Chromebooks fucked a generation of kids? Kids got cheap, hard to break, up to date, easy to replace laptops which ran a full desktop and even offered a Linux and android subsystem. Certainly not perfect but better than alternatives like the iPad or Windows S.
I agree, and I think it takes almost MAGA level self-absorption to contrive this interpretation of events. What actually happened was somebldy wanted to sell products and came up with products people wanted. And that’s not an all-encompassing endorsement of Google and everything Google has ever done because I’m “on Google’s side”, it’s a criticism of OP’s imagination.
I think it’s a bit harsh to lay all the blame on google, considering the iPad exists.
Same shit different bucket.
It is more basic than that:
“It just works” is terrible for developing computer skills.
It is damned convenient for the most part, but it removes the opportunity to have an issue and solve it, developing your troubleshooting skills.
Then we come to the lack of verbosity of modern operating systems and programs.
“Oops, there is an issue, please wait while we solve it…” is an absolutely terrible error message.
“Error 0x001147283b - Fatal error” is a far better error message.
I agree with the the sentiment of your comment, but I think both error codes aren’t great.
I want error logs or descriptions, not a cryptic code that the Company selling the OS can choose not to document publicly.
I can google one of these on another device and figure out what it means and at least attempt to fix it. “Something went wrong :(” helps fucking no one
Have you ever worked in an environment powered by Windows-based computers, and Microsoft software? Have you ever spoken with any user in such an environment about their experience with errors like the ones you described, and how easy or difficult it was to solve them?
I am not doing the whole passive aggressive argument where you refuse to say what your issue is and hold a clear conversation so you can try and seem like the winner and claim that I am an idiot because you have misunderstood my comment.
But to answer the specific questions posted:
Have you ever worked in an environment powered by Windows-based computers, and Microsoft software?
Yes, it has been my job for fifteen years.
Have you ever spoken with any user in such an environment about their experience with errors like the ones you described, and how easy or difficult it was to solve them?
Not only do I speak with them several times a workday, I am usually the one solving said problems meaning I get to experience it all.
My point stands, I don’t even see yours.
Fair enough, and I appreciate the clarification. That actually reinforces my point. You and I both work with people who use Windows daily and encounter these verbose errors—but they almost never understand them. They don’t use these messages to develop troubleshooting skills—they just get stuck and frustrated.
So while I get the appeal of a detailed error message in theory, in practice, it doesn’t help most users learn anything. If anything, it just creates more dependency on people like us to fix things for them.
Thank you for accepting my initial rant, I am all for a proper discussion.
I get what you mean, and while true that most people won’t get better at troubleshooting because of a verbose error message, even back in the Windows 95/98 days where you had verbose error messages, most people would still not be capable of understanding them, myself included at that time.
But my point is that the small minority of people who would start troubleshooting the stuff, myself included these days, would be vastly more helped by a verbose error message than a generic “Whops! Something went wrong, please wait!”
Modern software are not even giving people the same initial chances to troubleshoot the issue as older software did.
I’d argue the iPad is the bigger offender personally. They’re blaming Chromebooks because that’s often what schools provided, but the same exact timing existed before with iMacs in classrooms all through the 90s and early 00s for millennials despite Windows being by far the more common real world OS they would need to know in the workplace.
But when it comes to portable devices the iPhone and iPad are king, that’s what young people want and often what they’re given. And those operate nearly exactly the same as a Chromebook. Toss everything into a cloud bucket, no user-facing folder structures to learn, everything locked down with limited access and customization. A take it or leave it approach to user interaction.
I have user-facing folder structures on every iOS device I own. What exactly is the extent of your personal experience using iOS?
My experience with iOS devices is mostly non-jailbroken devices, where the file system is not accessible.
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A very limited scope of the filesystem instead of exposing the whole thing. Android does the same thing, and so does every system that doesn’t allow the user to have root access.
Not trying to be rude but the files app is absolutely not giving you anything close to full access to your devices file system. It’s an abstraction over the actual file system if anything.
Just to get this straight: you’re comparing the complexity of using OS X to Chrome OS. I hope you’re not also claiming you’ve actually used both of these?
