the combined URL-and-search bar (is that still called the "awesomebar"? It's not awesome) in my version of Firefox (93.0, running on Windows 10) doesn't actually let me search, unless I select a search engine. If I search for "red shoes", it tries to take me to "redshoes.com". If I search for "red doctor martens", it says it can't find a site with that name. I have to choose a search engine, even if I only have one search engine configured. I suppose I must have broken something.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Apparently you just set your preferences to not search from the URL bar.
motoboi 5y ago
I painstakingly developed a personal script for how to teach people how to split a screen between two chrome tabs. This is amazingly and surprisingly difficult thing to explain over the phone to “normal” (born before computers were prevalent) people. Basically I got it divided in two groups: those who have used internet for the first time after 18 years old (hardest group. Have to explain in terms of geometrical figures, like lines and rectangles on top of the screen, where in this rectangle is a good place to click and how to drag, and what a successful drag looks like), and the others (those I can explain how to “drag a tab”, because they already know what a tab is). The address bar is more easy, I refer to it as the place where you type the site where you want to go (but very often people never type addresses, they open google and start from there, always). This got me into thinking about getting old, more than once. How can I prevent this to myself (being totally confused and out of touch with current technology when I get older).
- wrs 5y ago
  I think I’m still doing pretty well with knowing about and even understanding new technology. The thing is, I have a harder time finding it worthwhile. Like social media that seems to have a 5 year cycle just because the younger kids don’t want to be seen using what the older kids use. Do we really need a new IM system and different way of posting short videos to friends every 5 years? So much “technology” change is now just fashion.
  - motoboi 5y ago
    You know you are old when you start think about younger people ways and solutions as frivolous.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      You know the ancient Greeks were right about youth being dumb when you start to think about younger people's ways and solutions as frivolous. There, FTFY. Now geroffmylawn.

3np 5y ago

> I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. This learned helplessness scares me a bit. It's like the willingness to comprehend stops at "tap". "What are you talking about, 'steering wheel'?! I'm not a greasemonkey, are you talking about the thing I turn to make the car turn?" Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

