• DancingIsForbidden@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      1 year ago

      That’s not an inherently bad thing though, same as it’s not inherently bad that not everyone can repair their car, or sew up tears in their trousers.

      • DancingIsForbidden@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        The relevant aphorism is “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn’t turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      TBF, I personally learned helplessness with house repairs. There’s no MS and Apple there. My colleagues are not like that, for example.