Ever feel like technology has passed you by?

[Zod]

Funkycoldribena said:

Zod said:

I'm 48 and pride myself on being on top of all of this stuff, but a couple of weeks ago, I tried to set up Kodi on an old MediaCenter PC and it defeated me.

Same.Read the thread on Kodi,thought I'd have a go,easy they said.Yeah right,gave up.

Installing Linux from the command line on a Sparc box 15 years ago was easier. I succeeded at that.

(it was pretty pointless though)

[br d]

GroundEffect said:

bks. It works very well, particularly on Mac. Think of it as the frontend of your phone/iPod not just a File Explorer. It consolidates all music from your computer in to one UI. You can't use it like your old school drag-and-drop systems.

Whoa there!
Why can't you just use it like your old school drag and drops? Why? WHY???
That's what everybody in the whole world did before i bloody Tunes. It's a pile of unmitigated horses arse nuggets is what it is.

And I'm free of it thank christ. After years of using Apple stuff I couldn't live with iTunes any more and have been Android for ages now, it's lovely

[willisit]

br d said:

Whoa there!
Why can't you just use it like your old school drag and drops? Why? WHY???
That's what everybody in the whole world did before i bloody Tunes. It's a pile of unmitigated horses arse nuggets is what it is.

And I'm free of it thank christ. After years of using Apple stuff I couldn't live with iTunes any more and have been Android for ages now, it's lovely

You can. I do - iTunes might be bunk (on PC at least - awful thing) but the files are usually easy to find and I drag them over to my Android device all the time. Has never failed me yet.

[Johnnytheboy]

You go through a stage (like a sort of technology mid life crisis) where you try to keep up. Then you just don't give a fk.

[Funkycoldribena]

Zod said:

Funkycoldribena said:

Zod said:

I'm 48 and pride myself on being on top of all of this stuff, but a couple of weeks ago, I tried to set up Kodi on an old MediaCenter PC and it defeated me.

Same.Read the thread on Kodi,thought I'd have a go,easy they said.Yeah right,gave up.

Installing Linux from the command line on a Sparc box 15 years ago was easier. I succeeded at that.

(it was pretty pointless though)

I have no idea what you're on about.

[Speed 3]

qube_TA said:

What I do find is that my parents generation struggle to use anything and my kids generation struggle to understand how anything works, they can use it but if it doesn't work then someone needs to fix it.

I feel therefore that we had generations who knew the basics of how stuff worked, when IT came along a lot weren't interested and never grasped it, and we have a young generation who have grown used to everything being easy and handed to them pre-assembled, they're just users.

This is an interesting observation as everyone generally assumes the young are tech-savvy but you are right that most users aren't, they just get some/most interfaces more than us oldies or they're actually geeks who will be / are the next generation of "stuff" designers.

As I approach 50 I'm one of those dangerous individuals who knows my way round most stuff but not expert enough to avoid ballsing things up periodically. I used to think I was lucky to grow up in an era of incredible progress (60's/70's/80's) with space travel, computers and supersonic flight but progress seems to just speed up. That said I think we are now in a phase of change for changes sake rather than actual progress, iTunes being a classic example of unecessary constant visual fiddling.

I find now I just seek out stuff that works for my requirements then avoid the perpetual updates.

[Impasse]

Whatever happened to programs? Why are apps better?

[Shaoxter]

MrChips said:

I've built my own pc in the past, and self taught myself website design and hosting.... However if you can find my one person to explain why the fk Apple can't explain how their photo filing system works then I'll eat my hat.

Oh, they're in the Photos app, delete them from there and it turns out they're not actually stored in there and all you've done is stop you being able to see it. They're in the cloud, yet delete them on your phone and your laptop copies them back in.
What was actually wrong with having a normal file system so you can just move and delete as you want

It's designed like that to get all the celeb nudes!!

[austinsmirk]

I'm 43 and I barely understand most of the content in this thread.

Although I love my I phone and dab radio in the house and car.

I really love my dab radio, cd and cassette player. At least when I go to gigs I can get my cassettes out and recall the music !

There is too much technology now and endless replacement of stuff that just works.

[AClownsPocket]

northwest monkey said:

I'm 6 years ahead of you (I think - I'm 42).

I have no idea what you're talking about - NAS/Drobo/Crashplan. I'm excited because I can plug in a USB stick in my car & it plays music

Personally I quite like it this way. It means I get excited about technology I can use, rather than pissed off about technology I don't understand.

The scrap heap is that way >>>>>>>> 😉

[bloomen]

Social networking has passed me by completely and long may it continue. Other than that I'm keeping abreast of the things I need to use. Tried Itunes once. I immediately recognised it as a piece of st and never used it again.

What is interesting is how astoundingly unintuitive some of the world's largest sites are. As soon as you go one layer down with anything google or Facebook related you could lose twenty hours trying to figure out what they're attempting to tell you about the simplest of stuff. They are truly dismal if you need to achieve something slightly off piste.

[SystemParanoia]

Did my first arch install onto a USB stick a few months ago.

Monumentously chuffed.

And im in the middle of building a frendica server on one of my new raspberry pi zero's so that i can rejoin the social networking world ... but on my own terms.

so i guess im comming out of my luddite phase... but ill happily go back if what i see scares me! lol

[Antony Moxey]

Almost 50 and I'm rubbish with tech. I have a smart phone and smart tv but use none of the smart bits. On my phone I phone, text, take pics, Facebook a bit and check the footy scores on the Sky Sports app. On the telly it defaults to Sky and I just use that.

