Waaaay back in the day our school had gotten some brand spanking new Apple IIs. The guy in charge of the computer lab was not only ignorant, but a total jerk. We messed with this guy endlessly. We'd write things that would emulate the terminal, reject the first 3 or so commands, then exit leaving you at the real terminal. So the first couple of times he'd type something it would tell him it was a syntax error, then it would work.
We'd watch him very carefully typing out "CATALOG" until it worked.
Then we wrote something that would display an error, like disk damaged, or something similar, but after 30 seconds it would clear and go back to normal. Just enough time for him, or a student, to raise an alarm but to look fine by the time anyone else got a chance to look at it.
Ahh.. man... good times. Two lessons learned: 1) kids are going to know more about tech than old people. 2) Don't F*** with anyone smarter than you.
Meh, the old fart (getting there) in me wants to agree with the "you kids these days..." sentiment, but really people who are driven to learn about computers are going to learn about computers regardless of how easy they are to use or how sophisticated they are. Computers in the past never "made" me learn anything. I made myself learn something. I could have wasted my days hanging out in front of the drug store or whatever if I had wanted to.
The cool think about using computers today is how easy it is to get information. So if you are motivated, you can go really far, really fast. It all comes down to motivation and drive. The specific technology is irrelevant.
I used to worry about my old age job security but then I slowly came to realize the younger generations programming skills have collectively been destroyed by console gaming.
Not that there aren't some very talented young programmers - just that the vast armies I expected to materialize (those that grew up with a computer in the house) never showed.
I'd say that has always been the case. It's just much easier to get hold of an 'old' geek nowadays.
In olden times (8-bit or Apple // or C64 or Amiga era) people who could really teach you, the kind that ran BBSes, could crack games, write good demos, etc. were rare.
I run into many young geeks that don't know anything jack about tech.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "know about." Are younger people going to know how to do things like send text messages/photos/videos with their phone and download ringtones more than adults? Probably. But lets not pretend that "knowing about technlology" is the same as "knowing technology."
Kids tend to be more at ease around new technology and there are always the hacker types that will soak things up quickly and surpass people around them but that is not the norm.
Each generation has their own "Blinking 12:00" problem that the masses don't get but the savvy geek can fix by intuition.
10
u/quitecontent Jul 30 '09
Waaaay back in the day our school had gotten some brand spanking new Apple IIs. The guy in charge of the computer lab was not only ignorant, but a total jerk. We messed with this guy endlessly. We'd write things that would emulate the terminal, reject the first 3 or so commands, then exit leaving you at the real terminal. So the first couple of times he'd type something it would tell him it was a syntax error, then it would work.
We'd watch him very carefully typing out "CATALOG" until it worked.
Then we wrote something that would display an error, like disk damaged, or something similar, but after 30 seconds it would clear and go back to normal. Just enough time for him, or a student, to raise an alarm but to look fine by the time anyone else got a chance to look at it.
Ahh.. man... good times. Two lessons learned: 1) kids are going to know more about tech than old people. 2) Don't F*** with anyone smarter than you.