It’s helpful to take a few steps back from time to time to reassess where we’re each coming from on our knowledge of tech (or anything) to better communicate.
Thank you.
This post made me realize that sometimes I get a little too annoyed when other people don’t understand concepts that are completely obvious to me.I’ll have to reassess how I explain certain things, like how being connected to wifi doesn’t mean having internet. Things like that are just not graspable when someone simply doesn’t know all the steps that lie between a server and their phone at home, and that’s absolutely fair.
It’s common sense to a techie, but it’s not actual common sense, as in everyone naturally learns this as they grow up
I had a coworker get livid when an end user didn’t know what “the start menu” was.
Pointing out that the last version version of Windows to actually say “Start” on the start menu is old enough to drink (XP was released over 22 years ago; mainstream support ended 15 years ago) did not quell his anger.
This is why scammers are so efficient, they adapt to people not knowing things because the people they’re targeting don’t. They say start menu or button that looks like 4 windows
Now that you mention it…What are we supposed to call that anymore? The…Windows menu, I guess? This reminds me that the “icon-ification” so to speak, of interfaces has made things frustrating for everyone involved since there’s no name/label for the icons to rely on to communicate what to click/tap.
Microsoft themselves still call it the start menu:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-the-start-menu-4ed57ad7-ed1f-3cc9-c9e4-f329822f5aeb
Go watch the IT crowd. It’s dated, but more people than you think are Jen.
I personally don’t think most people would even know how to make a text file on their computer without looking it up. Anything beyond usage of a Web browser and maybe connecting to WiFi is black magic for most.
I always have to explain to people that the internet and Wi-Fi are two different things.
I used to work at an internet service provider and oftentimes people would call up to say that they couldn’t connect to the internet and the problem was actually that they couldn’t connect to the Wi-Fi because the router was broken / out of range / had been turned off because they read something about 5G on Facebook. Their internet service was fine.
That’s like saying people are complaining their engine doesn’t work when it’s their drive train that’s broken.
That’s not so much a misunderstanding of the structure of the system, as that people unfamiliar consider the drive train to be part of “the engine” which is “the set of mechanical things going on inside the car that makes the wheels turn” or “everything upstream of the wheels”.
A person who can’t connect to wifi also can’t connect to the internet.
A person who can’t connect to wifi also can’t connect to the internet.
Potentially they might still be able to access the internet via wired connection. The point is you need to identify where in the system the fault lies. If the fault is with the network connection then it’s the level three service provider that needs to take action (which depending on the configuration may or may not be the ISP’s responsibility) if the fault is with the router then additional troubleshooting is required to identify where the problem lies. It may very well just be used at error
People don’t even know what a browser is… Yet if anybody expresses the slightest frustration with Netflix or anything else, the immediate responses hey you just need to set up a Plex server.
It’s two things wrapped into one.
First, the assumption is that people know the names of the software that they use.
The second is that other people who are not techy consider it just fine to spend hours and hours creating a stopgap solution that shouldn’t have to exist in the first place. They don’t.
I think this also exists within tech. There are some people with humongous working memory, who have no concept of thought being hard, and for them setting up a plex server is 5 minutes of effort: read the instructions once, do it all perfectly without time delay. Then there are others who are barely getting through the day. Accomplishing a Plex setup means trial and error, multiple attempts. Eventually, a deep understanding, but one built through sweat and folly.
Also Plex trash software. It is extremely useful, but my god is it annoying to use and bloated with unnecessary nonsense.
Also sometimes it just randomly breaks for no reason at all. Like literally you’ve done nothing to it and it stopped working. Then you just fiddle with random settings until it starts working and nothing you did actually fixed it it just wanted you to twiddle some knobs
Tech people overestimate people’s ability to distinguish harmful versus harmless actions. To us it seems obvious that there’s read operations, write operarios, and execute operations, and that the read is basically safe, write can lay traps for you, and execute can kill your computer or the control you have over it.
But that’s not obvious to everyone. We just tell them “Don’t run any code or give it permission to overwrite anything” but most people don’t know what the significance of that is or how to notice when a button is going to cause a write or execute.
