I think the fact that we are comfortable with pen and ink has a lot to do with it. I spent many hours as a kid learning to write cursive using the Palmer Method. It’s natural that I would gravitate toward a tablet.
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The pain…the pain…THE PAIN…
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Zaber-Bloser myself
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I love this quote from Wikipedia on the Palmer Method: “To educators, the method’s advocates emphasized regimentation, and that the method would thus be useful in schools to increase discipline and character, and could even reform delinquents.”
Suffice it to say that I was not reformed.
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Who needs even printing when we have opposable thumbs…
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Not all of us are old (yet)!
I had a rather ‘classic’ education though (do in addition to the normal subjects, I studied Latin and Scripture - and there definitely wasn’t a cane sitting in a corner of the headmaster’s office…)
We did handwriting practice. Starting with pencils then ‘graduating’ to pens if we were good enough. We’d copy short stories. I have the horror of having beautifully copied out one only for my fountain pen to have catastrophically leaked all over it.
tl;dr: Yeah, I too like tablet PCs because I like and am used to writing.
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Given that they know how use proxy servers, but don’t understand how URLs work, how would you say they conceptualize “the internet”?
When they change the DNS settings to setup the proxy, are they aware in some manner of what the IP address numbers mean?
What about simply connecting to the a network, are they aware of what the differences are between say a cell connection vs a local network?
WARNING: Boomer rant to follow -
Remember the old sci fi trope about civilizations becoming so advanced and automated that eventually no one remembers the basic principles about how and WHY the machines were built so it all slides back into barbarism?
Some slice of the time we used to spend soldering circuit boards together and burning up transistors is still tech time to this youngest generation, but tech in the sense of consuming social media instead.
They need youtube videos to know how to plant a garden, and heaven forbid they actually had to catch/kill/prepare meat for food.
There is blame for industrial America in there too. A disposable infrastructure inhibits the DIY/fixit instinct that got a lot of our grandparents through the Depression and the shortages of WWII.
Whither goest the handyman?
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They forget (or don’t care) how to save a drowning swimmer…
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No, they go to a proxy website and enter the keywords to what they want into the box.
A few might copy an address. Maybe. Sometimes.
Ah ok, but I’m still curious what you think their mental model of the “internet” is. Surely they understand what it is to be ‘offline’ vs ‘online’.
So for example, do they make a distinction between connecting via their SIM/data connection vs connecting through WiFi?
Also, how many do you think a mobile only users, vs some having a PC/Mac? (I think it would be difficult to use a PC without the concept of “files”, but perhaps I am using it wrong wrt. to modern paradigm.)
I’m no longer working in that area anymore, but when I did:
I think most of them saw the Internet through apps. I doubt many had computers, but certainly had smartphones.
I suspect must of them knew the difference between a WiFi connection and a mobile one, but perhaps only in that the latter was everywhere and required a contract and the former is often ‘free’ but not everywhere.
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