Edit: also, what do you mean “no user-facing folder structures to learn”? iPadOS I get because even though it has one and has for years, it’s not required. But again: have you ever used Chrome OS? I would sooner use TempleOS, and somehow you still managed to make an invalid criticism of such a dogshit operating system.
Edit 2: 23 downvotes; 0 explanations of how I’m wrong. Stay classy, Lemmy.
Huh? I used ChromeOS and Mac OS for work, study and play and I can’t honestly say one is particularly more simplistic or even user-friendly (dumbed-down) than the other. But ChromeOS is significantly less locked down overall in that getting root access on the device is much, much simpler.
- The thing about root access is just objectively untrue. These are the steps to gain root access on macOS as provided by Apple. Meanwhile, I can find no official tutorial from Google, and more importantly, enabling developer mode wipes your Chromebook. I legitimately cannot imagine what on god’s green Earth you did to make the macOS process more painstaking than wiping your device.
- Even if your premise weren’t demonstrably untrue, this isn’t a discussion about what you can theoretically do with a device; it’s about the kind of workflow the device would encourage for a typical student using it. In this regard, a Chromebook is massively dumbed down. Sure you might dip into the downloads folder, but Chrome OS by design encourages the use of web apps as much as humanly possible and severely restricts your ability and incentives to meaningfully interact with your OS outside of a browser.
- Even assuming that the process of gaining root access mattered to this discussion (it categorically doesn’t), what you can and cannot do with that root access would matter far more, and in that unrelated discussion, macOS clearly still wins out (unless you’d want to argue that developer mode lets you install Linux, at which point this is no longer about Chrome OS).
Meanwhile, I can find no official tutorial from Google
This is such an unserious strawman of an argument, how do you not get embarrassed writing this?
There’s no official tutorial for most Android devices either, it doesn’t mean it’s harder to do than on Apple devices.
Even if your premise weren’t demonstrably untrue
Just saying something is so doesn’t make it so, to demonstrate my premise is untrue you have to actually demonstrate how it’s untrue, which you have not done.
it’s about the kind of workflow the device would encourage for a typical student using it
You mean like how Mac OS is locked to the Mac OS App Store by default only, featuring mainly proprietary payware unless you toggle an obscure bypass in the settings, while ChromeOS lets you run any unsigned code for ChromeOS, Linux and Android with minimal effort, all of which are either fully or partially open source and comes with a web browser equipped with a nice set of easily accessible Dev tools, which allows you to examine and learn how web applications are written, architectured and deployed - the largest by far aspect of computer science and software development most people come into contact with regularly?
Even if the conversation was about what you say, you would still be wrong. But it’s not about that, because in a school scenario both would be locked down with an MDM - in Apple’s case literally via serial numbers and network connectivity DRM you can’t realistically block.
And no, this conversation is actually not about that either. A user repairable device doesn’t become less repairable if it discourages your 12 year old from popping out and eating the battery.
severely restricts your ability and incentives to meaningfully interact with your OS outside of a browser.
Any examples on this one, chief? Or you just saying things like that will magically make them true again?
Even assuming that the process of gaining root access mattered to this discussion (it categorically doesn’t),
Of course it does. Really it’s the thing that matters the most.
Sorry but your bailey castle isn’t any more secure than your motte, because access to root is actual freedom over your device, anything less than actual unrestricted root access where I can say, replace the network stack or write and add my own kernel modules for hardware support I want to add or whatever reason I please is by definition not really software (and by extension hardware) I have control over. It’s just another blackbox walled garden.
what you can and cannot do with that root access would matter far more, and in that unrelated discussion, macOS clearly still wins out
Again, do you have any evidence at all to back that up?
And what’s with this weird caveat?
(unless you’d want to argue that developer mode lets you install Linux, at which point this is no longer about Chrome OS).
It’s some real specious reasoning to handwave the most core freedom of all - to simply replace/refuse the OS altogether and bring your own to your hardware, and highly convenient of course because Apple employs many anti-repair, anti-consumer, anti-modification practices from the very screws to their knock-off TPM (T2?) chip to hardware whitelists where everything is married down to the cables and each and every module for no reason other than to maintain control above all.
