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I'm wondering if the change is more of a generational than a technology thing. Granted, computers and Iphones have certainly given young people a greater ability to engage in whatever behavior they desire. But, I think the decline in moral values and loss of a generally accepted 'truth standard is a larger factor in determining what people do with advancing technology.
Technology has certainly made the older retiree generation is certainly more aware of this decline (via technology), but, they aren't necessarily engaging in the same behaviors as younger people. Likewise, the younger generation (40's, 50's) is now influencing and making changes, which the older generation makes little sense of ... just like in previous generations.
oh god.....what a much different easier world for kids today
if a boy wanted to ask a girl out in my day (high school) he would gather up the courage to call her house...pray her father wouldn't answer the one house phone..
so you call..... in a sweat...her father answers you say.... can I can I please talk to heather ??? and he says she is busy and don't call again.....and slams the phone down..... so you feel like a dweeb...
today a boy can send out texts to ten different girls "hey whats up this weekend"????
and then see who replies
a whole different and easier world...…. along with just texting on a daily basis
not to mention the wealth of research knowledge at the tip of your fingers
oh god.....what a much different easier world for kids today
if a boy wanted to ask a girl out in my day (high school) he would gather up the courage to call her house...pray her father wouldn't answer the one house phone..
so you call..... in a sweat...her father answers you say.... can I can I please talk to heather ??? and he says she is busy and don't call again.....and slams the phone down..... so you feel like a dweeb...
today a boy can send out texts to ten different girls "hey whats up this weekend"????
and then see who replies
a whole different and easier world...…. along with just texting on a daily basis
not to mention the wealth of research knowledge at the tip of your fingers
Yeah, it's not all roses though. On the flip side of that when you and I F'ed up it was only your friends or school that knew about it. Now a video of you screwing up can instantly be uploaded to youtube and go viral for the entire world to see and comment on. The bully that you only had to worry about in the hallway can now reach out and mess with you 24/7 via social media. The computer club kid that you gave a hard time can create a deep fake of you doing things you didn't do or say and send it out there. The internet is a scary place.
Of course later in life you realize everyone screws up and none of this stuff is a big deal but, as a kid it's got to be pretty rough if you are unfortunate enough to be the "Epic meltdown" kid on youtube, the Covington Catholic kids or something similar.
Speaking to the wealth of knowledge at your finger tips part, that seems to have a really weird effect on a lot of the kids we get fresh out of college. It's like a lot of them view that knowledge as something they've earned or worked for and think that watching a youtube video is pretty much the same as actually doing it or being the one to figure out how to do it. Then when presented with a task that there is no youtube tutorial for they don't know how to figure it out because for as smart as they think they are they haven't had to actually solve a problem other than finding the right search terms. Typically this goes one of two ways, a dose of humble pie and they open their eyes a bit or another epic meltdown kid video.
LOL,,, my point was only that, if I wanted information that wasn't available via whatever current Encyclopedia I had, which may have been old and outdated, and whatever newspapers or periodicals available weren't to me personally. Then the library was the only place to go.
I couldn't just "google" a query so that was the best option
Is it?
The problem with the Net is that so much of it is opinion, not fact. One spends so much time sorting the opinion from fact. It's like looking at the pictures on imdb of popular movie and so many of them have NOTHING to do with the movie but are about who attended the opening. So much 2nd and 3rd level to infinity gets attached to this or that that not only in the end but actually at the beginning, it ends up being gibberish.
This is why I buy up technical texts because at least the information published in it is fact. If it is old, at least the factual information gives me the basis to form a correct query.
Then, there are two or three other problems.
When I was doing professional research that depended a lot on the Israeli raid at Entebbe, I finally had to break down and order 3 or so books on the subject. What was out there on the net was little more than footnotes, if anything at all (did find an IDF site which had much more information than others places but still, hardly anything compared to a book). It seems when it is historical on the Net, it gets massively watered down.
Once, I was taking a senior level political science class about Arab-Israeli situations. When it came time to the final, I predicted the prof would ask either about the history of the wars or the development of the PLO. I prepared for both and on the former, I had a copy of this text https://www.ebay.com/p/1281159?iid=1...yABEgLdePD_BwE and memorized all the necessary entries. That was the question he asked and I aced the final.
Long story short, there is probably benefit to being able to use a library than to depend on the Net.
Finally, I'm a reader and I tend to remember everything. Maybe that is just me but then again ........ Jenny Calendar: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much? Rupert Giles: The smell. Jenny Calendar: Computers don't smell, Rupert. Rupert Giles: Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences... long forgotten. Books smell... musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a... it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible. It should be, uh, smelly. (from BtVs, "I, Robot,.....you Jane", from IMDB)
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 12-31-2019 at 06:50 AM..