JohnWhigham 5y ago
People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going? Heck, there have recently been articles about STEM students that do not know how to work with a basic file directory. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
  - windowsrookie 5y ago
    I've actually been hearing and interesting theory that the younger generation is becoming even more computer illiterate than the generation before them. The younger generation was raised on iPads and iPhones where everything is easy to use and "just works". They've never had to do anything beyond tap the icon for the App they want. Edit: Was going to talk about that same article about File directories.
    - Rabei 5y ago
      I have seen this hiring, 10 years ago in general everybody fresh out of college had a good grasp of a linux box inner workings as they had fought through the install process of a Gentoo or LFS machine. Today is fairly common for me to have to explain in detail what is needed or how things work.
    - Jerrrry 5y ago
      This is true, the ease of use and proliferation of simplified and straightforward user interface conventions has had the adverse effect of making everyone born after 1998 practically unable to use a computer outside of the 4 major websites and apps.
    - lowlevel 5y ago
      I have witnessed this with younger people joining the company I work at. Most of them don't seem to have much of an idea how a computer works, why putting the internet between them and their deadlines might be bad or just can't figure out where their files are. I have to do a lot of hand holding for the first few months anyway.
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      where everything is easy to use and "just works" And that's unironically a good thing. To poorly paraphrase Alan Kay, you know a certain piece of technology works when it gets out of the way and becomes second nature. However we're now encountering one of those pesky questions that we never hear about in sci-fi because it's hard to solve and it's not fun for authors to write about: are we setting up future generations for failure by making technology too easy? And it's most likely "yes". I wonder out loud: are children not getting courses on how to use a desktop computer anymore like they used to in the 90s/2000s? It seems like it. Even if they never encounter having to browse a file system again until they graduate, the fact that it's at least introduced to them while their brains are still terrific sponges would be beneficial. I've never had to do long division after ~6th grade, but given a few minutes of recall, I can get right back into it because of the rote learning I had.
HelixEndeavor 5y ago
As self-driving cars come closer to reality, I fear your hypothetical will eventually become a real conversation someone will have to unironically have.
- eru 5y ago
  Well, that's how progress looks like. Computers also used to be only for those willing to geek out and geniuses. Now they are used without thinking too much about them.
- lnx01 5y ago
  I have no idea how to shoe a horse.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    Did anyone complain when people stopped being able to use rotary phones?
  - delecti 5y ago
    But if someone told you that a horse needed to be shod before riding, you'd at least know what the sentence meant.
    - jeffjeff2 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure a lot of people wouldn't understand the word "shod". It's not really a word in common usage. I just hope nobody would mishear it as "shot". That could be unpleasant.
thrashh 5y ago
Pretty much everyone is like this somewhere though. Not many people eagerly learn in every domain.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xyzelement 5y ago
> This learned helplessness scares me a bit... Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another. As a matter of personal philosophy, I agree - but on the level of "empathy for users" this misses the mark pretty widely. The 'steering wheel' analogy is not applicable (but funny!) because unlike computers, everyone who drives has been licensed so there's a baseline level of education that isn't there for computing. Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. But likely the people you are making fun of here did not grow up with computing. They are older folks to whom the computer was presented as a way to solve some specific problem (eg: a series of clicks so I can zoom with the grandkids) rather than a general platform that you perceive it as. You can still say "well, there's a computer now in your life so you should learn about that" and again personally I agree, but - you gotta admit there are things in your life that you could go deeper on but you simply aren't comfortable or interested in doing so. For example, do you know the anatomy of every muscle in your body? Are you perfectly comfortable with public speaking? Are you able to articulate the nuances of policy difference between two local politicians running for office in your area? These are examples of things that you come in contact with on daily basis, and (if you are like most people) you probably did not go as deep in on as you could (and arguably should). Even if you happen to be good at these specific things you can get the larger point that people don't and can't go "deep" on everything they encounter. It may seem weird to you that to someone that thing is their computer, but those people may know things that you don't, also.
- Majromax 5y ago
  > Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    > For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant. That's exactly right, the car industry has done a remarkable job maintaining interface compatibility for over a century despite massive implementation changes. Someone who knew how to "hit the brakes" on a 1908 Model-T will be able to do it in my 2021 Toyota. Despite the fact that my car has regenerative breaking (and ABS and other things) which means that how the pedal does its thing is totally different. Even the new additions over the basic interface feel pretty optional. EG, my car has radar cruise control but someone can drive the car for 10 years and not notice that button. If you want to drive my car the same way you drove the Model-T, you pretty much can.
ronenlh 5y ago
I had a computer illiterate boss once. He said “please understand it, I’m disabled”
danShumway 5y ago
There are a lot of things that contribute to learned helplessness, but in my opinion one underrated cause (for computers) is lack of security. Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think people underestimate how powerful concepts like the recycling bin are, history, etc... in making people feel a bit more confident about experimenting. How to translate that stuff to completely computer-illiterate people is a big challenge. But my experience is that when people feel like it's really easy to revert mistakes, they tend to experiment more and they tend to be bolder about trying to solve their own problems. And in the opposite direction, as they learn more that computers are dangerous even in specific areas, that can bleed over into other contexts and make them scared of trying things in other programs and with other devices. When I see people who aren't willing to try and figure out what a URL bar is or who are scared to move files around or organize a directory or bookmarks, I sometimes wonder what the rest of their computer looks like and if they're channeling anxieties with other programs. Of course, that's only one aspect of the problem though, it's an issue with multiple causes.
- dionidium 5y ago
  > Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think this is correct. Turning the steering wheel never randomly creates a bunch of new problems for the user that they don't understand. It works the same way every time over the course of the user's entire life. I've probably made millions of turns of a steering wheel and all it's ever done is turn the wheels. The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users.
  - 3np 5y ago
    > The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users. I think the big problem here is everyone of the big players “giving up” and trying to obscure and abstract as much as possible rather than make things clear. Most people understand a phone number +[country] (area) (number). Basic URL parts like (http/https)://(server)/(address) is not that much more complicated, is it really? Google and Apple have really set the trend here in making it feel more difficult for users. Things like “unified bar” and hiding the address are just two concrete examples in two decades of “making it easier”.
pkulak 5y ago
It feels to me like they're scared to try, because they still might not get it, and then what does that say about them? But dammit, if my relatives just tried, even a little bit, things would be so much better.
- sseagull 5y ago
  They are also afraid of breaking things, which isn't entirely unreasonable. I think we've all had relatives do something and then be unable to "get it back". Task bars deleted, icons deleted, etc. So they don't try to venture too far out because past experiences make everything seem fragile.
  - conductr 5y ago
    It's true. What I don't get is the reluctance to seek out learning opportunities. They won't watch a video, attend a class, read a book, none of that. It's like picking up a hobby if you're computer illiterate. They spend all the money on the device and expect what exactly? Yet if they bought a DSLR they would know it's a hobby and they need to learn a thing or two. They'd invest in learning like people do with any hobby.
    - throwaway472927 5y ago
      It's a cliché at this point but they don't want a hobby, they just don't want to be an outcast from society (especially in the last year and a half)
      - conductr 5y ago
        I guess hobby isn’t the best word. I suppose it could be a chore too. I have to learn all kinds of stuff to DIY pool maintenance. Either way, it’s an endeavor.
asdff 5y ago
It's really because most adults don't have time to tinker like we did, being children and adolescents with computers. When I grew up in the windows xp era, I became the family tech support, and not because I was smart or anything. Just because I had time on my hands, being a child with little responsibilities compared to my parents, to go through the control panel and click every single button and option just to see what it did, so when something did go wrong I had some idea to guess where the fix was to be found. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't mess things up more often. Fast forward to today, and there is a lot of common software that I struggle with like my parents did 20 years ago because I don't have the time to fiddle like I did 20 years ago. I can't do much of anything on windows anymore, after years of using macos and unix, that knowledge has left my brain and I don't have the time to get it all back.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Tech has gone to great lengths to convince people to be illiterate. "There's an app for that" was the worse form of handicap and users were heavily incentivized to seek premade solutions rather than trying to solve their own problems