Please apply more intellectual rigor next time.
Fuck Google and fuck Apple, stop defending them, don’t die on this silly hill and go be free.
Have you even been reading this thread? This is about the level of tech literacy kids get from using an OS for school, not about what you’re theoretically capable of doing. Yes, you’re right, root access on both macOS and Chrome OS would be locked out in a school setting. That makes your braindead argument a non-starter for this discussion. Even if what you said about the rooting difficulty were true (again, showed it isn’t), it could not possibly matter less here. And yes, I am going to say that official, step-by-step documentation that takes a few minutes at most to follow is easier than following some third-party website and then resetting your entire OS.
Even in a situation where it’s not locked down, neckbeards like you and I are in the vanishingly small minority of users who ever touch root access; when we’re talking about generations of people being raised to be tech-illiterate, root access has fuck-all to do with that. Unless the OS is incentivizing average users to use root access enough that a sizable portion actually would (desktop Linux and nothing else), then a comparison of which OS gives easier root access couldn’t be less relevant when talking about an entire generation of kids.
Here, Chrome OS is meaningfully much worse than OS X for teaching kids tech literacy on the grounds that the average user experience is dumbed down to hell. Meanwhile:
Fuck Google and fuck Apple, stop defending them
Literally where? I’ve done nothing but lambast Chrome OS this entire thread except to correctly point out that it has user-facing folders which you do often interact with. Apple? By correctly pointing out that the Apple desktop ecosystem is massively less dumbed-down than Chrome OS, I’m defending them? Dude, I use Linux and Android (the latter begrudgingly; locked bootloader) and would never purchase an Apple product again for the foreseeable future; next time, save your sweaty, mouth-foaming screed about Apple bad for when you actually find someone who likes and supports Apple.
I ain’t reading all that.
You are angry asf and need to chill tf out, restating your points over and over doesn’t make them true, but it does make you sound like an aggro troglodyte.
You need to back up your shit and learn to formulate actual arguments, not just arbitrary statements you keep repeating. Stop being an aggressively incorrect moron and start thinking.
Neckbeards Mouth-foaming screed Braindead
Speak for yourself bruh.
Anyway, it’s not very hard to understand:
Root access = control of device, control of device = ability to experiment. Ability to experiment = potential for tech literacy. Potential for tech literacy = tech literacy
Mac OS = locked down and dumbed down = tech illiteracy Chrome OS = Linux with chrome = tech literacy.
Also, blocked.
Also, the total number of Chromebooks sold worldwide is tiny compared with phones and tablets. Most kids have probably never seen a Chromebook, but virtually every kid has held and used a phone, a tablet or both.
If you want to blame Google, blame Android, not Chromebooks.
I don’t believe that.
It’s likely because the market has consolidated to a small number of companies who can dictate the means of production and how their consumers interact with their product.
When the personal computer market was young, entries from all sorts of manufacturers flooded in. Some failed, some succeeded. Everything had to be configured by the user because universal standards hadn’t been developed yet. This allowed for some people to be exposed to the back end, which have them some understanding of how their technology worked. It enhanced problem solving skills.
If anything, 'Plug and Play" probably had more involvement in enshittification than Google. Taking out the problem solving and moving the goal to consumption.
I am pretty confident it’s the smartphone OSs (Android and iOS) that are more at fault. I remember having to install a file browser on my smartphone. Kids grown up with smartphones may not even know there are files and folder structures.
First of all, this isn’t enshitification as defined by Corey Doctorow. This has nothing to do with an internet platform getting worse because the priorities of the proprietors changed.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame Google for this. None of these companies do this for entirely altruistic reasons. At the core of the problem is funding in education. Google saw an opportunity and jumped on it. When given a choice that kids get no computer hardware vs. dumping price Chromebooks I would still vote Chromebook. Get your politicians to set aside less money for tanks and more money for education.
Besides, no one is stopping kids from exploring other platforms. Google is looking for an infrastructure lock-in, get them locked in while they are young, but you can go do other stuff. It’s also a question of financial means and interests. And they don’t need to do LAN parties because they already have Fortnite and stuff. Life moves on. Your childhood was also markedly different from your parents’.
