this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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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.
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.
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.
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.
You're not from New Jersey I see
Sorry, didn't get the reference?..
TBF, I personally learned helplessness with house repairs. There's no MS and Apple there. My colleagues are not like that, for example.