david422 5y ago

This is my mom. Trying to walk her through steps on the phone like logins and lost passwords is a nightmare. I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

somedude895 5y ago
Same with my mum. It's really insightful to try to see things through her eyes. For example not understanding context like which app she's currently in blew my mind at first, but totally makes sense.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it. Really? I don't believe there exists a task I theoretically could perform if I knew the steps, that I would be unable to do if those steps were being explained to me by an expert. Even if it was gardening or cooking (two areas I have extremely little interest in). In my mind, this very concept doesn't parse. On the other hand, I do know people like this, and I hate helping others with computers over the phone. I believe this has nothing to do with one's intelligence or familiarity. More like some kind of general intellectual or emotional "closedness" - an instinctive refusal to do things out of one's comfort zone, even if one is guided step-by-step, and refusing to take those steps causes a huge loss. I have no idea how this comes about, as it's totally alien to me, except that I see it in most people.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  There are some tasks that require finesse, like hovering a helicopter, riding a bicycle or even balancing a clutch. Most people can't do those initially no matter how much an expert explains it - until they build up the muscle memory. Cooking and gardening are like that but to a much lesser extent. Of course typing into a URL bar is nothing like that.

kiryin 5y ago

I think it's sad whenever I see people that are very proud of just how tech illiterate they are and just how little they understand computers. It's like teenagers who brag about how badly they scored on on their exam. In many aspects it's the same exact situation, change for the better wouldn't require much work, and this sort of behaviour only discourages others from even trying.

nend 5y ago

Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well. It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what google is, etc. They've been using the internet since I was a kid in the 90's. I'm sure most of us have examples of this in our lives, being the de-facto "computer person" in the family. It is what it is at this point. For whatever reason, if you didn't grow up with computers, it's incredibly difficult to understand them as an adult. Which still applies to huge swaths of the worlds population.

