this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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We are the bridge generation.
We know and saw a world without the internet and we experienced it when it first came to be.
We saw the first mass produced computers and computer devices which broke often, didn't work the way we wanted them to, they weren't fast and they didn't have much memory in any way. We were the first generation to see all this. Our parents were too old and busy to figure it out but we were young enough to be curious about it all. We also kept wanting to have the newest fastest hardware and software so we had no choice but to either buy, beg or steal these things to get them. We learned to swap parts, add parts, remove parts, install an OS, uninstall the OS, run backups, store data and learn it all on our own because there was no easy internet social media community to help you. Software was constantly changing and we had to keep up by either buying expensive titles or we learned about Linux and open source software or we became digital pirates or both.
Now the digital landscape has changed. Younger generations prefer handheld devices so to them everything is solid state ... they never can imagine changing the RAM, HDD, SSD, CPU, GPU or the PSU or even bothering to learn what those things are. Because everything is built in and no one (or very few) people bother with fixing or tinkering with anything. There are fewer people who learn about software and about how or where to find it, install it, configure it and run it. To new generations who only know the digital world through locked devices, there was less incentive to learn or even have access to know how these things worked.
We are the bridge generation. We got to see the world without the internet and the world with one. No one before us got to see what we saw, no one after us will experience what we went through. Our civilization dramatically changed during our lifetime and we got a front row seat.
The comp for an older generation is cars. Cars saw similar growth and adoption in the 50s-80s. And they had similar growing pains, reliability and maintenance issues were common place. So being able to perform maintenance and having an understanding of how they work was far more wide spread than just hobbyist and professionals.
As cars advanced the need to perform field maintenance and ad hoc repairs became less required so future generations (on average) became less knowledgeable and skilled at various car repair (and modification) activities, because cars just work now so there's really no need to worry about learning how to fix minor issues, because they're just not a common problem.
The difference is that you don’t need to be car savvy not to get into an accident. But you do need to be tech savvy not to be at risk of cyberthreats.
Drivers truly don’t need to know how a car works, software is not like that.
Also, you can get by without a car, whereas most people need at least an email address.
Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. Do people think that you need to know about how engines work to drive a car. Or do people don’t think you need to understand file structure to manage excel files?