[rosseloh]

On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place.

"The box at the top where you type in websites you want to go to."

"What are you talking about? I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. I just click my facebook icon and it comes up!"

These people get all sorts of confused when something happens in their browser and the new tab page's recently visited list gets cleared out...

[3np]

> I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff.

This learned helplessness scares me a bit. It's like the willingness to comprehend stops at "tap".

"What are you talking about, 'steering wheel'?! I'm not a greasemonkey, are you talking about the thing I turn to make the car turn?"

Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

[danShumway]

There are a lot of things that contribute to learned helplessness, but in my opinion one underrated cause (for computers) is lack of security.

Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think people underestimate how powerful concepts like the recycling bin are, history, etc... in making people feel a bit more confident about experimenting.

How to translate that stuff to completely computer-illiterate people is a big challenge. But my experience is that when people feel like it's really easy to revert mistakes, they tend to experiment more and they tend to be bolder about trying to solve their own problems. And in the opposite direction, as they learn more that computers are dangerous even in specific areas, that can bleed over into other contexts and make them scared of trying things in other programs and with other devices.

When I see people who aren't willing to try and figure out what a URL bar is or who are scared to move files around or organize a directory or bookmarks, I sometimes wonder what the rest of their computer looks like and if they're channeling anxieties with other programs.

Of course, that's only one aspect of the problem though, it's an issue with multiple causes.

[dionidium]

> Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly.

I think this is correct. Turning the steering wheel never randomly creates a bunch of new problems for the user that they don't understand. It works the same way every time over the course of the user's entire life. I've probably made millions of turns of a steering wheel and all it's ever done is turn the wheels.

The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users.

[3np]

> The "learned helplessness" here is on us, not the users.

I think the big problem here is everyone of the big players “giving up” and trying to obscure and abstract as much as possible rather than make things clear.

Most people understand a phone number +[country] (area) (number).

Basic URL parts like (http/https)://(server)/(address) is not that much more complicated, is it really?

Google and Apple have really set the trend here in making it feel more difficult for users. Things like “unified bar” and hiding the address are just two concrete examples in two decades of “making it easier”.

[Majromax]

> Basic URL parts like (http/https)://(server)/(address) is not that much more complicated, is it really?

Yes. http[s]://www.facebook.com/my/profile?token=goes_here&other_params and http[s]://evil.co/facebook.com/my/profile?token=goes_here&other_params are very different things, but naïvely presented the visual weight is not on the important parts.

[piperswe]

[phone] and [phone] are also very different things, with one being toll-free and the other being pay-per-call, and people seem to be able to understand that

[incongruity]

> Most people understand a phone number +[country] (area) (number)

I’d wager most Americans don’t know what our country code is or what country codes are. Just say’n.

[chmod775]

> Turning the steering wheel never randomly creates a bunch of new problems for the user that they don't understand.

Having seen the kind of situations (untrained) drivers get themselves into while looking at a complete loss of how to proceed, I would like to vehemently disagree.

That's why most western countries have something that passes for "training" as an requirement to be allowed to drive.

No such thing with computers.

With this analogy I suppose an omnibar would be like a self-driving car? Or maybe just an automatic transmission?

[danShumway]

I do think consistency is also an important part of interface design, so I don't think GP is wrong to bring it up as something that modern software often fails at, but the type of consistency they're talking about isn't what I'm talking about with safety to experiment.

For me, a better car analogy would be something like the fact that your radio controls can't mess with your brakes. You don't have to worry that if you change your radio station that your car suddenly won't start. This means that you probably don't feel nearly as worried about messing with those controls in an unfamiliar rental car. The entertainment system is never going to brick your car and make it impossible to drive (well, in most cars it can't).

----

That's still a kind of tortured analogy though, so I'll dispense with the analogies entirely and just talk technology. When I teach people how to use Git, some of the most important early commands I teach them after the basic data model are:

`git reflog`

`git reset <ref>`

`git rebase -i <ref>` (and importantly, I wire this up to something other than Vim)

I have observed anecdotally that people who have a good grasp of `git reflog` are much more likely to experiment with branching strategies, rebases, and merges, and are much more likely to come up with creative ways to solve their problems. Why? Because they're no longer scared of blowing up their entire repo.