xattt 5y ago
I wonder if there’s any stories of anyone suddenly becoming technoliterate after feigning ignorance after a number of years.
- Avicebron 5y ago
  Anecdotally, my grandfather ~78, works very hard to understand how to navigate and use the computer they have, not sure to the extant you would call "technoliterate", but certainly he puts in the effort to learn how to navigate and use the device without asking for much help.
jeffasinger 5y ago
Interestingly, I think we're seeing less people grow up with general purpose computers, and instead just have an iPad or an android tablet, or a chromebook. I wonder what things will look in 20 years.
- entropicdrifter 5y ago
  At least chromebooks have the capacity to become general purpose computers by installing Linux. But yeah, anyone who doesn't grow up with a Raspberry Pi or the like is gonna have a hard time.

baktubi 5y ago

The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page. Ergo it’s actually bad UX design. Thinking desktop UX if that was an “Amazon app” there would be ONE singular search bar. To make matters worse, Windows has a search bar in start (usually at the bottom); browser has a search bar (at the top); some websites have their own search bar; file explorer has its own search bar. You get the point: bad UX design enforced by assumptions made at each layer of the OS/browser/website. Many out of the control of users and developers alike. Nonetheless, it’s overcrowding the UX with redundancy. Historically speaking, users had an ability to “find stuff” on their system but it was never by an implicit “search bar”; users had to explicitly do something like: file -> find prior to entering search query. The web browser was the one with the search bar (having one job: entering URLs not search terms) and when websites had a search feature it was typically placed in the middle of site or somewhere else (typically reserved for search terms). Modern UX can be ridiculous in ways devs put too much emphasis on these “automatic” components. Like the annoying page header that suddenly scrolls with content and takes up 1/3 of the page. Ack! Don’t even get me started.

denton-scratch 5y ago
> The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page. I assume this is deliberate. Amazon doesn't want you clicking on URLs that don't point to Amazon. A search bar that doesn't do an internet search, but looks like a browser search bar, would seem to fit the bill. I believe Amazon will fade away, once that bald guy reaches the orbit of Saturn. It's basically just an online shop with low prices - I can't see any USP. Incidentally, the combined URL-and-search bar (is that still called the "awesomebar"? It's not awesome) in my version of Firefox (93.0, running on Windows 10) doesn't actually let me search, unless I select a search engine. If I search for "red shoes", it tries to take me to "redshoes.com". If I search for "red doctor martens", it says it can't find a site with that name. I have to choose a search engine, even if I only have one search engine configured. I suppose I must have broken something.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Apparently you just set your preferences to not search from the URL bar.

motoboi 5y ago

I painstakingly developed a personal script for how to teach people how to split a screen between two chrome tabs. This is amazingly and surprisingly difficult thing to explain over the phone to “normal” (born before computers were prevalent) people. Basically I got it divided in two groups: those who have used internet for the first time after 18 years old (hardest group. Have to explain in terms of geometrical figures, like lines and rectangles on top of the screen, where in this rectangle is a good place to click and how to drag, and what a successful drag looks like), and the others (those I can explain how to “drag a tab”, because they already know what a tab is). The address bar is more easy, I refer to it as the place where you type the site where you want to go (but very often people never type addresses, they open google and start from there, always). This got me into thinking about getting old, more than once. How can I prevent this to myself (being totally confused and out of touch with current technology when I get older).

wrs 5y ago
I think I’m still doing pretty well with knowing about and even understanding new technology. The thing is, I have a harder time finding it worthwhile. Like social media that seems to have a 5 year cycle just because the younger kids don’t want to be seen using what the older kids use. Do we really need a new IM system and different way of posting short videos to friends every 5 years? So much “technology” change is now just fashion.
- motoboi 5y ago
  You know you are old when you start think about younger people ways and solutions as frivolous.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    You know the ancient Greeks were right about youth being dumb when you start to think about younger people's ways and solutions as frivolous. There, FTFY. Now geroffmylawn.