No more education

[smaragdus]

I never spare my efforts and time to help people with software, to explain how to, to show this or that. I dumped Skype about a year ago and when I suppose that people have some basic knowledge about software I try to convert them from Skype to Tox. But last night I failed badly and my enthusiasm waned.

It was an acquaintance of mine, a woman studying programming (C++) so I supposed she would be capable of coping with Isotoxin. I explained her where to download it, how to create a profile, how to get her profile hash, how to add me. Almost immediately she began complaining that the program is trashy, that it crashed any time she changed some settings. I was surprised because Isotoxin is very stable. When she sent me a screen-shot my heart sank- she was running Isotoxin directly from WinRAR without extracting the archive. Well, I should acknowledge that I missed to tell her that she needed to extract the archive first but it never occurred to me that someone might run an executable directly from an archive. Yes, it was my fault. It was my fault that I didn't imagine that ignorance is so unimaginable. She concluded that "her way" (running the program directly from the archive) was better than "my way" (extracting the archive first) because it was easier, faster and handier. When she told me she couldn't find AppData folder I just gave up. I never expected that someone who studied programming wouldn't have a basic idea about archives, executable files, folders. From now on I will let people enjoy their "Next, Next, Next", their ads and their abominable Skype. I no longer have nerves to waste. Many years ago when I started working at a newspaper I hardly knew how to turn off a computer but after a month I knew more about software than all my colleagues. Knowledge is a personal decision. It is obvious that the vast majority of people says "No" to knowledge, that is why trash like Chrome and Skype thrive.

The screen-shot below tells it all.

[shnbwmn]

That is pretty bad for someone studying programming, no less (those shortcuts ...). But the vast majority of people who aren't computer "geeks" (for lack of a better word) want to get something done and they don't care how. And you can't really blame them. If program A is popular and does what they want, then they use program A. Program A f#&ks up - find fix, move on. I think it's more about interest than knowledge, per se.

Avid home security experts would probably go anal about how people they know do this and that wrong, and then have a "I told you so" attitude when a burglary occurs. The truth is that while it interests them, most people have better/other things to worry about.

[webfork]

I never expected that someone who studied programming wouldn't have a basic idea about archives, executable files, folders

I have a similar story: some years back I was hanging out with a childhood friend whom I always thought of as reasonably intelligent and technically savvy but was astonished when he didn't know how to send an MP3. I was stunned. I thought that was pretty well covered as common knowledge at this point.

I can see things from her point of view however. The world we live in is an increasingly everything now place. So many things are near-instantaneous, making it really just a more frequent state of overwhelmed. The dictum in technical writing is don't make me think for good reason: we expect that people are just swamped.

Still, there's a part of me that wonders why this person you were talking with didn't get how a compressed volume works and why the other files would be unavailable. That's not a terribly complex thing.

[Midas]

I started with computers in the times of DOS -- imagine the dismay I've had to live trough when even my own offspring can't find anything on their respective machines that isn't an icon on the desktop... my younger brother is a CS graduate who doesn't wander off Microsfot or Apple's walled gardens. That's a lost battle, if you ask me.

[joby_toss]

So frustrated that I can't put into English words my exact feelings about this problem!

I have absolutely no IT training whatsoever. My actual field of work is not even remotely connected with the IT world. And yet, I am the most knowledgeable person I know (including my IT trained friends!). And it's not because I'm clever! In fact, I'm just about average at best. It's because I freakin' care about solving a damn problem! I refused to be a vegetable, so I learned!
Years ago I didn't have enough money to buy my first PC, so I bought scrap parts. I had to learn what I needed and where everything goes and I built my own. The frustrating part is that it's not hard at all, yet none of my friends knew how to do it (including IT trained guys!) and they still don't. Because I give a f.ck and they don't!

This is the real issue: not many people give a f.ck anymore!

[Andrew Lee]

I blame the dumbing down on Apple's iOS. They absolutely refuse to call a file a "file". Nobody with an iPhone knows what a file is, much less a filesystem. Everything is about the appstore.