I used to leave those more "complicated" commands out of early conversations with people because I felt like I would be dropping too many concepts on them too quickly, but without that kind of confidence that says "I can undo any Git operation, swap my head to any reference, and reorder, merge and customize any set of commits from any branch", people treated Git more like a set of arcane symbols and they were scared to ever experiment or try to extrapolate to solve their problems, even when their problems could be solved using commands they already knew.

Git could be a lot better about this stuff; the lesson I take is that I want to have very clear designations between dangerous and safe operations, and I want my interfaces to teach people where the undo key is first.

----

You can probably think of other Linux tools that demonstrate this issue as well. It took us a long time to get safety locks around `rm -rf /`. In some ways, the point of those safety locks isn't just to help protect the reckless people who do irresponsible things without thinking. It's also to give more confidence to people who are learning basic terminal commands/Bash that they're not going to accidentally mess up a pipe or regex expression and delete their entire hard drive if they try to experiment a little bit.

We can take that even a step further, one of the best things you can do if you're learning Linux is get a good, reliable hard drive clone pushing regularly to a backup. You'll be in a better position to learn how the low-level system works if you know in the back of your head that you can always just blow the entire thing a way and rewind back a few days whenever you want.

[xyzelement]

> This learned helplessness scares me a bit... Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

As a matter of personal philosophy, I agree - but on the level of "empathy for users" this misses the mark pretty widely.

The 'steering wheel' analogy is not applicable (but funny!) because unlike computers, everyone who drives has been licensed so there's a baseline level of education that isn't there for computing. Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. But likely the people you are making fun of here did not grow up with computing. They are older folks to whom the computer was presented as a way to solve some specific problem (eg: a series of clicks so I can zoom with the grandkids) rather than a general platform that you perceive it as.

You can still say "well, there's a computer now in your life so you should learn about that" and again personally I agree, but - you gotta admit there are things in your life that you could go deeper on but you simply aren't comfortable or interested in doing so. For example, do you know the anatomy of every muscle in your body? Are you perfectly comfortable with public speaking? Are you able to articulate the nuances of policy difference between two local politicians running for office in your area? These are examples of things that you come in contact with on daily basis, and (if you are like most people) you probably did not go as deep in on as you could (and arguably should). Even if you happen to be good at these specific things you can get the larger point that people don't and can't go "deep" on everything they encounter. It may seem weird to you that to someone that thing is their computer, but those people may know things that you don't, also.

[Majromax]

> Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is.

For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant.

[xyzelement]

> For that matter, the steering wheel the 20 year old is using today is very similar to the steering wheel the 70 year old used 50 years ago. Nothing in computing has been so constant.

That's exactly right, the car industry has done a remarkable job maintaining interface compatibility for over a century despite massive implementation changes.

Someone who knew how to "hit the brakes" on a 1908 Model-T will be able to do it in my 2021 Toyota. Despite the fact that my car has regenerative breaking (and ABS and other things) which means that how the pedal does its thing is totally different.

Even the new additions over the basic interface feel pretty optional. EG, my car has radar cruise control but someone can drive the car for 10 years and not notice that button. If you want to drive my car the same way you drove the Model-T, you pretty much can.

[jlawson]

Not to be pedantic, but the Model T has a very different control system than modern cars.

There are three pedals and a throttle pusher on the wheel. The brake is on the right, the middle pedal is reverse. To accelerate, you work a combination of left pedal to select gear, handbrake/clutch, and a pusher for throttle on the steering wheel.

You would need retraining to go from this to a modern car or vice versa.

[xyzelement]

> Not to be pedantic, but the Model T

You got me! I actually knew this but wanted to make my point. Technically my post is correct because I focused on the operation of the brake pedal specifically but it definitely doesn't stand to this level of scrutiny :)

[pkulak]

It feels to me like they're scared to try, because they still might not get it, and then what does that say about them? But dammit, if my relatives just tried, even a little bit, things would be so much better.

[sseagull]

They are also afraid of breaking things, which isn't entirely unreasonable.