I think tech people have overly high expectations of the average person’s ability to pirate.
I remember when Netflix was going to raise prices and all the online comments were like “Yo ho I will start pirating!” and it’s like, kind of sounds like you were already pirating. The expectation that Netflix would lose masses of money as average people turned to pirating was always outlandish to me.
Yes, it’s simple to do, but the vast majority of people are apathetic to minor nickel and diming, especially if it’s basically automatic reoccurring fees, and are intimidated by the idea of learning 1337 hacker stuff.
Dropping another “everything.”
There are LOADS upon loads of people whose entire understanding of the internet and tech is
1- purchase phone 2- Install Facebook 3-??? 4- profit
Once Facebook had a builtin browser there was no reason for whole swatches of the population to leave the app ever again. It seems insane to us here on lemmy but most people just… Don’t give a fuck. 🤷
Basically everything.
Like, even filling out a basic Excel sheet can be difficult to some people who have absolutely no experience in it.
I had to stop watching how other people use computers for my own sanity. Even people who use computers (allegedly) 40 hours a week for the past 20 years are no better than those chimps who learned to touch squares on a screen. If a triangle pops up they start throwing shit.
But I no longer assume a user knows anything. If someone asked me what a curser was I wouldn’t even blink. The only thing that really annoys me is a refusal to try anything. I don’t even care if you learn about what you are doing, at least try what I’m telling you.
I have a coworker who had literally never used a computer his entire life before getting this job. He’s almost 50 and was hired shortly aftet me.
But he’s put in the effort. He can now type relatively fast, he knows what the file system is, what browsers do, how to send and read emails, how to send and read slack messages. He’s even starting to get a sense, when something goes wrong, whether he did something incorrect or whether the software he’s using is just shit. Tabs took him a long time to wrap his mind around but he’s getting it. All this in about a year.
Tabs are weird because they only make sense intuitively to someone who uses paper files, which is becoming less common
Because that person care to learn. A lot of people don’t give a shit and that’s why after 20 years, some people still think a computer is a magic box.
I work with people who have no email and use flip phones. Knowing how to do basic formulas in excel is something people in my industry put on resumes as a brag. I blew minds with a pivot table last week.
Then tech people will come in like “if you dont c38÷<#æ&÷>h§tg your &÷8]ă2& on your ejẅińë6÷&7g/g5 then youre stupid and support facism, you dumb corporate apologist with your basic windows platform.”
Or at least that’s what lemme feels like sometimes.
What job is that? I’d be a God there after I automate my entire workflow and just get paid for sitting on the chair.
I automated my workflow once and started drinking heavily. My manager hated my guts but couldn’t get rid of me. So it was just me in a server room reading for 7 hours a day and pretending to look interested during meetings for the other hour.
Manufacturing, not a ton of behind the desk work required. What little office work is required is still often done on paper or on very manual entry heavy basic excel sheets.
I dont know why tech people always forget non tech jobs still exist. You definetely wouldn’t get paid for just sitting in a chair unless you’ve cracked industrial line automation in a way that should have already made you a billionaire. Still more automation of any kind would also be a good thing in a lot of plants.
Still more automation of any kind would also be a good thing in a lot of plants.
Controls engineer here. I will get to you eventually.
Pulling a tech worker move, i’d just convince the tech illiterate boss that the excel thingy is too complicated and that i should use all the time i have to handle it while i then make some software that handles that annoying part of the job until it becomes too important that someone has to maintain it. of course, i’d write no documentation so i only know how the program works, as a leverage in case they think it would be a good idea to fire me lmao.
You clearly just don’t understand manufacturing. They’d still be willing to fire you and make us use a paper and pencil. In fact if the techs that important then no it isn’t because they don’t trust it, and we’re keeping paper backups anyway.
I know that because youre in tech you think you can “out smart” the guy who can build a house with a paper and pencil, but I promise that you aren’t half as clever as you think you are.
At that point that’s just fraud lmao.
