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http://www.theonion.com/video/are-violent-video-games-adequately-preparing-child,14314/
;-)
I once asked a group of 14/15 year old students to say if they had even been scared and what had scared them.
The results were interesting, mostly fear of loosing family, material goods. Very little physical fear or experiences. Few of them had ever been personally challenged.
In day to day terms they have grown up in a climate of plenty, parents by and large have disposable wealth, the shops are full of goods to buy, daily essentials are delivered to the door or tap so there is little environmental pressure to push yourself outside the comfort zone.
You know, I was trying to make a joke, or at least link to one. But that Onion video maybe has a kernel of truth in it. I don't know about the fears of your former students, but I can guess what you're afraid of. You're afraid you might be looking at a civilization in decline. I mean that's what happens when each new generation is dumber, less capable, than the previous one. That's definitely one of my fears.
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1166827/quotes?qt0975618But is that what's really going on?
If you like conspiracy-folkore, the usual explanation is that the world's unseen controllers, whoever they are, are actually responsible for the decline in aggregate intelligence. Through their control of the popular media, educational systems, chemicals they put in the water, they are actually making you and your children dumber than you were yesterday, or at least dumber than your parents' generation. Here's a good quote:
The phrase "dumbing down", often with the adjective "intentional", that phrase gets used a lot too. I don't know if you've run across that phrase before.
Anyway, this conspiracy business brings me to my next point. You were asking about the popularity of video games, or maybe about the popularity of apocalyptic themes in video games. I think you were saying it's maybe some sort of fantasy escape from the boring, too-safe, real world. And that might be true, but to the conspiracy-minded those games are part of the mass-media, and therefore they are intentional conditioning, mind control of some kind. I'm not sure what the intended result is. Maybe getting young people to willingly join the armed forces, or to accept a bleak destroyed world when it eventually does arrive, as it has been planned to. Or it might just be part of the general goal of all-encompassing distraction alluded to in the Zeitgeist quote above. Erm... you know, that is if it really is part of some vast conspiracy. It's hard to tell what's really going on with the kids these days.
;-)
My initial question was somewhat aside from the idea that civilisation is in decline, conspiracy theory or not , but was really if sub 20 year old's are the computer boffins the media suggests they are.
Seems the general consensus is no.
On the actual question I have a little different insight. I have a "whizz kid" in computers, but he started out in it learning it from me. I can tell you he is not the norm. Many of the younger people I know don't have a clue as to how to fix things, either software or hardware. They know how to use basic commands and such but have no idea as to the inner workings. It could be likened to a car driver. Most of the people driving don't have a clue as to what is actually going on in their vehicles, and when they stop working they call for help.
Most of my business today comes from people who get their computers infected with everything imaginable and have no clue as to how to fix it. They are users, and that is about as far as they go.
I started out out with DOS a long time ago, it laid the foundation for understanding all of what goes on today in computers. I taught several adult Ed computer courses and began by explaining to people how even today's systems, are still file based collections of instructions. Each little program doing something that meshes with all the others and ends up being what you finally see. They actually got a good understanding of it and they did really well. Today's kids don't get taught things like that. They don't want to know what goes on behind the curtain, they just want to see the results. Because of that they might appear to be wizzes but in reality all they are is adequate users.
Having a basic understanding of how something works makes for a better user/driver/pilot. It means that when something goes wrong you don't sit there pushing a button over and over hoping that it will work again. You understand that you need to do something to fix the button.
In addition Most of the engineers I meet seem to be fairly "old" perhaps that is because few younger people are entering a career that is difficult and ever changing.
Generalisations are always a danger but this is one urban myth that I think should be stamped out.
The "silver surfer" far out numbers the younger internet user, I bet that most of the answers here are provided by >25 year old members and most of the questions by <25 years.
I suspect that your experience with engineers is just that since the age range runs from 20ish up to 70ish, the average is 45. I've known a lot of Darned Good youngsters in my field, who have the advantage of having had tools and techniques available from the beginning that came along much later in my own career. On average, I believe they will be better when they reach my age than I am now. And that's a good thing; that's how the field advances.
