Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
The relevant aphorism is “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn’t turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.
It’s a bad thing if something of that magic changes tho. You relied on that magic option that appeared in the right click menu in Win10? It’s not there in Win11 anymore, so now go find what that option actually was, what it did and if it can be done in Win11. You just need to relearn your whole workflow.
That’s deadly to older people, even more to visually impaired ones (Like my grandmother… 0% on one eye and 10% on the other…), especially if there’s no one to constantly help them. It’s astonishing how often I already need to help people with their PCs etc. because something changed. Some will need a new one, or Linux as soon as Win10 ends. That’ll be the year of the Linux desktop in my village lol
Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
That’s not an inherently bad thing though, same as it’s not inherently bad that not everyone can repair their car, or sew up tears in their trousers.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
The relevant aphorism is “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn’t turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.
You’re not from New Jersey I see
Sorry, didn’t get the reference?..
It’s a bad thing if something of that magic changes tho. You relied on that magic option that appeared in the right click menu in Win10? It’s not there in Win11 anymore, so now go find what that option actually was, what it did and if it can be done in Win11. You just need to relearn your whole workflow.
That’s deadly to older people, even more to visually impaired ones (Like my grandmother… 0% on one eye and 10% on the other…), especially if there’s no one to constantly help them. It’s astonishing how often I already need to help people with their PCs etc. because something changed. Some will need a new one, or Linux as soon as Win10 ends. That’ll be the year of the Linux desktop in my village lol
TBF, I personally learned helplessness with house repairs. There’s no MS and Apple there. My colleagues are not like that, for example.