I know xD that’s tech industry for you
Look, I’m a software engineer, and I still fucking hate filling out spreadsheets. I’m honestly at the point where I’d rather make everything a
QUERYfunction than deal withARRAYFORMULAbullshit. Honestly, if Google Sheets could add SQL language formatting, we’d be golden.Yes. Those words. They are things.
I said basic Excel sheet.
The government created the Internet, not Elon Musk
I’m old enough to remember when Al Gore created the internet
I had this silly thing kicking around in me head forever. I’v always had a generally positive view of Gore and now is the time to square that circle. Thanks for your comment. It made me read more. The guy was on Futurama. He deserves that.
Apparently he pushed for money for bringing more mass adoption of the Internet. It looks like as a senator he recognized the value of the Internet before stuff like gopher existed. Presumably because of papers from the NSF. So he was important.
In some question on the news he flubbed words and said something like, “I took the initiative in developing the Internet.” That’s not a lie so far as I can tell, but boy does it sound like bullshit. It’s super close to “I invented the Internet”.
I got all this from one source so maybe it’s bullshit, but hey: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/708
I work in an admin role in the construction industry. I regularly encounter seasoned engineers, project managers, and architects who don’t know the difference between a website and an app, or how to scan a QR code.
But then I remember that they know how to build a house from scratch, and I don’t. We’re all good at different things.
Thank you for having such a lovely view on things
What do i get for knowing how to do both?
I think a big part of my career was shaped by hell desk IT at my uni for a semester. I know this guy is smart. He has like a bazillion papers in things I can’t even pronounce and a whole mess of awards and what have you. He can’t figure out why his printer isn’t working.
I am far from perfect but I do make an effort to remember, as you said, that human knowledge and abilities can vary so much.
We assume that people know what an OS is, what OS they’re running, and how to install an OS.
I’ve seen it dozens of times, especially on here, where someone describes Linux, convinces the person that they’ll like it, and then gets the equivalent of a blank stare when they say ‘You just need to download the ISO and install the OS’
My mother is in her 70s, and if you set up her computer to run Linux in the same way that it comes ready to run Windows, she’d be fine after a short readjustment. If you gave her a USB stick with Linux on it, she wouldn’t get anywhere because she has no clue what she’s supposed to do with it.
She doesn’t care about the OS, as long as her browser opens and loads Facebook, letting her keep in touch with her friends.
Even as someone relatively comfortable with computers, Linux intimidates me. I want to use it but there’re so many variations and it’s a massive rabbit hole to go down; I just don’t have the time or energy to spend several days getting it set up how I want it and fixing any errors that I cause
About that last point, you don’t really need to. Internet people like to show off their customized desktops and systems, but in reality using a “just works” distribution requires very little headache and time. Except for the time spent choosing it, that is
Maybe this weekend I’ll give it a go on the old laptop
I would suggest Mint as a good distro that’s easy to use out of the box. It’s what I use on my laptop, and am switching to on the computer.
If you’re not sure though, you can try Linux in a virtual machine :)
Thanks, that’s the one I’ve seen recommended the most, I reckon
that’s why I recommend ubuntu. It’s got big market share. It’s orange. It’s linux.
Turning it off and on again fixes so many things.
“Turning it off” today just turns modern tech to standby mode. Those who has learned the long-press to get up a reboot menu magic are chosen as the families new tech guru.
Not if you’re shutting down Windows, you have to do the restart option to really be effective. Thanks for that Microsoft, totally worth the support headache to be able to boot up in 32 seconds instead of 38.
I complained enough at my business that we turned off fast boot. I haven’t had to have a conversation about restart vs shutdown in like a year now which is sweet, but my own computer takes significantly longer to start up so jokes on me I guess.
All the lingo and acronyms.
This, but also don’t underestimate people’s curiosity to learn a bit more about a niche topic over some beers. I love hearing about crap I understanding nothing about. I watched a PhD defence about sea slugs and it was really cool.
sea slugs
really coolWell thats just obvious
Hey if we’re talking about littoral sea slugs, they can be warm sometimes too
