Tech Fade - Old tech is simply... Forgotten. People rely on corporate services to substitute.

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Tech fade is the point in the (very near) future, where most people forget how to do basic computer stuff and instead only know how to operate some apps, while the powerful oligarchs know and have super-user access to most systems and machines, and can use them for malicious purposes. Null brought it up in his stream and it seems like it's way on its way.

For example, most mobile phone users don't know how to change the OS of their phone or even work with advanced features. Since most databases are outsourced, most people don't know how to manage a database, let alone host one on their own private server. Speaking of, when did you hear someone host stuff on their private server? Most people just use some git or online repository provider. Looking at the tech literacy of genZ and genA, the Tech Fade could here in one generation.

What are the implications? And how could we stop it?

 

[Lord Xenu]

Its already here, and has been for some time.

For example, most mobile phone users don't know how to change the OS of their phone or even work with advanced features.

I watched one of those post-secondary e-learning lectures a few years ago (IIRC it was the harvard CS101 series) and the presenter was saying that many of their incoming CS students struggle to understand the concept of directories because they've never been exposed to a filesystem before. They had to add it to their orientation so that theyre not wasting time every year helping kids find their first bit of coursework on the hard drive. I was very surprised to learn that.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I watched one of those post-secondary e-learning lectures a few years ago (IIRC it was the harvard CS101 series) and the presenter was saying that many of their incoming CS students struggle to understand the concept of directories because they've never been exposed to a filesystem before. They had to add it to their orientation so that theyre not wasting time every year helping kids find their first bit of coursework on the hard drive. I was very surprised to learn that.

That's just the Virgin Programmer VS the Chad Sysadmin.

 

[Frank(en) Castle]

It's absolutely already here. I've had teenage co-workers straight up tell me they don't know how a computer works and only know how to use their (I)-phones. I discovered this because I asked them to check if a machine had internet connection and they replied with "I don't know how to do that. I don't know how computers and stuff (sic) work."
I followed up with "you don't know how a computer works?", the response I got was a nod and them holding their phone up, "I only know how to use this?" (yes they phrased it as a question).
What followed was a frustrating conversation that ended with me walking away and shaking my head in disbelief.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

Its already here, and has been for some time.

I watched one of those post-secondary e-learning lectures a few years ago (IIRC it was the harvard CS101 series) and the presenter was saying that many of their incoming CS students struggle to understand the concept of directories because they've never been exposed to a filesystem before. They had to add it to their orientation so that theyre not wasting time every year helping kids find their first bit of coursework on the hard drive. I was very surprised to learn that.

It's absolutely already here. I've had teenage co-workers straight up tell me they don't know how a computer works and only know how to use their (I)-phones. I discovered this because I asked them to check if a machine had internet connection and they replied with "I don't know how to do that. I don't know how computers and stuff (sic) work."
I followed up with "you don't know how a computer works?", the response I got was a nod and them holding their phone up, "I only know how to use this?" (yes they phrased it as a question).
What followed was a frustrating conversation that ended with me walking away and shaking my head in disbelief.

I think children that grew up between the mid 1990s to late 2000s were spoiled with the technology classes and shit like that. I really didn't think they helped that much in middle school between 2006 and 2008, but apparently I was fucking wrong. It's like living in a completely different world than the one you remember living in just yesterday.

 

[Frank(en) Castle]

I think children that grew up between the mid 1990s to late 2000s were spoiled with the technology classes and shit like that. I really didn't think they helped that much in middle school between 2006 and 2008, but apparently I was fucking wrong. It's like living in a completely different world than the one you remember living in just yesterday.

That's what's so baffling to me. In my area, every middle school has a compulsory tech class that I know these fuckers went through. So, I repeat the question, "You don't know how a computer works???"
There was a brief, blessed period from like 2005-2015 where everyone knew how to use a computer and now it's like we're back in the 90's and basic computer use is this esoteric knowledge only few possess.

 

[Coolio55]

I wonder whether this will make my life better or worse. I 100% bet on worse.
Niggercattle can't get angry at us if we don't even exist to them but they'll still legislate against us and they'll stop manufacturing non-niggerphone computers and then that's pretty much it for computing.

 

[Lord Xenu]

That's what's so baffling to me. In my area, every middle school has a compulsory tech class that I know these fuckers went through.

In the early 90's the school board in my area contracted a company to build a computer from scratch. It was a unix-based OS. Every kid in my class knew how to do everything on the command line. Most kids knew how to use BASIC at least somewhat. I think the further you abstract, its inevitable that some segment is never going to look beyond what they need to know to get by. Similar to what null has been talking about in MATI regarding low-level/assembly versus higher languages. It's all part of the competency crisis.

how could we stop it?