I think we've all had relatives do something and then be unable to "get it back". Task bars deleted, icons deleted, etc.

So they don't try to venture too far out because past experiences make everything seem fragile.

[conductr]

It's true. What I don't get is the reluctance to seek out learning opportunities. They won't watch a video, attend a class, read a book, none of that. It's like picking up a hobby if you're computer illiterate. They spend all the money on the device and expect what exactly? Yet if they bought a DSLR they would know it's a hobby and they need to learn a thing or two. They'd invest in learning like people do with any hobby.

[throwaway472927]

It's a cliché at this point but they don't want a hobby, they just don't want to be an outcast from society (especially in the last year and a half)

[conductr]

I guess hobby isn’t the best word. I suppose it could be a chore too. I have to learn all kinds of stuff to DIY pool maintenance. Either way, it’s an endeavor.

[asdff]

It's really because most adults don't have time to tinker like we did, being children and adolescents with computers. When I grew up in the windows xp era, I became the family tech support, and not because I was smart or anything. Just because I had time on my hands, being a child with little responsibilities compared to my parents, to go through the control panel and click every single button and option just to see what it did, so when something did go wrong I had some idea to guess where the fix was to be found. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't mess things up more often. Fast forward to today, and there is a lot of common software that I struggle with like my parents did 20 years ago because I don't have the time to fiddle like I did 20 years ago. I can't do much of anything on windows anymore, after years of using macos and unix, that knowledge has left my brain and I don't have the time to get it all back.

[HelixEndeavor]

As self-driving cars come closer to reality, I fear your hypothetical will eventually become a real conversation someone will have to unironically have.

[eru]

Well, that's how progress looks like.

Computers also used to be only for those willing to geek out and geniuses. Now they are used without thinking too much about them.

[lnx01]

I have no idea how to shoe a horse.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Did anyone complain when people stopped being able to use rotary phones?

[delecti]

But if someone told you that a horse needed to be shod before riding, you'd at least know what the sentence meant.

[jeffjeff2]

I'm pretty sure a lot of people wouldn't understand the word "shod". It's not really a word in common usage.

I just hope nobody would mishear it as "shot". That could be unpleasant.

[cblconfederate]

Tech has gone to great lengths to convince people to be illiterate. "There's an app for that" was the worse form of handicap and users were heavily incentivized to seek premade solutions rather than trying to solve their own problems

[JohnWhigham]

People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.

[jabroni_salad]

I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going?

Heck, there have recently been articles about STEM students that do not know how to work with a basic file directory.

https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

[windowsrookie]

I've actually been hearing and interesting theory that the younger generation is becoming even more computer illiterate than the generation before them.

The younger generation was raised on iPads and iPhones where everything is easy to use and "just works". They've never had to do anything beyond tap the icon for the App they want.

Edit: Was going to talk about that same article about File directories.

[JohnWhigham]

where everything is easy to use and "just works"

And that's unironically a good thing. To poorly paraphrase Alan Kay, you know a certain piece of technology works when it gets out of the way and becomes second nature.

However we're now encountering one of those pesky questions that we never hear about in sci-fi because it's hard to solve and it's not fun for authors to write about: are we setting up future generations for failure by making technology too easy? And it's most likely "yes". I wonder out loud: are children not getting courses on how to use a desktop computer anymore like they used to in the 90s/2000s? It seems like it. Even if they never encounter having to browse a file system again until they graduate, the fact that it's at least introduced to them while their brains are still terrific sponges would be beneficial.

I've never had to do long division after ~6th grade, but given a few minutes of recall, I can get right back into it because of the rote learning I had.

[Jerrrry]

This is true, the ease of use and proliferation of simplified and straightforward user interface conventions has had the adverse effect of making everyone born after 1998 practically unable to use a computer outside of the 4 major websites and apps.

[lowlevel]

I have witnessed this with younger people joining the company I work at. Most of them don't seem to have much of an idea how a computer works, why putting the internet between them and their deadlines might be bad or just can't figure out where their files are. I have to do a lot of hand holding for the first few months anyway.

[handrous]

> Heck, there have recently been articles about STEM students that do not know how to work with a basic file directory.

