“Crazy how Millennials were the only ones to learn how to use computers and we apparently are also the only ones who learned to see through disinformation,”
Whoever this Dylan jackass is can piss right off. Gen-X built your fucking computers.
Well, TBF, the boomers helped bootstrap what Gen X was working with, and then there are the Elder Gods like Turing, Hopper, John McCarthy, Neumann, etc…
In any case, if someone thinks that learning computers means they can see through disinformation…LOLOLOL. This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.
Whoa there! Cant have the working class intelligent enough to see through the bull shit.
I do think that much of the things drummed up about “generations” feeds into the distraction. If you can get boomers vilified and at the throats of millennials, if you can get Gen-X mostly ignored and sidelined, and Gen Z getting feds lots of complete dreck while telling them “you are a magical species who gets ‘tech’ like no other” and so on (while starting to rev up the propaganda to tell Gen alpha the exact same thing)…it’s quite the sideshow from what is really happening, and that is that the upper crust like Elon and donvict are utterly lawless and making off with all the loot.
I think none of this is all that new - setting age groups against one another, setting up a war between male and females, the rural against the metropolitan, the various strata of classes that range from extreme poverty to the middle class (that still desperately needs a job to keep their head above water) and of course the old standby: setting the races against one another.
This is age-old stuff, but the techniques have been sharpened and perfected like never before. And the qons work extra hard to make sure that education won’t rise to meet the challenge.
This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.
I’ve actually begun work on an essay about that exact thing. One that I’ve put off for a very long time because the last time I dared to imply a causal relationship between the rise of Trade-Schools, where you learn to do one thing and one thing well, but have no real education otherwise, and the dumbing down of the electorate, I got shouted down for being “elitist”. But with recent events, I’ve decided to expand on my idea and throw some more research behind it because fuck it, I’m feeling vindicated.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
You could throw in some Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘philosophy’ which was just freshman-level ethics. The tech bro version of deep revealed moral truth is just they would have seen if they hadn’t all dropped out of college before taking their gen-ed classes.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
I read “Shop class as soulcraft” a while ago. I highly recommend it. I don’t have a problem with trade schools per se. Not everyone is cut out for white collar work, and there is no shame in doing other work. Smart people are required in skilled work that isn’t at a desk, IMHO. Also, I object to what university has become, and that’s essentially treating it as a trade school!
But if I were to have my ideal situation, it would be this - starting early, children are taught to question things and given a sound framework to base that on. By the time they are in high school, everyone should be able to easily spot a logical fallacy. This is not hard stuff. It’s also not airy-fairy stuff. It’s an essential life-skill, like learning to balance your checkbook and manage a household budget. This would be woven into nearly every class, where possible.
By the time someone leaves high school, whether they go to a trade school, or uni, or directly to a job, or to be a homemaker, they should hopefully be equipped to discern the wheat from the chaff and be able to use this skillset for life.
I think the major roadblock would essentially be Republicans. They basically want obedient workers, and they want people to fill their churches. Raising a set of citizens that are questioning the claims made by everyone, including qons, and who are able to spot the logical fallacies constantly employed by corporations and by Republicans would be a threat to the qons.
In any case, if someone thinks that learning computers means they can see through disinformation…LOLOLOL.
Well apparently you missed out on the reading comprehension lesson, because that is not what the original quote said. It never claimed one meant the other.
It’s like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow. I as a millennial have never soldered a PC mainboard (modding an Xbox doesn’t count), but I’d say that otherwise, my understanding is pretty good. And I think all of my friends understand the concepts of files.
I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn’t know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day. And it’s not like these terms are obsolete, the concepts are still the same, even though we went from MBR to GPT and from FAT32 or whatever to better filesystems. It’s no different for phones, but not required and even hidden.
I’d say generally, the technology userbase broadened while average knowledge in the group declined, however I’m not sure whether the absolute numbers of people with a certain knowledge level actually went down.
It’s like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow
Yes, I’ve been hearing computer engineers (or those with that mindset) complaining that programmers don’t really understand much about how computers actually work since before I even entered the workforce, but I kind of get what they are/were saying. I’d look around at my peers nearly the entire time I’ve been doing this, and I’d see some that really wanted to know a lot about, well, everything, in some cases, being interested in hardware, and then there were a lot, maybe more than half, that just focus on learning whatever the herd is telling them is the newest shiny object - and this is nearly always vendor-led and a lot of it is less about sound reasoning, and more about being fashionable. These days it might be a frontend JS framework, but exchange the set of terms/frameworks and it’s the same old story.
These days it is increasingly difficult to know much about the actual target hardware, if you work in hosted services like Azure, etc…
I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn’t know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day
I call them Intellectual Oligarchies. The knowledge (of any subject, not just tech) being limited to a circle of elites while the products are made simple enough to operate that the average person doesn’t really need to know how it’s done, just how to purchase it.
The good thing about Intellectual Oligarchies, however, is that they are open to be joined by anyone who wants to learn, or is curious about things. No formal education is required; just intellectual curiosity and the ability to read. They’re entirely self-propogated; not purposefully created by some evil cabal trying to withhold knowledge from the average person. Knowledge itself is open-source, in other words. Anyone can use it if they want.
In the Greek and Roman democratic condition, people who don’t exercise that “right to knowledge” lacked the context necessary to properly partake in the citizen’s primary job…democratic rule.
Ars Liberalis doesn’t translate to “Liberal Arts”. It literally translates to “The skills of Freedom”. A citizenry of a democracy needs the skills (knowledge) to properly function in said democracy; and that included studies of history, philosophy, politics, civics, etc…
Ars Liberalis doesn’t translate to “Liberal Arts”. It literally translates to “The skills of Freedom”. A citizenry of a democracy needs the skills (knowledge) to properly function in said democracy; and that included studies of history, philosophy, politics, civics, etc…
It’s for reasons like this that I say we should strive for everyone to have a liberal education, in every meaning of that term.
The qons have done a lot to demonize the term, but it is a word that should be taken back…and given to the generations in our education systems right now. The point of a good education is not to crank out obedient workers.