I genuinely have no idea how to Skype or Netflix and have no idea how to decipher a tweet. My kids get annoyed whenever we go into HMV to buy a CD and also that I ask them - and usually have forgotten by the time we leave the store - what 'trending' is. I can, believe it or not, import my CDs into iTunes and can update my iPad and iPod with songs and photos but Spotify is alien to me.

I worked out Bluetooth for my phone and iPod in the car, and love the DAB radio but like many others on here a lot of the jargon used in this thread is completely over my head. I am quite pleased that I've learnt to use our washing machine, but only the one setting - what on earth are all those dials and buttons and screen all about (which is also applicable to most kitchen items these days I suppose). Also, as an aside, are most people like me and only use maybe half a dozen of the what seems like hundreds of buttons on the average remote?

[Einion Yrth]

Impasse said:

Whatever happened to programs? Why are apps better?

Because iSaidSo.

HTH

[DukeDickson]

willisit said:

br d said:

Whoa there!
Why can't you just use it like your old school drag and drops? Why? WHY???
That's what everybody in the whole world did before i bloody Tunes. It's a pile of unmitigated horses arse nuggets is what it is.

And I'm free of it thank christ. After years of using Apple stuff I couldn't live with iTunes any more and have been Android for ages now, it's lovely

You can. I do - iTunes might be bunk (on PC at least - awful thing) but the files are usually easy to find and I drag them over to my Android device all the time. Has never failed me yet.

They can be found, but easily, not really. I can, but anyone who doesn't at least have a slip of an idea is boned. However, like a fair chunk of Apple stuff, it does on the face of it have a whiff of Saga about it. Put it on a PC and want to do something that isn't Borg & it is total arse gravy.


Tech in itself doesn't confuse me, how it is loved/hated and used or abused sometimes does. Then there's odd teen to early twenties apps & the belief that none of it can go wrong, very wrong -

[AJS-]

Some technologies. 37 and I bypassed CDs and DVDs. This was a product of having old bangers with tape players until MP3s came along. I did have a few CDs but never really found them very satisfactory. I resisted touchscreens far longer than any sensible person should have but am fine with them now.

Netflix etc doesn't really exist here so that's a whole new thing to either learn or yell at some day.

[Pothole]

The Don of Croy said:

FaceBook - why?

Why not?

I don't really understand this question and I suspect those who ask it only believe the negative hype.

[HD Adam]

qube_TA said:

I feel therefore that we had generations who knew the basics of how stuff worked, when IT came along a lot weren't interested and never grasped it, and we have a young generation who have grown used to everything being easy and handed to them pre-assembled, they're just users.

This.

I'm 54 now and reckon that this is the golden age for knowing and adapting to technology.

I had money in my pocket before decimalization. You had to be able to divide by 12.
None of this moving the decimal point malarkey

Schools taught metric & imperial. I know how many grams there are to a pound, liters to a gallon and millimeters to an inch.

I can convert either way in my head because we didn't have calculators. We did have slide rules & log tables though.

If you wanted a bike, you built one. When you got a car, you could change jets on a carb, set the points, adjust the tappets or fix the starter.

When I first worked in the oil industry, we had these.





For all you whippersnappers, that's a computer.

They didn't have any memory as such. The program was loaded from the tape reel.
You had to know DOS and how to input commands in Hexidecimal on a keypad. There wasn't a mouse.

Later on we went through PC type machines. A 5 3/4 floppy disc was pretty radical in its day.
For bigger processing jobs, bigger machines but you had to know Unix.

It wasn't that long ago really, 20-25 years or so but when you were remote, no mobile phones or any contact unless you count a Telex machine.
You had to know how to install, operate, troubleshoot and fix things and that's just the surface equipment, not downhole stuff.

Ooh, went a bit Python there. Tell the kids that today and they don't believe you.
But if you were tech savvy, you could and can keep up with things.
Smartphone? Check. Skype? Check. Tuning my fuel injection on a laptop? Check.
I don't have issues fortunately.

Now I design & test systems for the oilfield.. Then I get to train people on them.
Like Rockhound says in Armageddon, "The money is good, the scenery changes and they let me use explosives"

People older than me (and not by much) don't get the modern stuff. It's like when my parents first got a video player. They couldn't quite set it up or use it. The clock flashed 00:00 and recording anything was a no no.

People younger than me get it as long as it works. They aren't stupid but it's all plug & play for them. If they plug and it doesn't play, they have no concept of troubleshooting.

Funny old world.

[rxtx]

AJS- said:

I resisted touchscreens

That made me grin, for reasons you're probably not aware of.

Technology hasn't passed me by and I'm glad for that. Depending on what language you program in, and which of its libraries you have installed, you might even have my software on your UNIX servers.

[DragsterRR]

HD Adam said:

Lots of stuff...

Unix? Pah. Terrible OS, always was, always will be. VMS, now there's an OS for ya.

I fall into exactly the same category as you. I can do technology, because I learned how the same time you did.
I made a custom ODBII cable for the Range Rover to cure fault lights.
I play around with RPis and Arduinos etc. I have a couple of 3d printers (One bought one made from scratch).
But that's because it's like going back to the days when you had to know stuff.

But consumer technology leaves me cold. It's not that I can't do it, I can't be bothered with it.
And I'm happily a member of the flashing 1200 generation. Again, not because I can't set the clocks, but I can't be arsed with doing it.

I also loathe the dumbing down of everything to lowest common denominator level.