File directories, and the filesystem generally, confuse the hell out of the vast majority of computer users. We nerds forget this stuff because at age 12 we really gave a shit about it and took the time to internalize what it all means, and it's been second nature ever since, but most people haven't had the "a-ha" moment we did about it, so far back we've almost forgotten we needed an "a-ha" moment for something so "simple and obvious".

We get that this over here and that over there "are" the same thing, but that neither "is" the thing it's representing, which may also be represented entirely differently over in this other place. When we search in a file explorer window and it "becomes" something totally different, we get what's happened and that nothing's "gone anywhere". Normal people don't.

[Sophira]

I feel like a big part of the problem is that back when computers were newly introduced to the world at large, there were actually good tutorials on how to use them.

Consider the Windows 3.1 interactive mouse tutorial/Windows tutorial. [0] This was designed for an age where both mice and Windows were relatively new and people didn't know how to use them, and it's one of the better designed tutorials out there, I think, allowing the user to interact with the tutorial and instantly see the results of their actions.

However, nowadays if you try to look up a tutorial on how to use a mouse, you're probably not going to find very much. The best I could find was hosted at gcfglobal.org [1], and explained the concepts and how to do things with a mouse, and has relevant interactive parts, but requires knowledge of how to scroll the page (which it does tell you how to do at the top, but there's only so much room there). There was also a set of pages called hosted at pbclibrary.org [2] which goes over the mouse basics and doesn't require scrolling before the concept is introduced, but it's somewhat outdated.

But those two were about it. The rest were mostly non-interactive videos. And in all these cases, discovery is a major problem - most of the time, the only way you're going to be able to get to those in the first place is through someone who already knows how to use a mouse.

We're all assuming that schools are teaching these basics. But what if they're not?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmFzIllvHzU

[1] https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/mousetutorial/mouse-tutorial/1/

[2] http://www.pbclibrary.org/mousing/

[SketchySeaBeast]

And it's limited to the systems we're exposed to. I grew up with DOS and then windows so I know file structure there no problem, but I'm still not comfortable with how Linux organizes things, and I haven't the faintest clue about Mac.

[jkfdrsak]

I used a friend's mac once and I (a competent windows/linux user) could not find the top most file directory. Scary times.

[hateful]

I think that the fact newer versions of popular OSes (Windows, Android) try hard and harder to hide the filesystem from the users - probably because "they won't understand". But in the long run, hiding it makes the problem even worse.

[wffurr]

The transition to mobile computing devalued typing and greatly increased the attraction of icon grids.

There was some series of essays recently that I read (linked from HN maybe) that went into some details about the economic differences between search-based desktop computing and "juicy springboard of icons" mobile computing.

[burnished]

It isn't surprising, really. Computers are wonderful and complicated devices but a lot of knowledge about them is handed down more as an oral history, and it is dense and has had over fifty years of tumultuous growth.

Have you ever thought about even just the jargon you need to know to be fluent today? Not even just the important computer systems terms, but the names of tools, all the acronyms, the context of why things are the way they are.. its huge, and its endless. The stuff we think about as basic really never was, and now it gets hidden behind a slick user interface, and you might reasonably get to your third year in a CS program before getting a handle on how everything sort of fits together.

[lowlevel]

I see this all the time, with people not understanding where files are or that there is some kind of hierarchical filesystem lurking behind the covers. Thanks for the link.

[thrashh]

Pretty much everyone is like this somewhere though. Not many people eagerly learn in every domain.

[ronenlh]

I had a computer illiterate boss once. He said “please understand it, I’m disabled”

[nend]

Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well.

It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what google is, etc.

They've been using the internet since I was a kid in the 90's.

I'm sure most of us have examples of this in our lives, being the de-facto "computer person" in the family. It is what it is at this point. For whatever reason, if you didn't grow up with computers, it's incredibly difficult to understand them as an adult. Which still applies to huge swaths of the worlds population.

[jeffasinger]

Interestingly, I think we're seeing less people grow up with general purpose computers, and instead just have an iPad or an android tablet, or a chromebook.

I wonder what things will look in 20 years.

