I started a class this year, a forensics class related to computers. The intro prompt is interesting, what computer do you have, windows or mac?
I started building pcs to replace cable boxes for people. The realization I had is that most people’s understanding of technology starts and ends with their phone.
And they don’t even understand their phones.
Computer scientists don’t understand this. This is systems.
Seriously, I have met computer scientists who admit they don’t know how the computer works, but simply is processional math.
One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking.
Computer science doesn’t mean you know how to a use a computer; astronomers and microbiologists don’t know much about telescopes and microscopes.
And CS students have the dumbest “smart” questions.
Most cs degrees I’ve seen, including my own include an operating systems course.
“How a computer works”
It really depends what you mean, and at what depth; theres a tone of stuff in there. Even then I think your mostly wrong, you just notice/remember the ones who are inept at using their computer.
If you mean run program x on os y, well then sure
I work in the IT department at a university. Can confirm that many comp sci majors have no idea how a computer works, or even how to install an operating system. They sure know how to write code though.
One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking
I mean, computer science is basically the mathematics of computation. It’s not like the people working on knot theory or topology are great with 3d art or knitting
Computer science has many fields and those even differ per country. Theoretical computer science is only one part of it. There are also many specialisations.
But you make a good point about topology and knot theory.
Exactly
If that’s true then how come I see non-programmers talk about the somewhat obscure OS developer, Dick Pick, all the time?
‘Is this a windows computer’ ‘No this is a dell computer’
I swear I saw a comment around here that said “the average user does not want bloatware like systemd on their computer” and I just kind of wonder if we are all living on the same planet sometimes.
That…can’t have been real and serious
Nah that dude is just a post Unix purist about to launch into a 3 hour talk about how Plan 9 is (not was) the future.
And BEOS, of course.
Of course! How else am I going to play a video while I’m word processing?
A BSD. There are multiple
Nah, the title and the field where a person active, including comp sci will not guarantee any of these knowledge savy things, also there are factor of sociability between people , one side can pretend and ignore other in spite or apathy.
Yeah the avg people won’t even know about the TempleOS
Poor godless fools.
Most of them haven’t even set up Arch
I use Plan 9 BTW
no way
I constantly remind myself of the George Carlin(I think) quote:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.”
Also important to remember Douglas Adams (when underestimating stupid people):
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
Have gotten to post that one twice this week!
Adams was truly a modern philosopher of great note.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
gotta add the babbage classic :
On two occasions I have been asked, — “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
That sounds like my ex colleague. He could not comprehend people typing non numbers into his input boxes on his little application and I had to break thing à down for him. He actually got upset over it. “It asks for a positive, integer value. What’s unclear about that? Why would you type text in?”
sigh
I always think about the effort to create a bear proof trash can in Yosemite that gave us the phrase “there is significant overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist”.
While I don’t disagree with this in principal, it’s important to distinguish between stupidity and ignorance. Most people don’t know about OSes because they’ve never needed to learn more than how to do basic tasks, and so are ignorant of how they work, what alternatives are out there, and why someone might choose one. This is very different to being incapable of those technicalities if shown a good reason to do so.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html
"There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
If you put Linux Mint on the average persons PC and set it up with the same desktop icons as their windows pc they wouldn’t know it wasn’t windows.
My dad has been running Linux Mint for almost 10 years now and he doesn’t know that LibreOffice isn’t “Linux.”
Just show them where the web browser is and done!
No shit I did this for my partners grandparent. All they needed was the browser to do shit like Facebook and paying bills. Slapped Linux Mint on their near dinosaur laptop with a Windows theme and they were none the wiser.
someone told me their sound for meetings was coming out of their hard drive the other day. I knew what they meant but still.
now if it was a floppy drive I could believe them
Hold up, what did they mean because I cannot translate that
Non-technical people will sometimes refer to whatever piece of plastic or metal that contains electronic components of any sort but does not consist of an LCD display or obvious input device as a “hard drive”. This includes desktop boxes, external modems, docking stations, UPS systems, teleconferencing platforms, and far, far more. If it has das blinkenlights anywhere on it you can expect it to be referred to as a “hard drive” at some point. It will save you a headache if you just mentally translate their “hard drive” to mean “hardware” instead.
Alternatively, if it is a display device (an LCD monitor), expect that to be called either “the computer”, “the server”, or “the internet”.
Additionally, the entire desktop box is a CPU and the display is the computer
Tech support has evolved since I got out. I don’t remember this specific point of confusion. However, during the last job I had that involved any level of help desk support with non-technical people, Obama was still in office.
Probably the desktop tower. I’ve seen many people call it a hard drive, but I’m actually not sure how common it is to have speakers in the tower.
In Chuck, the TV show about a nerd accidentally getting a secret government computer stuck in his head while keeping his job at the nerd herd (geek squad) as a cover, they refer to all desktop PCs as hard drives. Including Chuck himself who is generally portrayed as the kinda nerd who’d know better (he and his college roommate had written a MUD, though it wasn’t specifically called that, just called a game).
Literally less believable than the whole getting a CIA/NSA joint supercomputer “stuck in his head” part of the entire show.
Technically most motherboard has a piezo speaker for POST beeps. Not sure you can route meeting audio through it though.
If it makes you feel better, you’re probably overestimating their interest in whatever it is.