Maybe they will have to just force people to learn before they get into those bad habits? Ban calculators in classes? Make Abacus Great Again? Only DIY calculators allowed in school?

 

[Ultrapenguin]

It seems like you're presenting that as a deliberate globalist operation.

The tech oligarchs aren't that knowledgeable I'm sure, they just have a general understanding and have lots of very nerdy patsies who they order around. The Stephen Wozniak to your Steve Jobs, basically. If nobody knows how to use computers anymore and the nerd pool dries up, they're going to be screwed as hard as everyone else.

There's a reason most tech companies maintain public programming databases and documentation. They want people to know how to do this shit.

I don't think it can be prevented though. This isn't isolated to computers. People don't understand how to do anything, they can't repair anything, they can't even cook their own food, there's a real pervasive sense of learned helplessness.

For the moment systemic momentum is such that you're rarely rewarded for putting in the effort to take back control and you'll get along much better by embracing niggercattledom, so naturally people have no impetus to do differently, but eventually things will get hard and that won't be viable anymore.

 

[TenMilesWide]

I've seen a few zoomie-zooms who coast by on "I don't know how to do that" because apparently nobody responded with "okay retard, here's how" early enough and now they've cooked their attention span and memory to the point that even if someone did teach them, they somehow don't retain it.

It's me, I'm the zoomie-zoom.

 

[Judge Dredd]

To repeat (and paraphrase) what I said in the MATI thread, I think the kids will be alright, and the "tech fade" will never really arrive.

A lot of this is based on cliche that "boomers can fix a car, millennials can fix a computer, zoomers can't do either", but there's a lot of boomers that can't so much as change a tire without going to a garage or calling a breakdown service. There are millennials that absolutely can't do the most basic shit with computers and just use their phones. I knew a guy that had a software update break a program for him, and instead of installing an old version, he updated the OS and caused a bunch of tech woes for himself for a while.

I agree that kids should be running rings around the older generations just we did to the boomers, but they don't. Mainly because the plastic rectangles in their pocket means they don't have to. The simple fact of the matter is that some people are technically/mechanically inclined, but most aren't. eg. I don't know any gen-xers that can program BASIC despite that supposedly being common knowledge and taught in schools.


Then there's "lost tech". Most "lost tech" isn't really lost. It's just not profitable to make. I keep seeing YouTube videos in my recommended list saying that CRTs are "lost tech". In this age where you can print-on-demand almost anything, it still surprises me there is no equivariant service for old tech. The comments on the MATI thread tell me it's possible, just prohibitively expensive to do so. I'll take their word for it.


Which brings me to my final point. Even as someone who is considered tech literate, I don't know how to code in assembly. I've had no real reason to. As a solo indie game dev, I have other priorities when it comes to a project. I need things to work. Maybe I'm part of the "tech fade"? But that raises a question of how far do you go with this stuff? Are you tech illiterate if you don't code your own OS? Do I need to use linux console command to do move files around? Where's the line here?

 

[Breadbassket]

Accessibility and ease of use can come at a cost.

 

[Night Crawler]

That's because most people don't need to know how to do any of that stuff. They are regular people. The phone just has to function. I have built 3 PC's myself and installed windows and got them all up and running. But I didn't know I could put a new OS on my phone. I'm not going to because I don't need to. It's just a phone. I used it to call people or watch YouTube videos and that's about it.

 

[Pee Cola]

For some reason OP reminded me of the Raspberry Pi's original raison d'etre, being a cheap computer to get schoolkids into coding in the same way that British home computers of the 1980s did. Measured on this rubric, the Pi has been a moderate success.

Unfortunately this has been overshadowed by (mainly) Gen X dudes and millennial troons using them for emulation and maybe a bit of tinkering in the shed.

That being said, Raspberry Pis can be found everywhere in almost every university and college in the world with an IT or engineering faculty. Ofc nobody ever hears about cohort after cohort of Comp Sci and engineering students go balls deep into the Raspberry Pi and the ARM architecture in general.

Here's a surprisingly based article (A) from The Guardian (!) about this. Something about stopped clocks twice daily.

 

[F13 Key]

The Bastard Operator From Hell shall rise again and gleefully resume ruining the lives of tech retards.

It's backup day today so I'm pissed off. Being the BOFH, however, does have it's advantages. I reassign null to be the tape device - it's so much more economical on my time as I don't have to keep getting up to change tapes every 5 minutes. And it speeds up backups too, so it can't be all bad can it? Of course not.

