[echelon]

So you're saying that you think Millennials are peak computer users? And Gen Z users are worse?

I wonder if this has anything to do with how platforms became locked down at the generational boundary.

Millennials grew up on 90's and 00's internet, where you could download and install anything. It was the most open tech has ever been. Run your own chat software, embed HTML in your MySpace profile, create a forum, etc. Apply patches and cracks to pirated software. Re-skin Winamp. All of it was par for the course for your typical Millennial teenager.

Gen Z has curated experiences in the form of walled silos. Less exposure to the underlying tech.

Granted, some subset will always be attracted to hobbyist pursuit. Game development, app development, Minecraft mods, etc. But it's not as much a part of the day to day experience.

[phobosanomaly]

1,000% This.

The internet during that era cultivated some incredible heuristics for navigating the internet.

During the era (at 14/15) I:

- Stuck behind a firewall, I downloaded gigabytes of porn from unsecured FTP servers by Google dorking

- Played hours of bootleg Quake3 and SOFII on my old-faithful cracked Windows XP (still remember the key to this day)

- Reinstalled XP about 1,000x everytime I downloaded something I shouldn't have

- Found hundreds of weird documentaries on The Pirate Bay and Smoking in the Rain from all over the planet

- Spent countless hours talking with a bunch of weirdos on IRC

- Had an HTML-only website called 'Science Experimenter'

- Dual-booted FreeBSD

- Played around on my SDF Unix shell

- Played Doom and Wolf3D downloaded from Vetusware on Dos 7.1/Win 3.1

- Newsgroups. Oh man, remember bootlegging movies from newsgroups.

That early internet was just incredible. From wandering through Fravia's Searchlores, to Geocities (where I first discovered the term 'Computer Engineering'), to the early MP3s you could find of HOPE and Defcon talks), to Andre Lamothe's XGameStation kit, to the Homebuilt CPUs Webring (I fell in love with Magic-1), to the OsDev wiki DexOS, MenuetOS, etc.

Today's internet is so convenient. It's like you said, it's 'curated.' It's not a jungle of lost Mayan civilization you can Indiana Jones through.

Edit: I realize today's internet is even more rich than the one I describe, but the nostalgia is just too strong. I prefer to live in my simple world.

[tayo42]

Is it only just walled off? I think its also way more complex then it was 10 years ago. there's a big barrier to entry to just get started. even 20 years ago anyone could put stuff on the web. angelfire was filled with unpolished websites, and beginner site could keep up with the average. even big site were ugly and simple,js wasn't pervasive like it is now, yahoo was not pretty. or even dual booting linux is hard on a laptop with stuff being locked down in the boot process. hacking on stuff seems harder then ever if your starting from nothing

[Reelin]

> anyone could put stuff on the web. angelfire was filled with unpolished websites

Check out (https://neocities.org/).

> dual booting linux is hard on a laptop with stuff being locked down in the boot process

All the major distros should work out of the box with secure boot at this point. UEFI USB sticks are incredibly easy to create since you don't have to worry about magic MBR stuff anymore. (The bootloader can just go in a specific folder and have a specific name.) For that matter, turning secure boot off completely is typically a simple toggle in the firmware. Even the drivers "just work" out of the box these days for all the mainstream laptops I've tried.

> hacking on stuff seems harder then ever if your starting from nothing

This is true if all you have is a locked down mobile device. Otherwise there's really no excuse - a Raspberry Pi can be had for $35.

[tayo42]

Linux is missing drivers for how my laptop is set up. Something with raid or ahci, it's been a while since I messed with it. For the rpi you really need to go out of your way to hack on it. But that's different then being bored and deciding to break something you have. That's not the only way to hack something. Like game modding, seems more difficult.

[aembleton]

How is it any harder to dual boot Linux now than on a desktop in the 00s?

Didn't seem any harder with Manjaro Linux and Windows 10 to me.

[tayo42]

My post said laptops. There's some kind of driver missing for raid I think in Linux. I forgot the exact details.

[anthropodie]

Why are some people so obsessed with generations (that they even gave name)? Here in India we don't talk like that at all and have no name for generations.