[Drew_]

Probably more and more like what this The Verge report finds on how students don't really know what files and folders are:

https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

As things get more and more offloaded to the cloud, local computing is something only developers, engineers, and geeks will properly understand.

[professoretc]

Something like Asimov's "Profession" story, I imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

[entropicdrifter]

At least chromebooks have the capacity to become general purpose computers by installing Linux. But yeah, anyone who doesn't grow up with a Raspberry Pi or the like is gonna have a hard time.

[xattt]

I wonder if there’s any stories of anyone suddenly becoming technoliterate after feigning ignorance after a number of years.

[Avicebron]

Anecdotally, my grandfather ~78, works very hard to understand how to navigate and use the computer they have, not sure to the extant you would call "technoliterate", but certainly he puts in the effort to learn how to navigate and use the device without asking for much help.

[benhurmarcel]

At some point those people would be happier with an iPad or Chromebook really, where they wouldn’t need to think about what’s local or not.

[baktubi]

The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page.

Ergo it’s actually bad UX design. Thinking desktop UX if that was an “Amazon app” there would be ONE singular search bar.

To make matters worse, Windows has a search bar in start (usually at the bottom); browser has a search bar (at the top); some websites have their own search bar; file explorer has its own search bar.

You get the point: bad UX design enforced by assumptions made at each layer of the OS/browser/website. Many out of the control of users and developers alike. Nonetheless, it’s overcrowding the UX with redundancy.

Historically speaking, users had an ability to “find stuff” on their system but it was never by an implicit “search bar”; users had to explicitly do something like: file -> find prior to entering search query.

The web browser was the one with the search bar (having one job: entering URLs not search terms) and when websites had a search feature it was typically placed in the middle of site or somewhere else (typically reserved for search terms).

Modern UX can be ridiculous in ways devs put too much emphasis on these “automatic” components. Like the annoying page header that suddenly scrolls with content and takes up 1/3 of the page. Ack! Don’t even get me started.

[denton-scratch]

> The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page.

I assume this is deliberate. Amazon doesn't want you clicking on URLs that don't point to Amazon. A search bar that doesn't do an internet search, but looks like a browser search bar, would seem to fit the bill.

I believe Amazon will fade away, once that bald guy reaches the orbit of Saturn. It's basically just an online shop with low prices - I can't see any USP.

Incidentally, the combined URL-and-search bar (is that still called the "awesomebar"? It's not awesome) in my version of Firefox (93.0, running on Windows 10) doesn't actually let me search, unless I select a search engine. If I search for "red shoes", it tries to take me to "redshoes.com". If I search for "red doctor martens", it says it can't find a site with that name. I have to choose a search engine, even if I only have one search engine configured. I suppose I must have broken something.

[CRConrad]

Apparently you just set your preferences to not search from the URL bar.

[david422]

This is my mom. Trying to walk her through steps on the phone like logins and lost passwords is a nightmare.

I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

[soylentcola]

At the same time, oil changes are more of a hassle that you only need to deal with every year or two. You can get away with not bothering to sort it out (and even if you know how, it might be worth the extra cost to just pay someone to do it faster on those rare occasions).

But if you use a computer to access resources and services on the web, you probably do so much more frequently than you change your oil. I'd liken it more to knowing how the turn signals, headlight controls, and wipers work on a car.

You don't need to know how to repair those items or how exactly they operate. But since that familiarity is something inherent to the operation of a car, you should at least know the basics of usage if you plan to do much driving.

[rspeele]

> (and even if you know how, it might be worth the extra cost to just pay someone to do it faster on those rare occasions)

Going off on a tangent:

I thought that this would be the case when I switched to changing my own oil -- if I was feeling lazy, I could always have the shop do it. But I found out right away that when the local quick-change place does it, they tighten the drain plug and oil filter to roughly a zillion ft-lbs. So if I pay them to do it, I am making the job way more of a pain in the butt for myself next time I want to do it, because I'll spend half an hour just struggling to remove those.

[soylentcola]

I just stopped bothering when it got harder to access the filter/drain and I moved to the city where I park on the street. I'm much less interested in farting around under the car, getting messy, and spending a half hour or more to drain the oil, replace the filter, and refill.