A user rings.

"Do you know why the system is slow?" they ask.

"It's probably something to do with..." I look up today's excuse "... clock speed."

"Oh" (Not knowing what I'm talking about, they're satisfied) "Do you know when it will be fixed?"

"Fixed? There's 275 users on your machine, and one of them is you. Don't be so selfish - logout now and give someone else a chance!"

"But my research results are due in tommorrow and all I need is one page of Laser Print."

"SURE YOU DO. Well; You just keep telling yourself that buddy!" I hang up.

You'd really think people would learn not to call.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

I wonder whether this will make my life better or worse. I 100% bet on worse.
Niggercattle can't get angry at us if we don't even exist to them but they'll still legislate against us and they'll stop manufacturing non-niggerphone computers and then that's pretty much it for computing.

That's my biggest concern.

Stuff like Linux and modularity exists because a big number of people use it.

If the niggercattle stop buying non-apple (or something like this), non-apple products will no longer be made.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

For some reason OP reminded me of the Raspberry Pi's original raison d'etre, being a cheap computer to get schoolkids into coding in the same way that British home computers of the 1980s did. Measured on this rubric, the Pi has been a moderate success.

Unfortunately this has been overshadowed by (mainly) Gen X dudes and millennial troons using them for emulation and maybe a bit of tinkering in the shed.

That being said, Raspberry Pis can be found everywhere in almost every university and college in the world with an IT or engineering faculty. Ofc nobody ever hears about cohort after cohort of Comp Sci and engineering students go balls deep into the Raspberry Pi and the ARM architecture in general.

Here's a surprisingly based article (A) from The Guardian (!) about this. Something about stopped clocks twice daily.

On the same tangent of the Pi, the Pi Pico has been an excellent little platform for embedded programming and learning c++. Many arduino components that use i2c work out of the box with the Pico and there are libraries from the manufacturers. Nice thing it also allows for micropython if cpp is not preferred. I had created a coolant temp readout and piezzo alarm for my car with the pico but ultimately decided not to use it because of lack of space in the center console. I may install it next iteration of mods though.

 

[Sandy Sun Dunes]

I can't quote directly for whatever reason but:

Are you tech illiterate if you don't code your own OS? Do I need to use linux console command to do move files around? Where's the line here?

I would say tech illiteracy when your inability to use computers is negatively impacting your daily life/work. Just like real illiteracy. In that sense, I can be considered illiterate in Xenforo. As I am trying to create a post, yet I am unable to format it as I wish since I am unable to work past my own inability with the software to even begin to understand why I cannot.

Many people at my workplace I would consider tech illiterate. They lack the background knowledge to even begin to describe issues they have since they have no idea how the computer works/what it is doing. I could equate this to not understanding grammar, so you aren't able to tell why a sentence doesn't make sense to you. Two examples immediately come to my mind, one of a coworker unable to connect to the internet and another who just said their email wasn't working.

In the first case, the fix was simply re-seating their ethernet cable at the wall. However, since they were tech illiterate once they found that they were unable to connect to the network they ended up wasting an hour waiting for me to actually getting around to them before they could get back to work.

In the second case not as much time was wasted waiting. But it still took over 15 minutes to get to their desk and find out that they were unable to describe that their outlook view settings had changed from compact. They were unable to use outlook or even change view settings back because of this single change.

In both cases, time was wasted and work was impacted because of people's inability to tell what their magic electronic boxes were doing. And these weren't one-off events, these are constant issues. This is like not being able to read the warning signs around a boiler, or its manual. Your lack of skill is making a real negative impact on operations. Be that of your workplace, or of your daily life.

Zoomers who only know smartphones and only ever need to use smartphones could be considered literate. As that's the only language they need to read. Just as Boomers who can't use computers but never need to use computers can be considered literate, as once again its not a language the need to understand. But once they actually need to use computers which they often do and they can't, they should be considered illiterate. People should know how to use the tools they need to use, and be able to learn how to use those tools if they don't know already.

TL;DR It matters what actual tech you need to use. If you need to use it but don't know how, especially if you don't know how to learn, you are illiterate.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

I've heard two (2!) accounts of recent engineering grads who couldn't read blueprints.

 

[WelperHelper99]

I've heard two (2!) accounts of recent engineering grads who couldn't read blueprints.

Those fuckers should be flogged, I say that as a welder who knows how to not only read prints, but use CAD software like plasmacam and torchmate. It's not hard, just takes study to understand the symbols. Good grief we are in a tech fade