The Chromebook does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a cheap notebook which runs Chrome. And it’s fairly competent at that task. It’s exactly as advertised. The problem only arises when people think that the ability to use a Chromebook is acceptable as a substitute for the ability to use a normal computer.
This is an incredibly dumb take. Tech isn’t one dimensional and there isn’t a “right” path to tech literacy. I grew up on Windows and I learned a lot of what I know by exploring my laptops and learning new things out of necessity. I ended majoring in CS in working in tech. My sister, who’s 5 years younger than me, had Chromebooks growing up both at home and at school, yet she’s also a very proficient CS major. Using Chromebooks doesn’t show that someone is bad at tech, that’s just a baseless assumption.
Chromebooks are just another branch of tech, and there’s really nothing wrong with them. They’re basically Android tablets in laptop form. Google giving them to schools at a deeply discounted price is not a bad thing. Without them, many schools wouldn’t have any sort of tech for their kids to work with. Chromebooks are incredibly useful tools that can enable teachers to incorporate material from the internet into their lessons and help streamline their work.
Hating on things for the sake of hating on them is just lazy and counterproductive. There’s a lot to criticize Google for, Chromebooks are not one of them.
Being a CS major (even a good one) isn’t a solid measure of tech literacy. CS still suffers from the “do this arbitrary thing so you can get credit”; along with other majors and American schools at large.
Actually I’ve seen first hand the dumbing down of curriculum in my CS program via my younger peers’ stories, and helping them with their coursework. And it’s 100% due to low tech literacy.
Edit: grammar.
This is kind of like blaming car manufacturers for people not knowing how to drive manual and how cars work under the hood, because they made cars reliable and simple to use.
There’s always an incentive to make things more accessible. Skills always become outdated because of that. How many of us know how to skin game and cook it on naked fire? Not many, I presume.
Chromebook for all its flaws and limitations still let children, who would not have otherwise used any computing device, at least use one.
Wanted to say the same thing you said, but with actual literacy. Books exist, but the desire to be literate is not there.
This is kinda a bad take imo. I don’t think it’s chrome books that has ruined tech literacy. Maybe it’s younger exposure to even more addictive social media than previous generations?
I’m pretty young. My first mobile device was an iPod touch 4th gen. I figured out how to jailbreak it and I was like 12 at the time. If I ever felt one of these walled garden devices was holding me back, I enjoyed finding a creative solution around that. Since that iPod touch, I jailbroke my Wii and recently a kindle. I also modded a gameboy, but that was different than jailbreaking.
Yeah it’s a fucking abysmal take. More kids had access to the internet and computers because of Chromebooks, without them they’d have had nothing - maybe once an hour in the computer lab each week, assuming they even had one.
Prior to Chromebooks, the most a school could do was “a computer in every classroom”. That was it, that was the ambition in the early 2000’s and even then most schools failed.
What happened was tech companies made computers easier to use by hiding a lot of that complexity. And average humans were fine with that because shit should just work.
The arguments being raised here about a loss of skills are the same arguments boomers used against millennials because they didn’t know how to do DIY and shit like that.
The blame is always squarely on the education system. That system is supposed to set kids up with the skills they need to make it in the wold and tech literacy is one of many, many areas that is hugely underserved.
Before Chromebooks we had one aging computer lab that the entire school had to reserve and share. Kids never even learned to type. I was able to improve students typing ability before they hit High School.
Because we had Chromebooks (that I raised money for with fundraisers) my students were able to learn to use digital data logging of science experiments using probes, my students were able to learn to design websites, I was able to teach them programming basics using Scratch, I was able teach kids basic IT management since I created a team of kids to assist with tech problems students and teachers had with their technology. I taught them CAD with TinkerCAD, I taught them video editing, I taught them image editing, etc.
Chromebooks were amazing.
were fine with that because shit should just work.
This was Apple’s literal marketing campaign when they were trying to make Macs popular again
And say what you will about apple, it worked (the slogan, not the Macs)
Not to mention that Chromebooks are Linux (so can be modded for basically anything), but these days have official native support for sideloading any Linux distro you please. All it takes is a flashed USB drive and one button click, then you’re totally unrestricted and out of ChromeOS.
If any kid wanted to, they could do that far easier than I could when I was in school. If they become adults, buy a Chromebook, and choose to do nothing with it other than watch YouTube, then it has absolutely nothing to do with the technology that was provided to them during school.
What did you jailbreak your ipod with, though? Was it a chromebook?
Probably windows 🤮
I think there were jailbreaks that could be done on device, but if I remember correctly this wasn’t one of them. I forget the exact year/iOS version. I wanna say I jailbroke 3 iOS versions in a row, and at that point new things had captured my interest. Eventually I found myself captivated with frontend development.
You can find my latest work at https://blorpblorp.xyz/, the obviously best client for Lemmy and soon PieFed.
So you had access to a fairly open device, where the system was considerably less restrictive than a Chromebook. Apparently many first time users don’t have that luxury any longer. They’re stuck with phones and chromebooks (phones with a keyboard slapped on, really). Good luck hacking anything with that locked up shit.
Someone else pointed out it’s not that difficult to boot Linux on your Chromebook off a thumb drive. A quick search shows it might be slightly complicated but seems pretty doable depending on your model.
Listen I hate Google, but this still seems like a dumb take. There are better things to criticize them for: illegal monopolization of search through anticompetitive practices, making their search product worse on purpose, having no respect for people’s privacy, literally removing their slogan to not be evil, etc).
What are the advantages of a jailbroken kindle? I’ve thought about it but there isn’t really anything I lack on mine.
My motivation was mostly to ditch Amazon, but in the process I discovered ko reader is both better than Amazon’s reader and does a really good job turning PDFs into readable books.
This seems silly. Lots of kids never learned about computers even when they were available. A chromebook was just an electronic school aid. If the interest was in computers they would learn about computers.
I think this is a fairly dumb take. In the schools that I saw that had chromebooks a kid might be taking English, Math, AND computing. It really was up to the school (and parents) to introduce computing, not the machine that was the general replacement for books.
Anecdotally: a high school near us requires every student to have a computer. They do not hand out chromebooks and the requirement specs are a higher end Mac or PC laptop that the kids are required to bring to classes. These kids use blender, maya 3d, office suite, video and music editing software for example. They absolutely do not know any more about computers then chromebook kids (with a few exceptions). Having access to a computer doesnt magically make them know about how computers work.
The real take is to get kids into PC gaming from a young age. Kids are super patient with each other and now my kid is doing things like installing mods for games that he plays. It’s also massively improved his reading which is mostly how I learned English myself.
I can thank Minecraft for making me learn how to use the computer because I wanted to install mods and for learning English because Minecraft let’s plays were like crack to 10 year old me and basically all of them were in English
That’s awesome, I love hearing stories like this. I was lucky to have access to a PC since I was about 8 years old and computer literacy is probably the most useful skill I have. Nothing teaches PC literacy better than pirating software with complex readmes lol or having to fix the family computer because you infected it with a virus. Had me stressing, looking at the task manager and searching for the origins of every .exe to find the culprit
Probably a great way to get them comfortable with pc hardware too - want that new GPU? Here you go. Install it, you just get the one so be careful and learn how to do it right.
I probably wouldn’t let my son install a GPU until he’s a bit older just because of the cost lol but it is simple enough for a teenager to do, I think.
chromebooks suck but this isn’t really why
Thank you. It started long before chromebooks were a thing. If anything, we can blame it on windows. I remember people of my generation not understanding any tech from the mid 90s on…
People have not understood tech forever, but the 90s and '00s probably had the highest rate of tech literacy. Modern OSes obfuscate the inner workings more than they used to, meaning everyday users are less exposed to them.
So the argument is that because Chromebooks just work and don’t need troubleshooting unlike windows so this is Googles fault
OK
No, the argument is that Chromebooks are so limited in what they can offer that kids never learned to do anything out of using the chrome browser.