[coliveira]

This is a common American pastime. The funniest thing is that they give "personalities" to these supposed generations. In fact these features have nothing to do with the generation, but with the economic conditions of the time. For example, Americans use to say that Gen Xers don't "like" to own houses, when the reality is that due to the Great Recession they didn't have the same opportunity to own property as their parents.

[bryanrasmussen]

I think the U.S last century had maybe decades (maybe a bit longer or a bit less than a decade in some cases) that changed what had gone before drastically, as such the feeling came about that every generation was different than the one before and should be categorized.

So, last century U.S, the roaring twenties, the great depression, WW2, then I think the 50s were probably seen as something of a return to normalcy after the war but in some ways quite different because now the U.S was really in charge, followed by the 60s, I don't think the 70s was that big a divergence but lots of big thinkers seem to think it was because of the end of Vietnam, the end of Nixon.

I think the last big decade shift were things were significantly different (last century) was the 80s which began the dismantling under Reagan of the New Deal which kept up in the 90s - however by this time the idea that generational shifts were important had taken hold and somewhat trivial things like changes in musical tastes were taken as examples of such a shift.

Then of course there has been a technological change in this century by widespread use of computers and the internet.

[bryanrasmussen]

no longer editable: when I say "Then of course there has been a technological change in this century by widespread use of computers and the internet." I meant that would be seen as another generational shift where the new generation was different than the preceding.

[searchableguy]

We don't have explicit names but we talk about them by prefixing with father, grandfather, young, current etc.

Example: My father's generation lived in poverty and had to struggle to get by while the current generation have it easy.

[sjy]

It had never occurred to me that other cultures might be less familiar with the concept of social generations. People find them interesting for the same reason as history and sociology generally – they are useful tools for understanding how the world works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_generations

[EVdotIO]

It comes from advertising and marketing. It's sorta morphed into a self-fulfilling catch-all identity, as it's much easier cognitively to apply a board generalizing categories to large groups of people.

[petre]

You've got castes in India, right?

[umanwizard]

India does in fact have a caste system, but what does that have to do with this conversation?

[Alterlife]

Is there really such a difference? Older people tend find excuses to accuse younger people of being inferior. We're older people now. Perhaps we should be careful not to fall into that trap.

[vmception]

There is an opportunity for education that just shouldn't be assumed.

“Hey you are good with electronic devices that I had the same 20 years to understand as you, fix this other unrelated thing”

Means something very different when the users don't understand anything about the device they are using.

It isn’t about inferiority it is about understanding the baseline technical literacy and what areas should still be taught, just like they were taught to prior generations, instead of assuming there is a linear and continued proliferation of technical literacy. Its just a patch work.

[dundercoder]

Winamp really did whip the llamas ass.

[everyone]

I still use it.. Havent found a better music player yet.

[searchableguy]

Do you have actual data to back that up?

[scarface74]

It never was outside of geek bubbles....

[echelon]

My "non-geek" friends knew how to torrent, rip mp3s, convert file formats, and patch cracked software.

There were plenty of "non-geek" people tricking out their MySpace profile.

[scarface74]

And in the 80s, “true geeks” would type assembly language programs into their computers from magazines. In the early 90s we would use Gopher servers to get information and post to Usenet. Time marches on.

I don’t miss ripping MP3’s, converting file formats and what the heck is “patching cracked software”? I think I qualify as a true geek, and I’ve never heard of that.

[echelon]

> patching cracked software

Downloading commercial software, then downloading a tool to alter the binary to remove the license verification check. Alternatively, they would patch the signature check to use some known algorithm, and then you'd generate a key locally that worked.

Skater kids, emo/goth kids, preppy kids. Everybody was doing this to get Photoshop or games or whatever. This wasn't limited to computer nerds.

Kids in the 00s had to learn some skills and read warez instructional text files.

[scarface74]

By 92, I was already in college into console games. I wouldn’t even have bothered by 1996 and just pay for stuff. I also stopped downloading music from places like Kazaa when iTunes came out.

In the 80s, I don’t know where my friends got their cache of cracked software for the Apple //.