If you want to look into uncomprehending faces, just try to explain to younger children that just a few years ago the plastic lump with the rotary dial served the same purpose as the shimmering smartphone that they dearly want for Christmas. Or that a typewriter can not only be useful as a decorative element in the retro living room, but actually had an important function.
The situation is similar with a story that the technology portal a few weeks ago The Verge reported. There university professors had their say, who recently had a very special problem conveying what they taught. The students are not lacking in attention or ambition, nevertheless they would have more and more difficulties in delivering work orders on time or at all. Because they can’t even find the files they need. The idea that a file stored on a computer is somewhere on that computer, in a specific place, the young people could not imagine.
Tech manufacturers have continued to simplify the user experience. In return, users become consumers.
Of course, this is just anecdotal evidence. The complaints of stressed educators could still be an early warning signal for a deeper problem. If you think the phenomenon through to the end, the coming generation, which is exposed to digital services and electronic gadgets from the start, could paradoxically also be the first generation that is less as good as its semi-analogue ancestors when it comes to media literacy.
In order to ensure greater and greater convenience, tech manufacturers have tried in recent years to continue to simplify the user experience. Instead of presenting them in a structured directory, modern apps and programs hide the files. An iPhone still does not have a file manager program. You just press an app icon when you want something from the device. If a certain file is actually needed, the search function is used. It doesn’t matter which folder the files are in. Or? In return, the user becomes a consumer.
Because just because the so-called digital natives have intuitive access to technology and can enter the tablet password themselves after they have watched their parents do it, that does not mean that they automatically understand the processes inside the machines. But this is necessary at the latest when it comes to more than basic functions. In a study that examined the computer understanding of middle school students internationally, only two percent of the young people got the highest possible rank. Instead of the future programmers every education politician sees young people as, many of them might as well end up being IT illiterate.
In any case, the dilemma between professors and students remains. The question of who has to adapt now is unclear, for example? The young to traditional forms of representation or the old to a changed handling of the devices themselves. The misunderstanding begins with the simplest semantics: The icon for “Open file” is actually still a folder in almost all Office programs. Even the universal symbol for “save” is no more than a hieroglyph for the years after 1990 at the latest. Because it is still a floppy disk – an object that these people only saw gathering dust in the attic. Right next to the rotary telephone and typewriter.