Generalizations are of course inherently false. (Including that one.) But you have to remember that the very fact that we have found our way to Instructables means that we're probably more computer-savvy than the average populace; the fact that we have stayed here and been able to contribute usefully pushes us further along the curve.
I don't think the kids today are inherently either better or worse than we were. On average, they do have some advantages we didn't. They also have some disadvantages we didn't. Life's like that.
IMNSHO, this really speaks to differences in specialization with perhaps a bit of high expectations, and not to some special deficiency on the part of this ONE generation in the history of the human race.
I personally derive great satisfaction from understanding how and why something works, but I don't understand the attitude that this understanding somehow confers moral authority to those who possess it. There's a lot of "I don't have to know how it works as long as it does", and really, what's wrong with that? Why *must* one know how the plane flies, if it's getting one from point A to point B?
You can't know everything about everything, and we all prioritize knowledge
differently - in the interests of time, I may sacrifice knowledge of one thing, while you could never envision going through life without knowing it.
Nobody knows how everything works; they just know how some subset of things work and sort of fudge knowledge of everything else along the way, hopefully supplementing as necessary. Your personal knowledge priorities seem to lie in the technical workings of certain physical machines (mechanics/electronics); someone elses' might be instead be in another field.
"Kids today" (to apply gross over-simplification, mass-generalization, and near-criminally stereotyping) probably _don't_ have a lot of in-depth knowledge of much - same as any other generation. (Now, some may object "but I was an electronics/mechanical/linguistic/artistic/musical/whatever GENIUS when I was young! And so were all my friends! But particularly advanced knowledge by definition puts you outside of the average sample.) It is when children become adults that the specialization comes - and the fun begins of seeing whether any interesting trends emerge.
Use perhaps, but then, unlike adults who are into technology, they in general don't have to pay for it themselves.
I think the same number are whizzes as there ever were. TV portrays a fictitious POV with respect to the current child generation, and if anything, they've been taught even less of the fundamental grounding principles and tendencies toward inventiveness than we were as children, since the government and merchant industries have been promoting consumership for two generations now, rather than the inventiveness desired in a producer economy.
No wonder we are producing fewer and fewer engineers and scientists.
I remember "everyone" (most anyone I talked to) telling me I was cracked in the head when I warned people that there was something fundamentally wrong with making everything already built and painted, while I was still a teenager and witnessed the beginning of the deconstruction. I got tired of wasting the breath.
We are producing fewer and fewer by design, Mr Harris. Make no mistake in thinking otherwise. Consumer economies do not desire the competition and cannot sustain themselves when people are making things for themselves or fixing things. Big box and precanned ensures that all revenues are directed through singular pipelines, maximizing profit taking opportunities within the international investment sector. keynsian economics at it's unbridled worst.
Repair goes the same way.
BUT Is that a confirmation of my premise that kids today are in general NOT computer wizz kids at all.
In fact, there are, in my guesstimate, a huge number of whiz kids (age not limited) who were laid off or fired in the 2007-2009 purge of white collar jobs in western countries that will remain black listed until there's either a revolution or they die of old age or want, since their independent thought threatens the very basis of the corporate takeover that the investment class is still completing...
Call me a kook, but I suspect that in ten years time, anyone who remembers will just say I was lucky in guessing what was going on back in this decade...
What you see is more % general population using computers where in the past it was mostly the technically-minded, the trained and the weathy/funded.
L
No?
Although I have access to money I still find both pleasure and challenge in making my own versions of things I want or need.
I get a lot of parents talking about how their kids are "good at computers", but they really mean is that their kids can navigate Facebook without having to ask what a profile is.
The kids, though, can't cook without instructions that begin "Remove sleeve and pierce film".
(From my side, what I actually see is a bunch of kids without the first idea of personal security posting all sorts of personal stuff without their parents' knowledge.)
I taught thousands of kids, of which only a handful showed any understanding or even curiosity about the technology around the, and, for the most part, very little patience to find out.
. It's not just the younger crowd. I got started programming computers in 1972 and was active selling, programming, and hacking until about 10 years ago. Now I'm just a plug-and-play user like 99% of the ppl (including the sub-20s) that work with computers.