[bsmitty5000]

Yes this was my thought when he implied not knowing the proxy settings, or even that you must connect to a proxy, to get internet was a sign that someone “doesn’t know computers”.

It’s like a mechanic making a blog post complaining that people don’t know how cars work because they can’t change their oil or brake pads and somehow that’s a bad thing.

[yumraj]

Strongly Disagree.

The examples he’s given are more like a driver not knowing how to turn the wiper on, changing the speed of the wipers depending on the amount of rain and so on.

Changing oil or brake pad would be like upgrading RAM in a machine which has easy slots for upgrading RAM (such as in many Windows laptops).

Edit: I’ve had a neighbor tell me that he doesn’t know how to change wipers in a car. So that would be another example.

[navjack27]

Exactly. There are simply people who throw up their hands and say "I don't know." To things. No want or drive to explore further. Maybe they think it's beneath them. Maybe it's embarrassing to them to admit they don't know in any way that makes them appear vulnerable (the example where the kid kept clicking away the dialogue box that simply said there wasn't Ethernet plugged in).

There will always be these people. So it's up to designers of systems to cater to them because they will always be the norm.

But!

As a extremely fluid thinker and great troubleshooter I'll gladly take a more "dumbed down" OS with things hidden away that I can still access as long as the designers are making the changes because it makes computing easier for the entry level user. They really shouldn't have to know most of the things I do. Things shouldn't be released in a state where I need to draw upon arcane knowledge from the early 2000s or even the DOS era. People have lives and computers for some of them aren't their entire life... But computers are mine and that's ok.