Turns out you don’t need to worry about troubleshooting something if you just remove that functionality lol
Most Chromebooks offered Linux on them. Even Linus Torvalds used a Chromebook when travelling to develop via it. Presumably because he was sick to death of “troubleshooting” when he had other, better things to do. And presumably schools and teachers also have better things to do than deal with bs like conflicting packages, missing drivers, viruses or whatever on every kid’s device.
All Chromebooks ARE Linux. ChromeOS is a Linux based operating system. Whether or not you can get to the lower level is a different discussion. I had one of the first Chromebooks, you have always been able to root them and do what you want with them.
You are correct that most chromebooks can have Linux installed on them.
I don’t think that’s relevant in a discussion about Chromebooks in a school setting - were schools encouraging their students to install Linux?
Doesn’t matter if they encourage it or, not, the option is there. So if kids want to mess around, compile stuff, run Linux games they can totally do it. The main purpose of the laptop however would be to do work, save / submit stuff to the cloud, run all day and be cheap so if it gets stolen or broken it’s less expense to replace. I think in that role the Chromebook is the best solution anyone came up with. And there were a long line of contenders.
A certain group of Boomer-brains are heavily invested in the idea that Millennials are the only generation that knows how to use computers.
So we’ve been seeing a lot of “blame the X for the Y” agitprop that’s increasingly divorced from reality. It’s just the next generation of outrage porn, tailored towards the current generation of 40 year olds.
FOX News ran the same bullshit content for GenXers and Boomers.
They don’t need to know how computers work if Chromebooks are the only thing in existence.
They also don’t need to know how to deal with python dependencies if they can pace their code into AI and say why isn’t tkinter working?
Craftsmrn said the same thing about the industrial revolution.
That’s honestly technology in a nutshell. Technological development leads to further abstraction, leading to less low level knowledge. It’s always been this way. Is AI an abstraction step too far, or are we just the next generation of old man yelling at cloud?
I asked myself that question a lot.
When cloud first became a thing I yelled at the cloud a lot. Then I got on board with provisioning. And they stepped up the game with load balancers that actually have features security groups SSL unwrapping.
No I realize that one person with a cloud account can do the work of three or four of system engineers.
If you know what you’re doing, you can definitely do this hybrid of vibe coding and real coding. You can’t just give it a problem and tell it to solve it you need to tell it exactly what you’re expecting it to do. Occasionally you can ask it if it has any suggestions and it’ll come back with something that you didn’t think of that’s not a half bad idea.
That said, there’s a lot of idiots out there with zero skill just vibr coating stuff they have no business doing leaving vulnerabilities and caution to the wind.
Before AI we used to refer to the “vibe coders” as “script kiddies”. People who would find a chunk of code and apply it to a job without really knowing what it did.
Fine when they were working alone and what they were up to wasn’t your problem. But as soon as you got into a team project, the code base would start filling up with these patchwork, confused, inefficient solutions to systemic problems.
You’d have the same bug in three different places and you’d have to run down the flaw over and over again, because someone was just copypasta-ing a solution wherever it would fit.
You know how you know even less about computers? When you cannot afford one at all
That’s why they only know what Chromebook offers, they have them in school.
My kid’s school doesn’t have any kind of computer instruction, no computer lab, it’s all Chromebooks.
Is it your genuine belief that your schools would have computer instruction and big easily accessible labs if not for Chromebooks?
I remember “teach kids computers” as an educational panacea during the 80s/90s. It made Micheal Dell very rich, but often at the expense of the biology, chemistry, and physics lab programs. “Nobody knows how to use a blowtorch / dissect an animal / build an engine anymore” was a refrain I heard all the through my high school years.
Has eliminating computer labs brought back the old 70s era Space Race science programs? Or are we still just boiling away ever ounce of the public system that costs money (except athletics, of course)?
I was simply stating why the kids only know Chromebooks. Many poor communities, mine and myself included, have households that don’t have computers at home.
The schools give each kid a Chromebook at the beginning of the year. So it’s the only computer access these kids get.
There isn’t instruction on how PCs work on a base level in my kids middle school, and no computer lab to experiment with. So they only know how to navigate Chromebooks, because that’s their access level
And I mean, They got rid of home economics for the computer lab back when I was a kid. I don’t understand why you brought up the 70s or whatever, I’m aware times and education instruction changes sure, you don’t need to be rude.