This week being the end of a decade, it's timely to reminisce. The past 20 years have witnessed a steady and incessant erosion of privacy and of individual control of computers. Back in the year 2000, it was common for bench-level employees to have their own PC, to administer it and to be responsible for software loaded on it. Computers were networked, but networks were not heavily policed if at all. Much of this changed due to 9/11, and in the ensuing years, with threats of viruses and hacking and so forth. Now - 20 years later - workplace PCs are essentially terminals, with a system administrator who manages the computers from a remote, centralized location... and tracks every move.
The irony is that the prior 20 years - 1980 through 2000 - saw a democratization of computer use. In 1980, the computer was a big throbbing machine in an air conditioned room, managed by a fellow in a white coat. Users sat at terminals, and launched programs that required "time sharing", or rotating access to the CPU. As the 80s wore on, the mainframes and minis were replaced by desktop PCs. Then in the 90s we got networking, which initially was ad hoc and unpoliced.
The 2020s will likely resemble the 1970s: computers are austere, centralized things, carefully watched by professionals. Any user-interaction with the machine is carefully and methodically recorded, and users can do, only what the central authority allows them to do.
We've moved in that direction where I've worked. Things are increasingly becoming locked down to the point it constricts business.
Still, the average employee doesn't need to be an administrator. Even in this day and age, many are clueless about basic navigation beyond what little they need to know for their jobs. Poorly educated staff are probably more responsible for more IT security incidents than any other one cause.
I think one thing we're forgetting is that many of the kids today who are users of technology often have little interest in or understanding of the underlying technology itself.
BitTorrent is a file sharing protocol that was developed and released in the early 2000s. I was using it probably no later than 2005. Virtually anyone who was using it at that time probably had at least a high-level understanding of how the technology worked. You didn't need to be a software engineer to use it, but most anyone playing with something like that was probably fairly "techie" anyway.
One of the big uses for BitTorrent at that time was to download content to be able to create a local media library that you could stream to your local TV. In the mid 2000s, it was a fairly sophisticated thing to do. I set up a dedicated computer with specialized components in a case type that would "blend" into the living room with what was then cutting edge HTPC software to acoomplish this. I could watch movies from my computer with a remote and I thought I was cool. It was basically DIY and you had to learn a lot about the technology itself to accomplish the end goal. Even then, by today's standards, the technology was crude. It was pretty much standard definition stuff with stereo sound.
That's a far cry from a few clicks on a much better remote control to watch a 4K movie with outstanding Dolby Vision color on Netflix. Anyone can do that and you don't need to know much, if anything, about the underlying technology (aside from entering credentials and connecting the device to the internet) to do this.
I was on a lot of chat rooms in the late 90s/early 2000s. I met people from all over the country and the world, including adults as a minor. I got tons of music from other people that I would have never been exposed to. I played a computer game back in the early 2000s with a lot of Brits. A lot of the loose nature of the internet is now gone in the name of "protecting the children" and big commercial interests like Facebook have increasingly gobbled up and restricted content.
If we had what we have today, I would have spent much less time at the library.
Yeah, me too. I spent A LOT of my youth at the library. I'm sure I'd still be an avid reader and probably FB would not interest me any more then, than it does now.
Online dating was good to me at age 45 to 50, so I would have engaged in that back then too.
Given my upbringing, I doubt I'd be into selfies or recording every move someone makes. I've never been into that kind of stuff.
oh god.....what a much different easier world for kids today
if a boy wanted to ask a girl out in my day (high school) he would gather up the courage to call her house...pray her father wouldn't answer the one house phone..
so you call..... in a sweat...her father answers you say.... can I can I please talk to heather ??? and he says she is busy and don't call again.....and slams the phone down..... so you feel like a dweeb...
today a boy can send out texts to ten different girls "hey whats up this weekend"????
...
This is entirely situational and a matter of perspective. I'd have had much better luck, and fewer qualms, in approaching the father first. We'd talk about the stock market, or about car-repair. Maybe I'd help with a construction project around the house. Maybe model airplanes. Or chess. Eventually the conversation would turn, to whether perhaps he has a daughter my age. Much easier than "dating". Try that today, and you'll be politely (or not too politely) advised to move to Afghanistan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation
I think one thing we're forgetting is that many of the kids today who are users of technology often have little interest in or understanding of the underlying technology itself. ...
Very true... and applies to persons of all ages, backgrounds and economic strata. 100 years ago, to be a user of "technology" meant to be a tinkerer, a hobbyist, a participant in the craft. How many drivers of Model T's did NOT perform significant engine-work themselves? How many drivers even 50 years ago, did not feel some engagement with trying to improve horsepower, with trying to stand their own at the neighborhood stoplight grand-prix? But today, cars are merely transportation, be it for conveying the kids to soccer-practice or for off-roading at the national park.
Everyone brags about being able to sell junk on Facebook, or posting frequently on Twitter. But how many people actually understand the code that power Facebook or Twitter?
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I would never have gotten my homework done
