[huimang]

"When I watch the users try the Internet, it slowly becomes clear to me that the Net represents the ultimate dumbing-down of the computer."

I think this is an asinine quote, to be honest. It comes across as elitist: "these idiots don't use computers how they should be using them, according to -me-".

The internet, the ability to communicate and access data instantly across the globe, has been one of humanity's greatest achievements to date. But because some people look at junk or don't use it efficiently, it's "the ultimate dumbing-down of the computer"? Really? People like this complain about "the unwashed masses", but fail to recognize that the internet would not nearly have been as useful if it were limited to an insular group of similar people until now.

[manuhortet]

I don't think she criticizes users here, but content. I see how your way of understanding it is valid without more context.

[Karrot_Kream]

This line of criticism has always had elitism woven into it. The real internet was the internet of those that build their own modems/wrote their own modem code/added specific NNTP headers to their news messages/had their own static IPv4 IP/understood what I understand. Mix that with nostalgia over a time when "have you tried restarting it" was the most common piece of advice and you get this line of critique.

It's an alluring tale and appeals to the technologist in all of us old enough to feel nostalgic about a lost time, especially as the internet and then the web has become used by a broader swath of the population. I have a successful uncle who tells us stories about how calculators and CAD dumbed down engineering and only his ilk of paper calculations and slide rule approximation can truly engineer.

[wizofaus]

> nostalgia over a time when "have you tried restarting it" was the most common piece of advice

I think I missed the memo... that's surely still the single most common go-to when something stops working mysteriously? Or are you suggesting it's no longer "advice" because everyone already knows that by now?

[quickthrower2]

I think restarts of home computers are rarely needed even in Windows. On the server we have gone down the cattle not pets route so that restarting is abstracted away. (When was the bare metal restarted on that CDN/VM/ etc.)

[wizofaus]

Had to do it just yesterday when Bluetooth just stopped working, and yes I tried everything else I could think of first. And I do software restarts (iisreset etc) all the time. Mind you I also tried restarting my phone(s) a couple of times recently when it started exhibiting strange behaviour. In neither case did it work - one phone I gave up on entirely (no internet when on cellular data, but it had other issues and had been planning to retire it). The other I had to dig around to find some obscure option ("reading mode") that had been activated somehow.

[quickthrower2]

Bluetooth / general audio may be the annoying exception.

It makes me want to schedule a nightly kill of slack.exe lest it become too attached to it’s worldview of my audio devices.