COMPUTERS AND GENERATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES

In the past few generations, we have had a curious phenomenon that many talked about individually but not as a whole and that is how a generation grows up with a certain technology that defined their childhood-early adulthood and becomes very proficient at it and not the one next and last then proceeds to praise or complain about the next generation is so good/bound by it.

This is something that came to my attention when I would help the previous generation struggle with computers while myself having very little idea on how to fix cars and this tends to be the general trend for most millennials. Especially the ones who have not grown up in the States where the entire culture of people could be defined by cars they drove and got familiar with.

Similarly, to how the Boomers to Gen X generations grew up with cars, the millennial grew up with computers and since they were so exposed to them in their youth, they picked it up as their view into the technical world. This is no excuse to understand either technology enough to use it. For a while, I believed the first half of the paragraph more than I should have, as this was the reason other generations did not understand those technologies but that was until I met one of the best system administrators I have ever seen.

A 65-year-old Linux wizard from Fredonia taught us Linux commands and system administrating. He was originally an electrical engineer which is quite distant from computer science and got into computers when he was 45. Conversely, my cousin who makes a living administering a popular game server got into cars as well as many millennials including myself after getting my first one. Turns out that as soon as you drop the bias that “It is Generation (insert generation here) thing” it becomes much clearer that the technology we are talking about is simple because the principles of the systems stay the same, the best systems are the simplest ones. Sure, when you get into the nitty-gritty and combine them, they become complicated but after understanding the underlying principles they simply become just complicated instead of impossible.

Hence, I would like to invite everyone when you encounter a piece of technology you do not understand, do not be ashamed, for there is no shame in learning but there is shame in willful ignorance as says the Russian proverb.