The schools give each kid a Chromebook at the beginning of the year. So it’s the only computer access these kids get.
Plenty of kids have access to desktops and laptops through their parents. Libraries also have computer labs with traditional PCs.
There isn’t instruction on how PCs work on a base level in my kids middle school
I’ve never heard of a school that provided middle school computer education outside of small elective classes, and even those only in wealthier districts.
I don’t know many of my son’s peers, who do have a pc at home.
I had computer instruction in middle school while attending a title 1 rural school. Idk
Maybe both things are true. Wasn’t trying to argue or “be proven wrong” just stating why many children may only know Chromebook use, and it’s not thier fault
Apple did the same thing in the 80s and 90s. Then schools eventually said “no thanks” and switched to PCs for all the computer labs.
The switch to PCs did happen in the late 90’s but not reacting to some walled garden from Apple.
In the 80’s, schools saw computers as a tool to teach general skills to students. The Apple II was a machine to run Number Munchers and Oregon Trail on. Especially for younger kids, “computer skills” weren’t really taught.
By the late 90’s the tide had shifted. Computer literacy was becoming a requirement in more and more jobs, and IBM with their Microsoft-based PCs and the ecosystem they accidentally created had a massive grip on the business world. So schools needed to start teaching classes in Windows and Office.
Apple made a big comeback with their pivot to the fashion and jewelry industry but never recaptured the hold on education they once had.
I would say in the 80s, we were taught computer skills as a foundation for using computers to learn more general skills.
No, really, it was corporate social media, and also the smartphone (iphone particularly). They don’t need to know anything anymore thanks to those two. I mean even MySpace had kids learning CSS at least.
“We used to make our own webpages…!”
It’s this and it’s not. Chromebooks don’t give kids anywhere to explore outside of chrome and handheld devices provide a controlled environment. A lot of kids (and adults!) are operating with a tablet in place of a computer because the most intensive thing they need to do if they’re not gaming is word processing. It’s big tech overall and the internet shrinking down into like 3 companies.
As someone who lives and works online. I wish.
It seems super consolidated, right up until you start listing the “handful” of big vendors that run the Internet… You get passed the first 3 or 4 big players and end up with a long list of “of yeah, these guys too”…
Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, CloudFlare, valve (and every other game publisher), Netflix, PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Apple, Yahoo (yes, they still exist), xitter, Rackspace, zoom, Dropbox, Etsy, Pinterest…
The list is super long.
And that’s just companies that people would have heard of. The companies that actually make the Internet work is a much longer list, and GoDaddy plays a surprisingly large role as well. There’s also entire business sectors that most people aren’t aware of, for network transit services, and interconnects.
It’s a pretty deep topic.
I completely agree. I think people mean more like in the scope of basic tasks kids aren’t meant to be doing on computers in school. That’s been basically wrangled into Google and Amazon at this point with a handful outlying things. If you’re doing anything else though, the scope definitely broadens, and you can make it broaden more if you try to eliminate the bigger guys.
Eh, I don’t really agree.
To want to learn something starts with curiosity and the willingness to learn. I was always trying to fuck around with games and programs before I knew that modding was even a thing. When I was met with restrictions I always tried breaking them. I got around admin protection on school computers that literally only had access to the desktop.
My youngest brother on my dad’s side (my family is complicated) is a shut-in who barely acts like the adult he’s supposed to be, never owned a chromebook, and sits in front of the computer more than I even do. He is incredibly tech illiterate.
Yeah it’s a pretty bad take IMHO. When I was a kid we had one 386 desktop computer running MS-DOS. No laptops, phones or tablet. I always liked computers and when I went to high school I noticed a bunch of old broken computers in a storage room one day. Asked the computer teacher (we had computer classes learned MS Word and (blind) typing) if I could try to fix them. Me and a friend spend many luch breaks swapping parts, until about half of them worked again. Learning about something is mostly your willingness to learn. As a highschool kid I would have loved to get a laptop. If I had a Chromebook I’m fairly sure I would have tried to run a custom OS on it or see what else non standard thing I could have unlocked.