At some point I just decided it was worth the extra cost to be in and out quickly. And honestly, when you add up the cost of replacement filter and oil, the premium isn't terrible when you add in time saved. I like knowing how to do it, but it's been several years since I bothered.

[frosted-flakes]

Top-side filters and oil extraction pumps make oil changes almost effortless. The biggest problem for me is disposing of the oil. There are several vehicles in my family, and the old oil just collects in jugs by the garage door. The nearest hazardous waste centre at the landfill will only accept two jugs at a time, and they won't take 5 gallon buckets at all. They will not accept 10 jugs (<2 years' worth), let alone 30. It's like they want me to pour it down the drain or something!

[pitaj]

Often parts stored like AutoZone, O'Reilly's etc accept waste oil.

[WarOnPrivacy]

You aren't wrong. We often had to screwdriver the filters loose.

We moved to a bigger property, have 5 cars. It's easier now to change 2 or 3 at a time.

[somedude895]

Same with my mum. It's really insightful to try to see things through her eyes. For example not understanding context like which app she's currently in blew my mind at first, but totally makes sense.

[TeMPOraL]

> I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

Really?

I don't believe there exists a task I theoretically could perform if I knew the steps, that I would be unable to do if those steps were being explained to me by an expert. Even if it was gardening or cooking (two areas I have extremely little interest in). In my mind, this very concept doesn't parse.

On the other hand, I do know people like this, and I hate helping others with computers over the phone.

I believe this has nothing to do with one's intelligence or familiarity. More like some kind of general intellectual or emotional "closedness" - an instinctive refusal to do things out of one's comfort zone, even if one is guided step-by-step, and refusing to take those steps causes a huge loss. I have no idea how this comes about, as it's totally alien to me, except that I see it in most people.

[cameronh90]

There are some tasks that require finesse, like hovering a helicopter, riding a bicycle or even balancing a clutch.

Most people can't do those initially no matter how much an expert explains it - until they build up the muscle memory. Cooking and gardening are like that but to a much lesser extent.

Of course typing into a URL bar is nothing like that.

[TeMPOraL]

Yup, I've explicitly excluded such tasks from consideration (perhaps not clearly enough). My claim was only about tasks that don't require tacit knowledge or experience in addition to detailed enough step-by-step instructions.

With references to gardening, I meant stuff like e.g. how to correctly replant a flower. I have no first clue how to do it, but I'm confident I could do it successfully if I had a gardener guiding me through the process step by step.

[asdff]

at least today you can share your screen on zoom and demo what you are talking about

[motoboi]

I painstakingly developed a personal script for how to teach people how to split a screen between two chrome tabs.

This is amazingly and surprisingly difficult thing to explain over the phone to “normal” (born before computers were prevalent) people.

Basically I got it divided in two groups: those who have used internet for the first time after 18 years old (hardest group. Have to explain in terms of geometrical figures, like lines and rectangles on top of the screen, where in this rectangle is a good place to click and how to drag, and what a successful drag looks like), and the others (those I can explain how to “drag a tab”, because they already know what a tab is).

The address bar is more easy, I refer to it as the place where you type the site where you want to go (but very often people never type addresses, they open google and start from there, always).

This got me into thinking about getting old, more than once. How can I prevent this to myself (being totally confused and out of touch with current technology when I get older).

[wrs]

I think I’m still doing pretty well with knowing about and even understanding new technology. The thing is, I have a harder time finding it worthwhile. Like social media that seems to have a 5 year cycle just because the younger kids don’t want to be seen using what the older kids use. Do we really need a new IM system and different way of posting short videos to friends every 5 years? So much “technology” change is now just fashion.

[motoboi]

You know you are old when you start think about younger people ways and solutions as frivolous.

[CRConrad]

You know the ancient Greeks were right about youth being dumb when you start to think about younger people's ways and solutions as frivolous.

There, FTFY. Now geroffmylawn.

[kiryin]

I think it's sad whenever I see people that are very proud of just how tech illiterate they are and just how little they understand computers. It's like teenagers who brag about how badly they scored on on their exam. In many aspects it's the same exact situation, change for the better wouldn't require much work, and this sort of behaviour only discourages others from even trying.