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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
source: @n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca
It only relatively recently occurred to me that the vast majority of people use the Internet either solely or mostly with a mobile phone. It blew my mind since I grew up with PCs and modems and the Internet is so much better on a large screen that's not half full of ads.
Yeah, I hate using the internet via a phone and only do it when there's no other option available. It severely limits what you can do, which of course is perfect for the 5 or so corporations that run most of the internet.
It doesn't have to be full of ads on mobile either, just use Firefox or a fork (ironfox is great) and add ublock origin as a start.
OK so I have a pet theory about this. I grew up in a period when computing involved friction and lack of ready resources to ease that friction. Solving problems involved actual research, in the research process more and more details of how computers operate were exposed to me. I had the time and focus to learn and the motivation to stick at it when it was difficult. I then did something horrible to almost everyone who asked me for help, I removed that friction.
With the noblest of intentions I prevented everyone around me from experiencing that friction, I made it easy. Consequently I caused those people around me to miss out on those basics I struggled with. I uncovered the arcane lore of endianess so everyone around me who wasn't already an adept would be spared. I plumbed the mysteries of the parallel port so that others could use a printer with only mild mystical invocations. I immersed myself in SCSI termination so that my friends and family might partake of IDE (retroactively named PATA) in peace.
I came from an era of computing where these things mattered (at least to some degree) and they moulded me and shaped how I use a computer to this day. My brothers will always be dependent on myself and my ilk to act as guides and so much of what I know is functionally useless today so a neophyte could not follow the twisted path I did.
I was blessed as well to come of age in a time when a computer was a comprehensible assemblage of parts, when I could identify at an IC level the components of it. I feel like that is what is missing in the modern incarnation of technology. I also worry this is where we stagnate, the field is too large for anyone to compass it entirely and we splinter in to specialisations.
However this is also a sign that technology has come of age. I am certain, absolutely positive, that if I was to pick an arbitary topic, say music, I would seem as illiterate and helpless as the Zoomers we are bemoaning as mere consumers of Tech. I can enjoy a piece of music, I can even take a rough stab at the rusiments of how it is made. Ask me to explain the nomenclature of a time signature on sheet music and I will look the dunce before I finish the first sentence.
So maybe we should give them a break and realise that for a lot of them, It... Just... Isn't... Important...
They will learn this stuff if and when they need to. Otherwise "magic box does things when I perform this ritual" is enough for them to function in their world, the same as "Car starts when I turn this key" is enough for me to function in mine.
Holy crap, I wrote this on my phone, what is wrong with me?
Fun read, but the zinger of "it.... Just.... Isn't.... Important" really damages your argument.
The difference in knowing how our technological systems work versus just using them is how you wind up in a world where capitalist rule, intelligence dwindles and choice is stolen. We're seeing these effects in real time. And it's just not technology; take the electoral system here in the US. It stopped being about the functions of our government and became flag waving and baby kissing. Now our tax dollars kill children, the rich are all but unstoppable and we're at each other's throats all because we, collectively, let the systems work without understanding how and why.
Tech today being a glass and aluminum block feeds our lust, insecurity, inequality, comparison etc all in an effort to generate wealth and further divide, all by design. Didn't you think it's very important to know that?
Let's be fair though. Adobe changes the Acrobat interface every two weeks for no reason. PDF has always been an absolute shitshow, super slow, walled garden format. After like 30 years it's still a 30 step process to add a note box with an arrow that looks half decent
Adobe did that to me twice and then I uninstalled it and never gave Adobe another chance. There are plenty of good free pdf editors that I don't need to support such a terrible and greedy company
this is less a problem of 'people are stupid' and more 'educational institutions have been dismantled over the last several decades and large numbers of people are pushed through school despite being functionally illiterate, if they graduate at all'
It’s not just dismantling of education. It’s the corporate creep into the education system from companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple. They want people get locked into their systems. So they start them young. Instead of learning basic os agnostic computer skills, kids at school are locked into cloud dependent apps.
I think if they were using windows they'd be far more computer literate, but they're just using iPad and chromebooks
Hey, I was never taught how to rotate a PDF.
I just looked for the button in the viewer.
Sometimes, I just rotate the screen instead.
No it's just that Zoomers only use touchscreen, which are vastly simplified devices compared to a desktop computer
You can rotate a PDF in your mind. It's free entertainment and nobody can stop you
> be me
> zoomer
> use linux
> i use linux
> i don't know how to use windows, or macos
> i dont know how to use the most popular operating systems
> wait
> i am the joke now
TBH your IT skill set is incomplete if you neglect the most used desktop OS. If you don’t work in IT, then more power to you.
listen man, if you're going to hire me for an IT position, you better assume i will do nothing other than linux, unless you want to pay me a lot more fucking money, or want me to be very mad, all of the time.
As a boomer, reading this thread/discussion has been so amusing in many ways while enjoying my cuppa tea this morning. A classic "the younger generations are stupid."
The older generations looking down the ones that follow. And the following generations looking down on those that precede them. And no one understanding ain't none of us are all that bright.
Ever has it been, and so ever shall it be.
We grew up in an analog childhood, but digital adulthood.
We've been at the cusp of all the changes, we probably had to boot into Ms DOS and navigate to the A:// drive to play whatever was on the floppy disk with a whopping 1.44mb.
Now you download almost instantly to your phone/tablet. The internet as we knew it is mostly dead, everywhere is a walled garden of shit.
The number of people in this thread stumped by the “rotate a PDF” comment, even what it means at all, while a smartphone has been 95-100% of their “computer” usage in their lives.
As a developer and avid Linux enjoyer, I myself don't know why the printer won't connect.
Because they designed it not to. Printer manufacturers were way ahead of the curve on enshittification.
The more I think about it PDFs are our fax machine and that shit just needs to go away.
What are you guys using pdfs for? They're idiot proof.
You clearly don't use digital signatures in PDFs
"How do I rotate this PDF? I need to print it."
"Uh, you can just set it to print in landscape mode."
(Scornful stare, for using space age words) "NO! I must ROTATE the PDF!"
I'm sure I had a conversation like this with one of the acquaintances of my dad
Not true
Millennials think it's them , because they learned how. Gen X knows, because they wrote it.
I am what you would call a boomer. But I do not only know how to rotate a PDF, I also know how to generate one from a number of sources with software I have written...
You're a computer boomer, basically don't count. A lot of millennials, with no relation to tech, can use the computer at least for basic stuff. That can't be said about any other generation.
I remember a game wouldn't work until i adjusted the screen resolution in like 98
So, the key takeaway is everyone has a different experience, and that is okay.
The smartphone and it's consequences to the human society...
Is there some magic to rotating a PDF? I just opened one and there's a button in Firefox saying "Rotate clockwise" and "Rotate anticlockwise". Are we talking something rotating and then saving the PDF so it stays rotated or just rotating it after it's already loaded? Or is this about rotating the PDF so it can be printed out?
Yea surprise some people are good at using computers some are bad, has nothing to do with whatever generation someone is apart of, generation labels are so dumb. Literally every "milleinal" I've known comes to me for their computer problems.
I would be happy to never see a PDF again, can we not have something better?
I always think it's like complaining that nobody under a certain age can use the card catalog, microfiche or whatever. Technology changes. I have so many leftover now useless skills; please God may the ones related to Adobe rot on that same pile soon.
How did we fail so hard? Where did we go wrong?