I think the IT industry will track the car industry. In the beginning, everyone have an idea of what's under the hood. These days, people don't even change their own oil. At the pace things are going, within a generation we will have autonomous vehicles and nobody will know how to drive anymore! Tesla's (and its competitors') cars will be sealed with special bolts so that they cannot be taken apart. When something goes wrong, you drive down to the "genius" bar and they will take care of it for you!

[smaragdus]

@Andrew Lee
I have no iOS device and i am very curious- how files are called under iOS (no joke, I really don't know).

I can see and sniff dumbing down everywhere- in software, hardware, education, culture. What I think is that this is not a coincidence- it simply can't be. It is obvious- a dumbed down society is easier to control and rule.

By the way, perhaps the dumbest ever device seems to be coming soon.

[Emka]

I teach, though not an IT related subject, and most of the times I go to a computer room with my students, it results in utter chaos: text suddenly disappearing from word files or powerpoint slides, files seemingly being saved into the void and gone lost forever... They play on their phones and tablets all day, but using an old-fashioned desktop computer for productive purposes is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma for many students.
I too suppose it is due to the fact that nowadays it is often unnecessary to really look into how such a miracle machine works in order to benefit from its basic functions: download something from a store, start an app. When I got my first computer in the early nineties (not too early anyway, it already had Win3.1), it was damn expensive, and if you didn't know what you were doing, you couldn't really use it.
Oh boy, I'm becoming one of those seasoned guys reminiscing about the olden days when things used to be much better...

[joby_toss]

It is obvious- a dumbed down society is easier to control and rule.

So true!

By the way, perhaps the dumbest ever device seems to be coming soon.

But dumb people won't have money to buy these stupid things, that's what the chaos "creators" don't want to address yet...

[Midas]

a dumbed down society is easier to control and rule.

And "amen!" to that, too. In fact it's my biggest regret regarding tech -- just look at TV, it used to be full of promise and now people like myself can even bother to turn the damn thing on...

BTW, a while ago, I posted a video where author Cory Doctorow ponders on emerging issues of the so-called "Internet of Things", foreseeing its impact on individual privacy -- in it, he also addresses the logic behind the dumbing down of computer platforms.

Oh boy, I'm becoming one of those seasoned guys reminiscing about the olden days when things used to be much better...

And, oh boy, how I feel that pain...

[Specular]

At the pace things are going, within a generation we will have autonomous vehicles and nobody will know how to drive anymore! Tesla's (and its competitors') cars will be sealed with special bolts so that they cannot be taken apart. When something goes wrong, you drive down to the "genius" bar and they will take care of it for you!

Well, car manufacturers almost won a legal case to protect their onboard systems with the DMCA. So any attempt to repair or hack them would have been considered a violation, effectively excluding third party repair shops. It's not that far out tbh.

[webfork]

... any attempt to repair or hack them would have been considered a violation, effectively excluding third party repair shops. It's not that far out tbh.

That's especially amusing since so many early open source commenters compared proprietary software to cars. I just used their terminology in the license types post in the when I said when I said you can't "look under the hood" with freeware.

Regardless, it's very unfortunate as many dealer repair shops are profit centers for the car companies. This could encourage car companies to make less reliable cars.

[smaragdus]

...This war has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this planet can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down Pavlovian/Skinnerian education, to accept what those in control want, there will be no more wars. If there are no rights or wrongs, there will be no one wanting to "right" a "wrong." Robots have no conscience. The only permissible conscience will be the United Nations or a global conscience. Whether an action is good or bad will be decided by a "Global Government's Global Conscience," as recommended by Dr. Brock Chisholm, Executive Secretary of the World Health Organization, Interim Commission, in 1947-and later in 1996 by current United States Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

..

...This war which produces the death of intellect and freedom is not waged by a foreign enemy but by the silent enemy in the ivory towers, in our own government, and in tax-exempt foundations-the enemy whose every move I have tried to document in this book, usually in his/her/its own words.

..

Much of this book contains quotes from government documents detailing the real purposes of American education: * to use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global "state," just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution; * to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of collectivism; * to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism; * to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus; * to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism); * to reject freedom to choose one's career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE process, aptly named "limited learning for lifelong labor,"7 coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

..

Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding "choice" proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.

source

..

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

about Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt