11% of Americans don’t use the internet | Hacker News Reader

11% of Americans don’t use the internet

thehustle.co

195 pointskdazzle284 comments

It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (though I’m sure there are edge cases, as always).

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.

This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.

More than libraries, I wish there would be really affordable computers.

We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive.

Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.

You can get a Samsung Chromebook for $75. The FCC operates the Lifeline program, which provides subsidized Internet access to low-income Americans, but the program was gutted about three months ago, dropping about 70% of enrollees.

There's also a second hand surplus of old technology. They may have wear & tear and other disadvantages though compared to today's standards: slower CPU, slower IO, less RAM, HDD instead of SSD, dead pixels, (half) dead batteries just to mention a few but hey its an option.

Yup. This is yet another forgotten aspect of software bloat - as it continues, it makes dirt-cheap computing unfeasible, because by the time you get e.g. something like Raspberry Pi, it's already too weak to run software/websites you'll encounter daily.

I get that world isn't fair and poor people keep getting the short end of the stick, but in this case - software bloat - it's really mostly just aggregate of individual choices. So for cryin' out loud, be a little more lean with frameworks and libraries you use. Treat it as if it was charity contribution, if you have to, because in a sense, it is.

Used thinkpads on ebay.

My local library in $SMALL_MIDWEST_TOWN lends Verizon portable hotspots for free.

For your interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

Half of the Italian population is functionally illiterate? What?

Yep. Italian here, Can confirm.

Can you explain why? And does that manifest on a daily level?

Look at their governments over the pas 25 years, I mean, they may not seem that crazy compared to Trump, but they’ve been, and continue to be, really shitty.

It turns out that uneducated people make really uninformed decisions and as a result, it’s tanked their economy and exploded corruption.

I can give you my anecdote from Brazil: there are people of my age (25-35) that have been through basic education (quite a big chunk of them through high school even) that can't express themselves, that can't do basic arithmetic most of the times.

It manifests in a lot of ways on a daily level, from people who can't explain what exactly they want from a store, from a hospital. Communication breaks down easily so they are used to be shouting all the time when talking to try to get a point across, etc.

For an American anecdote, my father taught at a small rural public university, and he encountered students who were functionally illiterate every year. They were almost always from small rural schools. In a larger school, a kid who couldn't read would have had difficulty passing classes, received remedial instruction, been assessed for intellectual disabilities, and so on. Unless they had extremely serious behavioral problems or congenital intellectual disabilities, or they dropped out of the system entirely, they would learn to read! In a school system that is smaller, less impersonal, without extra programs and resources for a teacher to fall back on, it's really hard to label a kid a failure and deny him a diploma just because he's falling behind academically and the unsupported, often barely trained teacher can't get him up to speed. Especially in a small community with lots of illiterate people working and earning a living, it's hard to justify stigmatizing a kid that way and denying him an essential part of a normal American life, namely to go through school with his peers and have all the normal school experiences. So kids get passed along from grade to grade and then (why should 12th grade be different?) they get a diploma.

There was also, I think, a kind of naive view that intelligence was a pretty broad spectrum and a lot of kids were naturally going to end up illiterate. This was understandable if your point of view was restricted entirely to a small rural area where a small but significant number of adults were illiterate. It just seemed natural for some people not to take to reading, and that was just a normal part of life, not something a person should be punished for. (Most teachers had a much more progressive and modern understanding, and I really don't want to overstate the prevalence of this view, but a handful of teachers here and there is enough to produce a steady trickle of children falling through the cracks.)

Another factor was that there was not a uniform understanding of the purpose of high school and college credentials. Most people accepted the notion that a diploma should guarantee a minimal set of skills — functional literacy included. They valued the education and skills that their children were getting. Occasionally another feeling showed through, though, which was that educational credentials were a way of granting life success to some people and denying it to others, and requiring kids to succeed academically in school was just a way to perpetuate class and racial distinctions. This sentiment came to the fore when my state adopted a minimum skills test that kids needed to pass in order to get a diploma. This test was labeled "evil" by some people in my community because it pointlessly (in their eyes) denied their kids a chance for a normal life. They felt no anger or anxiety about the fact that their kids struggled with reading to the point where they couldn't pass a state basic skills test. They were only angry about their kids being denied an important life credential. And with Jared Kushner getting a Harvard diploma, you can't say it was entirely a made-up concern, even if they did adopt a counterproductive attitude towards their kids' education because of it.

Probably more than half. Having access to the Internet means nothing if all one can or wants to do is digesting social media nonsense on a phone: it doesn't improve at all his/her culture while still makes the user subject to manipulation. I have some chemtrails believers among my friends. They're wonderful people in other contexts, but they tend to believe just about every conspiracy theory they're fed through that human stupidity collector called Facebook, and their vote counts as 1 just like mine. I remember them before the social media era, and they were better persons; one of them was (albeit mildly) interested in programming, now he trains weekly at the range because "we're being invaded by immigrants, you have to be prepared". Nope, that ain't Texas, it's Italy.

It’s surprising how well young children use the internet, pre-literacy. My 4-year-old asks Google questions all the time on her laptop, and gets answer most of the time.

There are many other factors for this, but the primary one is how much Google has invested in making that the case. Start them young.

And then later they learn the privacy repercussions. Plus earning money on 4 year olds? If its via advertising its shady. There's code of conduct here that commercials for under 12 aren't allowed (so they target the parents instead, yay).

I'll be teaching my kid to learn to go for the duck instead.

I chuckle every time I remember that when my dad used to interview secretaries to hire ~20 yrs ago, he'd always ask "Can you use computer?" which sounds like a quite funny question to ask a 20-something years old person nowadays, let alone kids.

By the way, I used to think that in the future, when people have had computers already from childhood, everyone would know their way around them really well and be advanced users who know programming and what not. That did not happen.

I would expect that the average computer/smart phone user in 2018 is much less computer-literate than the average computer user in 1998.

You don't have to know anything about computers to use them now. I would expect for most non-technical users, the computer consists of the web browser, and maybe Microsoft Office and a few games and that's it.

It's good that you don't have to know how a computer works to use it, but there are lots of downsides to that as well.

If literacy involves writing, then most kids are illiterate.

Remember the three R’s? Now it’s down to two. Well, maybe one (American kids have long been using calculators).

But a deeper question is, what do we actually lose if people can’t write by hand or do arithmetic?

Writing typically refers to composition, not penmanship. I’m not actually sure penmanship has suffered much from ubiquitous computing. It would be interesting to do a study on it.

> I’m not actually sure penmanship has suffered much from ubiquitous computing.

It certainly has in Japan and China, but I'm not sure that extrapolates to simpler writing systems. I suspect it partially does due to schools spending less time teaching handwriting.

Recall is definitely down, but don’t think penmanship has changed (at least in Japan).

If anything wouldn’t it get better in a sense, since you write so rarely and develop less shortcuts which might be more efficient but less formal/elegant?

Depends what you want out of kids. I can tell you how to NOT do it.

Don't start with block lettering for all of pre and grade school, then switch to ONLY cursive for 3 years... now I can't write anything nicely. It's still readable, more so to me.

As for actual composition, don't force kids in to a rigid structure all the time. Maybe they've changed that too. It took me years to write in a more free form.

I had only cursive for my entire first twelve years of school, then slowly switched to block letters. My handwriting is really nice, but I don't think it had much to do with my school(s). I can't really glean from your comment why you think the kind of writing you are taught has anything to do with the kind of writing you use now.

I stopped writing in cursive the minute I graduated from high school and never looked back. I understand the point and purpose of cursive, I just never liked it.

By the early 90s, my ability to write began to atrophy, not that I couldn't write fine, but that I couldn't write much without my hand getting tired. Now, I can't write more than a few sentences before my hand gets really tired, but I very seldom have a reason to write anything more than a short note. I still make hand-written notes while working (as a software developer), but I find I'm doing that much less than even 5 years ago.

At this point in time, I'd be more concerned about people's ability to compose good communication than their ability to physically write. If social media is any indication, a lot of people can't write simple sentences that follow basic grammar and spelling rules.

Anecdatum, but my handwriting looks like a 5 year old's. It was best when I was a teenager but now that I probably write fewer than 30 words a week on average it's really taken a nosedive. I don't view it as a huge problem, but it's a bit embarrassing.

Still, turns out being able to type well and quickly is far, far more important in my line of work.

I can write very nicely if a make an effort, thanks to a lot of drafting I took in high school back in the Dark Ages, but after more than few sentences, my hand starts hurting.

Maybe they make up some part of the 11% but I imagine age is a big factor. The old folks I know who don't use the Internet are some of the most well-read, whip-smart people I've met.

Here in India—guards, drivers and house helps are all on the Internet all day long!

What do those jobs have to do with illiteracy?

You don't need to be literate to do those jobs and so chances are, a lot of people doing those jobs are illiterate.

You don't need to be, so therefore you aren't? Sounds like a fallacy and a generalization.

But you’re right, there are exceptions, although far in between

Most people who go to school (even up till something like elementary school) do not take up those jobs, hence the jobs do have something to do with illiteracy.

I think functionality illiterate people can still use smart phones. Certainly not to their full capabilities though.

I think they rely on smartphones, especially for basic maths or asking others for help.

I'm disappointed that countries set such a high barrier to entry for immigrants (TOEFL level 6.5-7) when local people probably can't even achieve the same.

They set this high barrier of entry because they want only high-quality immigrants. I assume because they think this correlates with good socioeconomic status in the future (there is some indication of this, but I don't think it's been established. Please do send me some papers if it is, I'd love to read them).

When you look at it from that light, I think it makes more sense.

> I'm disappointed that countries set such a high barrier to entry for immigrants (TOEFL level 6.5-7) when local people probably can't even achieve the same.

Shrug, seems harsh but the local people have a somewhat arbitrary birthright to be there and these countries can afford to pick and choose who they admit.

Especially with the link to crime, why would you ever want illiterate or functionally illiterate immigrants?

More worryingly, about 111% are innumerate.

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy.

He is starting to run into some practical problems. For example, the local library apparently stopped stocking all the paper IRS forms.

Side note: he should be able to get those forms at the post office.

The IRS will also mail them plus the directions if you call and ask.

Also, the library has internet access, so the librarian should be able to print them.

Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. Part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing [citation needed, I know].

Part of me thinks that the easy way now where we can do IRS forms (and everything) online and to our door of our houses, will make us weak.

There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times, but I think i'm going on a tangent from the disappearance of paper IRS forms at local libraries...

> part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing

And yet we are growing closer together every day because of the internet. Technologies like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime enable human interaction like never before. As VR becomes mainstream, along with eye and face tracking, we can expect interaction over the internet to feel 99% as authentic as interaction in real life.

> There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times

Contemporary moral systems look down on suffering. As engineers, we should strive to create a society where suffering and "hard times" are eliminated. The end-goal is everyone being able to enjoy life with tragedies and hardships eliminated.

This is not to say that we should get rid of all intellectual challenges - just that (by any contemporary moral system) it should be the end goal to rid ourselves of suffering.

> suffering and "hard times" are eliminated

There's an ancient intellectual tradition of Buddhism, very much concerned with elimination of suffering. What they came up with is that to stop suffering, one has to stop existing ("break the circle of re-incarnation").

What we can realistically hope for using engineering is to eliminate gross material causes of suffering, like famines, or large-scale warfare, or various illnesses. We can hope to eliminate hardships, but not tragedies, which are endogenous.

Just saying.

Agreed. Elimination of material causes is the best we can do given our current lack of insight into the brain. The discussion becomes much more interesting when we do begin to gain that insight when coupled with the ability precisely and extensively modify it.

And yet we are growing closer together every day because of the internet. Technologies like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime enable human interaction like never before.

I don't find looking at a person on a screen makes me feel "close" to them anymore than watching a person on a television show.

The people I feel "close" to are people I see in real life. But maybe I have a different definition of "close" than other people.

This was intended more towards people you don't normally see face to face. My parents live across the country. I can maybe see them twice a year. My college friends have moved elsewhere, but we can definitely play a game of DnD over Hangouts and Roll20. My relatives live abroad, but I still get (virtual) face-to-face time with them.

This would have been incomprehensible 100 years ago, and is a huge innovation in terms of bringing humans closer together. Sure, if you decide to start communicating with your roommate over FaceTime rather than actually talking to them in person, you're going to experience a decline in "closeness", but if you use these technologies normally, I think they absolutely have the potential to maintain strong connections where none could have existed before.

Worry not my friend, for you are not alone.

I've never heard that quote before but it's pretty solid. :)

The quote is from Herodotus Book 9 Chapter 122, "Soft lands breed soft men", by Cyrus the Persian.

Reference: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...

Oh wow thank you! I have wondered for years where it has come from. I love the following sentence: "...wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.".

This all is reminding me of another saying, a spartan one. A Spartan woman was asked why they do not submit to their men, and she replied with "strong men are not born from weak women".

If anyone is liking these forms of phrases (short, insightful), there is a word just for it: Laconic [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

You are definitely onto something. I'm going to skew this comment towards something similar. As an early twenty-something, I'm urging more friends and family to stop using the internet loosely - meaning, use the medium as a tool but not as a form of entertainment. Extensively, use it as little as possible.

I'm not saying reject the medium but rather try to be acutely aware of how it affects things: perception, mind, body, people, culture, etc. Especially, and this doesn't have to do solely with the internet, try to take an objective view of yourself and your life. In my teens, I used to play a lot of video games and surf the internet for 2/3rds of the day, every day. One late evening, I had to take out the trash to my backyard where the trash-bin was. I'm not sure if anyone has noticed but late evenings are one of the greatest times of the day - it's just honeyed indolence. Well, from outside in my backyard, I noticed my room, I saw all the light coming from my television and my computer. It was sad. That was most of my life. That room. Since then, I try to use technology less and try to be outside as much as I can. But to the point, please take notice of things.

Alas, further reading: Don DeLillo's White Noise.

Is HN a tool or entertainment?

Definitely a tool or at least, mostly a tool - I continue to learn a lot from the site, largely from the comments but also from the links to articles, etc. I suppose it's important to define tool and entertainment. As I see it: A tool is something that helps you grow, create, learn, etc. Entertainment, on the other hand, is something with no intention of helping you, it's only for gratification purposes.

For instance, I think, mindlessly scrolling through reddit.com is a form of entertainment. But if you are subscribed to only certain particular subs in order, for example, to become a better writer, that would be a tool. This is a shaky example though.

> I continue to learn a lot from the site

To me, that makes it entertainment, though I guess learning things can be useful for work too. :-)

This sounds like thinking I've heard from some Amish people.

I sometimes think if the barbarians of the 4th and 5th Century are like today's people who adopt Amish principles, and the rest of the population as 4th and 5th Century Romans. There are extremely identifiable markers.

The only recollection I have on the Amish is from Family Guy - I'm not close to that. On a serious note, what I was trying to argue, in short, was: 1. Anything in excess is not good. 2. Try to think and be aware of the effects of things like the internet have on you, people, culture, etc.

Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already.

I'm not sure why. Libraries are still massively popular, and most have embraced digital media fully. In many of the cities where I've been in the last 10 years, the libraries are struggling to keep up with demand. Many even have coffee shops and internet cafes.

In my estimation, a lot of people under 40 think the library is empty all the time because they've never been to one to see what it offers.

It's like how people say they don't watch PBS because there's nothing good on. But how do they know there's nothing good on if they don't watch?

My parents were internet-free until they figured out that a smartphone could show them pictures of grandkids. My siblings with kids were printing and mailing them pictures, but out parents were cut out of the daily fb updates of their grandchildren.

It is funny, I think that is pretty standard stuff, getting instant photos. But it is actually a huge change compared to how things were 20 years ago.

What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

If you spent your life becoming very efficient in a particular environment, there's an incentive to keep this environment from changing, and not to expend any effort to learn a new environment. That learning capacity can be more efficiently spent elsewhere.

(An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important things to do.)

A big component of mastery is wiring your brain to make the right decision without sweating over the details like you did when you were 25. Replacing problem solving with intuition. But what happens 20 years later when your intuition is no longer correct? Or when someone keeps asking why? You’re out of practice, And you’re trying to rewire a part of your brain that is no longer part of your internal dialog.

Teaching seems to be one way to avoid this. You have to keep defending your decisions. Switching specializations (or creating new ones) is another. The only other way I know is to seek outside help, and that level of humility is rare in experts.

There is another way. Keep challenging yourself with new projects, be a life learner.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

It gets better: there are places selling their software via hardware appliances that run RHEL6.

That is better, actually. If it's proven for that many years why mess with it? Why assume that older is unilaterally worse?

Ecliptic Curve cryptography. In-tree driver modules for last year's 10Gb Ethernet cards. Python 2.7, let alone 3. Official support for kernel 4.x.

I've barely been in the industry for 90 days and I've already had to deal with the lack of the above in RHEL6.

(Indirectly, mind you; but I believe that the transition between RHEL6 and CentOS6 is negligible for the current topic.)

Hardware appliances would generally be one place none of these things matter - you know if your gray box ships with a 10gbe card or not, customer doesn’t care about userland versions, etc.

That said, I also hate working on RHEL 6.

What's better than a relatively impenetrable appliance? One that manifestly doesn't care about security and therefore uses an old kernel and vulnerable userland. If they use an old unsupported OS, what other vulnerable libraries are hiding inside?

RHEL 6 is supported until 2024.

Oh, goody, just in time for the theoreticians to finally tell us that any kind of speculative execution can be made into a security flaw, and that there's nothing to do about it but to crawl back into a hole, err, I mean, back to ARM micro-controllers. :)

RISCV :)

> none of those things matter

... unless the software's needs evolve over time such as to require them.

> you know if your gray box ships with a 10gbe card or not

Yes; and lucky we do know. Else, our upcoming model of gray boxes that - unlike their predecessors - aren't approaching EOL but are only available with 10gbe cards ... would already be shipping with broken networking.

Hypothetically, if you needed python couldn't you either compile it to binary or just install the runtime ? I don't see how a language would be coupled to the version of Linux.

Doing so means putting all Python packages into a single opaque OS-level package. Not fun when your build system and related infrastructure, were all designed to work with OS-level packages.

Why? You just use package dependencies to indicated that they depend on the New Python.

Third-party dependencies. Their BRPMs will all install to the OS's old Python. Pull them from PyPI using setup.py, and we get the problem I describe; the alternative is to build our own BRPMs, which is a massive headache to set up.

Can't you just set PYTHON_PATH="where yoy put python" ?

> all Python packages

That's a weakness in the language. You trade such a simple syntax for dependency hell. Oh, you wanted XML-derp-3.5.2.9.6? Well that requires XML-slurp-2.6.5.9.77 and you only have '75, sorry bud, can't possibly work. Oh but if you upgrade XML-slurp that breaks pycairo-2.7.55-1 and all your GUI code will stop working. Fun stuff.

Not my choice. We've had over 50kloc of Python for several years before I arrived. The packaging shenanigans still occasionally sputter.

>there are still places running RHEL6 in production

We just got off of RHEL5, so I can understand why there are people still running 6.

There are places that just forked RHEL5ish and update the kernel and packages. At some point it's a mess, but until then, just keep patching.

> An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while.

I recently interviewed at a startup (though a reasonably far-along/mature, if not spectacularly successful by VC standards) that was both running RHEL6 and depending a remarkable amount on "enterprise" gear, software, and support, which seemed incongruous for any small company, let alone a startup.

They did see it as worthwhile to "migrate" to CentOS6, but I'm pretty sure the interviewer who was the incumbent rejected me quickly and strenuously after I admitted a preference for Ubuntu (due to its package ecosystem better catering to a wider array of developers, making my DevOps culture evangelism and implementation that much easier) and a focus on frugality first when it comes to hardware (that being a huge benefit of it being a commodity).

> They have more important things to do.

Poe's Law aside, I do actually find this to be a valid argument, if it's presented eyes-open, rather than just through inertia.

That is, there's a difference between having considered the migration and deciding it's not worth it (or that the "more important things" are more worth it and take priority) and not having considered the migration at all because those "more important things" completely consumed everyone's attention. I don't mean to present these as a false dichotomy, just two extremes that illustrate my point.

> (An IT illustration: there are still places running RHEL6 in production and not seeing an effort to migrate from it worth the while. They have more important things to do.)

We're currently re-building all our systems to target RHEL6 because that's what the execs decided, if we're lucky the project will be done before it's end of lifed. They also decided that we'd be using modern c++, more modern than the GCC that ships with RHEL6. Thanks to these largely incompatible requirements the team responsible has practically built their own distro on top of RHEL6, with a newer gcc and a rebuild of all the libraries we use complete with it's own package management system. I think it's customized enough that a highly doubt redhat could off us any support anyway.

> who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser

Do you need to now IP protocol to use the internet?

Old people generally don't like change, they have things set up as they like them.

If you need to configure a computer, understand the difference between an email and a webmail and imap, what is a certificate and why it matters, you need a basic understanding of how these things work.

Right, but they don't need to configure that crap, they get someone else to do it.

My parents both had Ph.D. educations in chemistry. A big part of my father's work involved scientific programming in Fortran. Both used computers in their research. Neither really got on board with the internet. My father never even used email. My mom did, but minimally.

I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it.

I know a woman who until recently worked as a secretary to one of the presidents of a large regional bank. The first thing she did each morning was to print out the president's e-mails, and bring them to him on paper. He would then dictate his responses and she would send the e-mail responses for him.

The job paid big bucks for several reasons:

- She knows how to take fast, accurate dictation with steno. They don't teach that anywhere anymore.

- She knows how to file. Real paper files.

- She would place his phone calls for him, old-fashioned style. He would say, "I need to talk to Mr. X," and a in a couple of minutes she'd be on the phone: "Is this Mr. X? Please hold for bank president Y."

- She dressed the part; coming to work in a proper business suit and briefcase each day, not carrying a backpack like a sixth-grader.

- She didn't mind making coffee for the boss. It's a hate crime to even ask these days, but she did it happily.

That bank president must have a very low stress level, since he only had to see his paper e-mail once a day.

You read my mind with that last sentence. As I read your anecdote, I was marveling at how much relief she probably created by circumventing the email/slack/txt/messenger treadmill the rest of us are forced to run on during a workday.

>the email/slack/txt/messenger treadmill the rest of us are forced to run on during a workday.

Or at all hours of the evening, night and early morning, since some people we work with don't seem to understand the concept of leaving work at work.

You can enforce such rules on your own, by slowly trimming down after-hours "work" (since it is unpaid, it's not work to me). You can compensate this with very good time management and always being on time/reading up on meeting agendas. Nobody will openly criticize you for such a practice since everyone sees you as together and competent. Eventually they get used to this status quo and nobody will even question it anymore in your case. It might take you a few years, but it pays off in the end I think.

Maybe the _are_ still at work! :-)

I think having an assistant would be a relief even if I read my own email.

I know law partners who are like this. If they generate so much value for their employer they can hire an assistant solely to bridge the technology gap.

My father was exactly like this (he retired last year after 49 years in practice as a lawyer, several decades of which he was managing partner of his own firm) - if he needed to send an email, just like sending a letter, he would shout down the corridor to his secretary and she would send it for him. Here's one just for the HN open-office haters: he only really retired because the consultancy gig he'd taken on for the twilight of his career (during which he still had a secretary who would send emails for him) switched to an open-office floor plan and he was extremely miserable because he could no longer take a nap after lunch.

Curiously, post-retirement he's bought a smartphone and is actually moderately competent with it, in a way I never really saw him be with a computer...

> - She dressed the part; coming to work in a proper business suit and briefcase each day, not carrying a backpack like a sixth-grader.

> - She didn't mind making coffee for the boss. It's a hate crime to even ask these days, but she did it happily.

This seems like very strange editorializing to me. Do backpacks bother you so much? Who is complaining about making coffee if that's in the job description?

There are some groups of people that find such tasks offensive/beneath them. I don't understand why, I have just seen it in practice.

Perhaps my experience is unique, but in the places i've worked, everybody made each other tea all the time when their colleages were busy - and if one thing was certain, its that the boss never made their own tea. I don't think it was every considered a problem. That was just the order of things

I would be surprised if this is still not one of the responsibilities of secretaries that work for CEO's.

What’s wrong with having a bookbag?

Here in Finland, practically everyone carries one. From young kids to grown adult men and women. I even saw an old person with one the other day. One can’t carry as much nor is it practical to use briefcases.

They said it themselves. Its about _looking_ a part. If they wanted practicality it would be business casual and a backpack but its not about that. Monkey suit and briefcase shows you're willing to jump through the hoops, toe the line and wear the uniform.

I think the Finnish point was that in Finland you are looking the part with a back pack.

I'd argue that briefcase's are more practical for that kind of job where it involves a lot of paperwork, as you can lay them flat without worrying about crumbling them.

I'll allow a book strap.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/illustration-depicting-...

You accidentally hit the core of the coffee problem. Woman in your story is secretary and coffee and baby sitting boss is her job description. Bank (industry) professionals are not expected to make coffee nor write boss mails. The women who complain about the coffee requirement are complaining that they are treated as secretaries and expected to do secretarial work, despite being industry professionals.

It is also dominance game - there is that thug-of-war among professionals over autonomy, leadership, ideas, credit, blame and what not. A person that should have no authority to order her around is ordering her around in front of third parties, which makes him look more like a boss and her more like secretary. Both request and complaint are office politics. Not coincidentally, secretaries (unlike industry professionals) are supposed to act rather submissive and manage boss emotions rather then propose ideas, argue or fight for them.

- She knows how to take fast, accurate dictation with steno. They don't teach that anywhere anymore.

Of course they do, usually it's directed at court jobs, but anyone can take a steno course.

Court stenography is computerized now. And even decades ago was mechanized.

"Steno" with pencil and a steno pad. Not a stenography machine.

Yes, but there are still shorthand classes, e.g. https://www.kbcc.cuny.edu/TutorialServices/Pages/tutorialcou... (search for "Office Administration & Technology")

> - She dressed the part; coming to work in a proper business suit and briefcase each day, not carrying a backpack like a sixth-grader.

This is something I've been thinking more and more about lately. I used to be happy with the lax attitude most tech places have to attire but honestly I look around my office now and I wish we had a bit more of a dress standard. I was a tshirt and hoodie fiend but changed to slacks/smart jeans and a shirt recently. I've been on the end of so many barbs and jokes from coworkers over this (which I take in good humour). Interestingly I've found that I'm being taken more seriously by our management side/CTO etc. I have no interest in moving over there by the way, I'll be coding til I retire.

I'm going to be asked why we should change and what's wrong with the casual approach. I think if as a profession we want to be taken seriously, we need to start looking the part. Sure a lawyer could rock up into court wearing shorts and a faded 1980s Man Utd jersey and still do a good job, but honestly what would you actually think of him? What is actually wrong with looking smart?

Right! Workplaces seem to advertise to, for example, computer people how they are relaxed and that you can come to work in jeans. I just want to get to wear a suit for once, for the enjoyment of myself and others!

We had Classy (Client* Team) Mondays at a previous job of mine. The whole larger group would come in dressed up in suits and business appropriate dresses, then have some nibbles and drinks afterwards.

Pretty much a reverse of a casual Friday.

* Client in the client-server computing sense.

Monday is a good day for that as well - gives you time to panic-prepare/iron on sunday evening :)

I'd do the same if they invested in proper AC (Germany wide issue). But for now, shorts it is until summer is over.

>but honestly what would you actually think of him

I would hire him as my full time lawyer in a heartbeat, but that's just me.

If you'd hire someone based solely on their clothing (the only data point we have here), then you should review your decision making processes.

Warren Buffett I believe works in a similar way - his emails are printed out and he dictates responses. It probably saves quite a lot of time over checking the inbox in the usual way.

Age? How many young kids are curious about how plumbing works or lawnmower engines? It probably has more to do with you and your friends being curious about something and not understanding why other people in general aren't curious about it.

For many people who started worked before the 80’s, using a keyboard is for clerical work, and a sign of reduced social status.

Doctors expect to be catered to. They're at the top of an entire apparatus designed for their convenience, that starts by making people come for appointments on their schedule, and ends with it being acceptable for them still to use paper charts in 2018.

I'm not blaming these guys, they're part of a system that treats them like gods.

> who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser

Out of and interest in both computer protocols and medicine, I'm curious to know if you have any specific examples of those concepts you mention.

My 70-something parents keep their cell phones at home, since they are so nice, so nothing happens to them. They carry pens and paper if they need to track something.

My dad was a privacy-conscious bus driver in the 1980s, and has always had an unlisted number. These days, I know he's calling because caller ID shows "Private Number" when he calls.

They carry pens and paper if they need to track something.

I do, too. And in the nerdiest possible way: https://logostore-globalid.us/ProductDetail.aspx?did=17363&p...

And it's super cheap!

This looks like a great gift. Thanks for the idea!

These days I know it's my dad calling because he's the only one who actually makes plain-old telephone calls.

Does the US IRS have an auto-fill feature for tax software?

In Canada you sign up at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA is Canada's IRS) and get a log on. Then at tax time you can download free tax software from links on the CRA website, click auto-fill to populate with your info and then click the e-file button. That's it, done.

My dad in his mid 70s probably wouldn't do it so your dad may not either if it was available in the US. But it is a great feature to have it makes it almost to the point of why is anyone doing this it should be automatic each year.

> Does the US IRS have an auto-fill feature for tax software?

No.

See: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...

I used to think making it more automatic was a clearly good idea _until_ I listened to that episode and was introduced to the counter-argument that people should well know what taxes they pay, to make it harder to sneak things in there or make the existing things swell without scrutiny.

This is why there's automatic withholding of income tax from your paycheck. If you never see it, you're less likely to miss it. The whole system is designed to try to keep you from realizing how much you pay.

Many companies sell software to do US taxes for you and an automated system would shut them down overnight so they spend a lot of money blocking any changes to make tax easy.

Here in South Africa, you give your employer(s) your tax number and for ordinary employment they report your earnings. Then come tax time, you log onto the e-filing system and most of it is done for you already.

That's perfectly fine. To the vast majority of HN, the internet may be the 2nd most time consuming aspect of our lives after family life (or perhaps the 1st). So much of our lives revolves around the internet - maintaining friendships, getting into careers, learning new things - that we've become almost inseparable from the revolutionary communication it provides.

Yet, as amazing as the internet can be, it's still what you make of it. There's users with greatly varying proficiencies with vastly different use cases. Some people just aren't as accustomed to it as others. For us younger folks, it's easier to take something for granted when you've had it basically your entire life. A person who is 50-60 years old (born between 1958-1968) was in their 20s-30s when the internet was becoming mainstream. As someone in their 20s that thinks "wtf are these kids talking about" when a teenage cousin explains the internet culture of "vlogging", I could imagine some of the people back when the internet first came about were like "wtf I can send mails to other people over the telephone wires that's not telegraph and is done by computers" (I'm exaggerating). As you can see by standard adoption curves, there's always a group of last remaining holdouts. Maybe they've gotten by fine in life without adopting and don't feel compelled to bother. As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". These people carry with them what seems to be a soon-to-be historical lifestyle that's still important to remember.

This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...

whats the exchange rate with wikipedia articles?

I think that’s a fair point. If you exclude audiobooks, I don’t think I read one between the two previous summer solstices… but I’ve been writing and am now in the middle of editing what is currently a 130k word novel.

What’s the connection between reading books and the internet, aside from literacy? They’re such different things, I’m not clear on the connection between reading and the internet.

There's a shockingly high percentage of people age 60+ who get all their news from local/cable/satellite TV and never read books.

Not shocking at all when you consider what age does to the eyes.

> I’m not clear on the connection between reading and the internet.

Prior to the internet, books were the only way humans consumed large amounts of textual information. Now, we have web pages, which 89% of people use, whereas books, which have never been more accessible, still linger at 76% usage.

One assumes of the 89% of people who use the Internet, 100% of them use web browsers, web sites, and thus read lots of textual information. That's as close to 100% penetration for a technology as you're gonna get, in my view. I wonder what percentage of Americans use toothbrushes!

I suppose there might be some subset of Internet users who exclusively use YouTube/Netflix (children, maybe?) That would be the only wrinkle in the comparison, IMO.

> books were the only way

I am sure you mean newspapers and magazines. Books still are.

and thus read lots of textual information.

I don't think that follows. If you use Instagram, YouTube, Imgur, 9GAG, and such, you barely need to read any text. Same for Facebook, depending on the people you follow.

Frankly I'm shocked it's only 24%.

How much of a book must one read to qualify as reading a book? Do we include online books that are unfinished, or not read start-to-finish?

The cited study was a number for "in whole or in part". So, in other words, 24% of Americans "neither cracked open a print book nor sat down in front of a Kindle to start reading a digital one."

That number doesn't surprise me. I personally did not read a book in whole or in part in 2017 or 2016. It's something I don't need to do for my career and is not a past time of mine. My reading primarily comes from the internet. When I do read it's maybe a handful of books in a year.

That’s alarming and sad. No pleasure or drug is as powerful as a good work of fiction.

I have read fiction in the years in question, but most of my fiction consumption lately has been serial TV (by internet). Modulo Sturgeon's Law, the quality in the last decade has gone way up.

This could be said about Game of Thrones in the first book. Sadly, it's not 1996 anymore.

I don’t think so - web forums and HN itself has taken over a lot of my attention that was once given to books. I still read a book or so a month, but that’s probably a quarter of what it was ten years ago.

There's nothing sad about it. I know people that hadn't watched a movie or TV show in 2017. I know people that hadn't played a video game in 2017. It's just a matter of perspective and interest.

I didn't read a book for probably 2 years at some point.

That doesn't mean I'm poorly educated or ignorant. I was reading a lot, I was just reading articles rather than books.

I still don't read a lot of books. I just don't enjoy them that much. I'll read short fiction and poems, but I just don't really like novels.

What about non-fiction?

I guess it depends on what you qualify as a book.

I mean... there are many years (since being an adult) that I haven't read a book: why would I need to read one when I have online news, blog articles, wikipedia and other such resources.

Media comes in a lot of forms these days. I've definitely read a book in the past year, but - especially if you restrict it to written word (e.g. no visual novels) - there's a good chance that the 3 otherwise reasonably intelligent people I live with haven't done the same.

They've listened to audio books, watched movies and tv, played video games, gone to plays, played board games, read both long and short form articles, flipped through facebook, kept up with the news, listened to music, watched youtube videos and other short films, but reading a book is a really big investment, and there's a good case to be made that it just isn't as important as, for instance, keeping up with culturally relevant tv or movies, if you want to keep up with the best and most widely experienced parts of modern culture.

I'm pretty sure audiobook counts.

If performances of literary works count, then presumably TV, movies, and plays are included as well?

To perceive and interpret information in form of long text (which can thus have much complex structure due to having less limitations in length) surely requires more brain work than something like TV. Certain formats of narrative simply do not work in a play or a movie. They have to be adapted.

Usually if people read books, they will often be able to listen audiobooks to the same effect - and vice versa, people who can't read 3 pages because "they get bored", often can't listen to long audiobooks either (and focus on them, as opposed to just have them in background).

And IMO internet amplifies attention deficit, making it harder to read books unless you're very willing or isolated.

My Grandfather is one of those 11%. However I suspect he's a bit different from the others. Up until the late 90s he was programming Fortran and COBOL. He started during the Korean War or just after I believe. Towards the end he was mostly doing contract work as one of the few people who could still work on them. But after he retired technology stopped for him. The latest innovation he'll use is a DVD player. The only reason he doesn't have a tube TV is it died five years ago and we got him a flat screen.

To be fair he may never have gotten used to using a GUI on a PC or the internet at large. But still, it's my grandmother who runs their email account and shared cellphone.

My father is like that, although not as extreme. He was also a professional Fortan programmer. I showed him Visual Basic 6 when he retired in the mid-90s and he's still using it today for all his programming projects. He uses email and will websurf some, but has no interest in a cell phone or anything else invented in the last 15 years or so.

Oh, but he really wants a Tesla. He's in his mid-80s. :)

I think your grandfather and I are kindred spirits.

When I retire, I don't plan to ever use a computer again if I don't have to. There's nothing on the internet that can compete with the fulfillment available from my wife, my dog, and my actual real life friends.

I'll keep the computer but I'm planning to disconnect from the internet once I retire.

For what tasks do you intend to use the computer?

Everything that computers were used for before the internet?

Yeah, what was that, really? Typing QBASIC programs from paper into the computer? Using it as a fancy typewriter? Calculating ballistic trajectories? That's all I can remember.

I'd write an enormous list here, but it's probably easier and more educational for you to go to archive.org and look at the software ads in pretty much any issue of Byte magazine before 1990.

We can also ask what we use the computer for now, for which we don't need the Internet.

That's incredible. Have you interviewed him with audio or video yet?

Old people can use the internet just fine if they want to; my 80-year-old mother happily uses it to buy all kinds of stuff, to pay her bills, to keep up with family on Facebook, etc.

Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.

Sorry to hear about your father, neverartful; that has to be incredibly difficult. Wishing you peace, for whatever it's worth.

at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...

African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)

Sorry to hear that. Stay strong!

I had taught my grandma how to use a feature-phone and she was pretty happy with it. Later she was diagnosed with dementia, that phone's battery is dead for some years now. Somewhere down the line, she forgot how to use her phone (and pretty much anything else). It's sad watching her unlearn things.

For some older people the logic of the operating system is nearly incommunicable. They get keyboards, as they've typed. They can get a grip on a mouse. But after that they've got the face of a dog that's just been shown a new trick.

Not just older people. For a lot of people the GUI is the computer, and anything inside may as well be magic. I’ve known more than one who has referred to the whole computer enclosure as the hard drive.

Obviously, because the screen is the computer, so the big box has to be the hard drive :)

My mom is in her 70s and she has three laptops that she uses regularly - an old netbook that they use when they travel, a 13 inch laptop that she works with away from home and her main computer is a 17 inch that is easy on her eyes. She also has every kind of gadget and adapter known to man, a portable inkjet printer and two or three other working printers at home.

Not to mention my old Mac Mini I gave her after installing Windows 7 that she lets her students use when she tutors.

My dad has his own 17 inch Dell that he uses and he loves the Roku TV that I got him for Father’s Day.

Even worse, they already had DSL but they got cable internet when I stayed there for the summer and was working remotely. She kept both just in case one started acting flaky.

She uses Word and Publisher all of the time.

It helps that my mom is a retired high school teacher and we always had computers in the house since 1986.

Absolutely - this article doesn't claim otherwise. Disproportionately (by a large margin) they don't, but even so about two-thirds of the 65+ age group does use the internet. (See the age chart about halfway down the article.)

I have relatives that will never use the internet, they are just from a different era and have no interest. Nor do they have cellphones. Conversely I have other similar aged relatives that can't get enough of it on their laptops, iPads and smart phones. There definitely seems to be a split mentality for that generation.

Yep, my 80yo mom can't get enough of it. It's funny, because 15 years ago she poo-pooed it and didn't see why she'd need a computer or the internet.

My dad is in his late 60s and belongs to a generation of non-tech office workers that had to learn to use computers without mice for word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.

It's more impressive when you turn this number around: 89% of Americans "use the Internet", up from just over 50% less than 20 years ago.

That is an insane adoption curve for a network that basically didn't exist -- at least not in an approachable, mainstream way -- within the current memory of many of its users.

That's faster than the update rate of either the telephone or electricity or indoor plumbing. (Arguably fair I suppose, since those things all require more infrastructure than the Internet does, which if needed can run over existing telephone infrastructure, and did for a long time.)

And of the people who aren't using the Internet, the plurality (according to the article) are declining to use it by their own decision -- "just not interested" -- not because they can't afford to get online, or don't know how to, or some other externally-imposed hurdle. Which is their prerogative; if people aren't online, I'd hope it's by their own choice and not through inability (the same as not reading books -- if someone isn't reading books regularly, one hopes it's because they're not interested, not because they're illiterate).

Makes me wonder if when we are 80 years old, we'll be organizing retro LAN parties to play Unreal Tournament (1999 release) in our retirement homes.

I'll be there for that.

I stopped LAN'ing way before that; and I'm from the early 80s. (80's of christ not of age.) Let's play something older. I stopped playing way before Unreal.

Indeed, I remember when PhoneNet made ad-hoc AppleTalk networks a bit easier (although, by then, the LocalTalk hardware, genuine and clone, was common enough, too, except sometimes long enough cables could still be a rarity).

... you’re not already doing that?

I organized a LAN party to play SiN a while back. It was fun!

I'm not a hacker. I got my first PC in '88 (a 286 with a 20mb HD) because for sure it was going to be the thing in a few short years. I was 28 and wanted to use it for my business... the NIGHTMARE of trying to; load software, hookup a printer, get the modem to work and so and so was just unbelievable. I persisted though, in fact when Windows was seriously starting to dominate-I even refused to use for a damn long time. Anyway, my point is I bet more than a few of those 11 percenters are peeps my age who just never got comfortable at the command screen.

I was a little disappointed not to read anything about conscientious objectors, having just read Wendell Berry's 1987 article "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" [0]. Idealistic as he is, Berry's work appeals very strongly to me. But maybe there isn't anyone like that anymore.

[0] http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html

When I read an article like this I'm reminded that Pamela Jones (PJ) [1] of Groklaw [2] -specifically, her last Groklaw article [3]- might be one of them.

Quoting from the last article:

"The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.

[...]

Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over.

[...]"

My point isn't that a significant percentage of the 11% consciously don't use the Internet for similar reasons. I don't know how significant such as percentage would be. My point is that there are people around who consciously do not use the Internet (at all) for privacy/security reasons. The Internet isn't a panacea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw

[3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

It blew my mind when I visited my grandmother recently.

There's a computer in the household. My grandfather used it avidly since the days of dialup. He didn't give up the dialup connection until well into the 2010s. I'm not sure if he still uses it. My grandmother was never interested in it.

My grandmother still certainly has her wits about her. She does NOT fit the mold of someone un-skeptical or easily swayed due to senility. Yet like many older people she voted for Trump despite voting Democrat in the past and living in a very blue area. This of course is very curious to me.

Eventually my conversation with my grandmother went to the topic of news media. I had mentioned that I do not like the way news reports anecdotes and not data and paints a misleading picture. I mentioned a few of my favorite sources which eschew this trend (fivethirtyeight, the economist etc).

My grandmother replies that she knows full well the news is garbage. The thing is to my grandmother the news is whatever she can buy at the corner news stand. Her options are the New York Post or the Daily News. She has considered maybe spending the extra money to buy the New York Times.

Coming from a world where news comes in an infinite stream from infinite sources straight into my pocket 24/7, it completely blew my mind that news for her comes from 2 sources and only once a day and both are owned by Murdoch. I am used to a world where debates can abruptly end with "lets look it up". In the world of my grandmother, remembering a few stories from the papers and friends is the only reasonable basis to form an opinion on anything.

Maybe we've overvalued the importance of fake news on the internet.

Presumably your grandmother has had the same news options for the past... many years, and was subject to the same pressures. Are you just thinking about this now because she voted against your wishes?

My grandmothers news options didn't manifest in any unexpected way in the past. Nothing to do with my wishes.

I just got back from a camping trip in the White mountains region of New Hampshire. Neighboring cities strike me as those where high tech lifestyles aren't needed nor preferred. Locals congregate in the early morning where breakfasts are served. No one looks at a phone once. People seem to enjoy the company of those in reality over those of their online social network.

I see why this lifestyle is alluring.

I left a comment about this on HN the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306) - 8 months ago, I launched a product to serve the older population, blending old and new, called NanaGram (https://nanagram.co). We let you send printed photos to a loved one in the mail with just a text message.

Older people like my late grandfather are some of the happiest I've ever met. I think one of their secrets is growing up in a more disconnected world. I've honed my ability to stay off the internet for long periods of time but this skill is just the default state for many older people and isn't a challenge they face. I didn't always struggle with internet addiction and remember life before and after the internet. Some of my most joyful moments in the past year have been visiting loved ones just after spending 2 or 3 days completely disconnected.

There's a great book called Happiness is a Choice You Make about the "oldest old", people over the age of 85. I touched on in the book in this blog entry and expanded on some of the lessons I learned hanging out with my 94-year-old grandfather as often as possible over the last couple years: https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook.

My grandfather never learned how to internet but we did have a hilarious unboxing moment with the Amazon Echo this past December. He made it to a viral TV show and tried to negotiate for bitcoin as compensation. While it was very promising, we never truly got his Echo habit to stick as he and my grandmother kept pressing the wrong buttons. https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing

I wonder will the internet have matured (jumped the shark with excess commercialism, JS, ads etc) to the extent TV has that people start cord cutting the net.

Anecdotally the novelty is starting to wear thin with more than a few people I know who barely use anything beyond a chat service and a little shopping (probably at Amazon).

People didn't start cutting the TV cord because of commercialism or ads or really anything about TV in particular; they cut because there was a substitute. Until there's another option as good for that chat and shopping, they'll keep their internet connection (even if only a cellular one).

there is a kind of natural selection on the internet that breed things that capture attention- sometimes i think of the internet as an intelligent agent thats just trying to exist in as many minds as prominently as possible. it will only get better at this, but i guess i wonder if it gets better easier by hijacking attention, or by being helpful. i feel like hijacking attention might be hitting a ceiling? at least i hope so.

I don't think that's completely true.

There was a choice between streaming services with no ads and TV with ever longer ad breaks and cheaper programming. Dissatisfaction with TV made the choice easy. No ads was a big selling point for Netflix.

I'm tempted to unplug when I retire in a bit more than a decade. After working in tech for 20+ years, the idea is appealing. I doubt it will be very easy to function in an ever-connected society however.

What is tempting for you in that idea, if you don't mind?

Not being on call, not being reachable 24/7 by family, friends, work. The expectations of persistent connectivity has grown tiresome.

I used to work with a very hands-on CEO who called me multiple times a day.

I learned to take vacations in places without cell coverage. Honestly some of my favorite vacations over the past few years.

I love my CEO, but when I take a week off I really want to be away from it all. It’s not a vacation if I’m being called to do a support call or some such.

It already has jumped the shark for me. I go online for HN, arxiv, stackoverflow/other online documentation, and google groups for my ulti league. I don’t use the internet for recreation anymore at all. It’s a cesspit. I have an rss reader that I check for headlines every couple of days, a Spotify account, and Hulu/Netflix/hbo go that I don’t use enough to justify the expense. If there were a way to find non-toxic, non-bullshit content (sort of an anti-reddit), I might consider using that if it were completely ad-free. I really miss the old days of the internet before there was any significant amount of money to be made. Forums, personal web pages, etc were fucking awesome. You could really feel the personal passion for what people were doing. People felt entitled to be themselves without fear of retribution, offending others, or failing at some standard set by society. Now it seems like everything is about chasing either money or likes. I fucking hate it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I wish all three perspectives had been more like the last one; the first two were pretty much just the stereotype of old people who don't like the internet because it's too newfangled. It's more interesting to learn about factors that limit people who otherwise might use it.

I wish I could be one of them.

You can, at least for a few hours a day, or even for multi-day streaks. Your friends might think you're weird at first but they'll get over it.

"don't use the internet" is a vague qualifier.

My father has a Gmail and a Facebook account, both of which he signed up for himself. He last signed into the latter no less than 5 years ago. He interacts with his email account by calling myself or my siblings and asking them to check it for him. A few times a year.

Sometime a year or two ago he borrowed my brother's computer and went online to do some research into something he wanted to buy online; no assistance required so he's not computer illiterate. He just has absolutely zero day-to-day need for them.

11% seems very very low.

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

Laughs in Moodle

I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..

Right, could be a repeating pattern, but could also be a downward slope.

or just shifting around how people zonk out.

I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption.

For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier.

Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents

Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.

Grew up with kids TV in the 70s and 80s thanks :p

I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. Walkmans in the 80s, yes; games, yes; TV, definitely as mentioned. All of those have cropped up in the news more than a few times while they were topical.

Maybe UK radio got a different reaction to the US?

Back in the 60's and 70's, it was mostly criticism of radio stations that played rock music.

That’s because it was normalized in the 70s and 80s. When it was still new people moaned about overconsumption, just like the internet.

>I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember.

You're far too young to remember. There were two distinct moral panics about radio; the first in the 1930s when radio first became popular in the home, and the second in the early 1960s when transistorisation allowed teenagers to have radios of their own.

Until 1967, the BBC did not have a pop music station. Until 1973, commercial radio was illegal. The pirates who filled the demand for pop radio in the interim were hugely controversial. A great many column inches were spent fretting over the corrupting influence of foreign broadcasters, beaming salacious rock and roll music into the bedrooms of British children.

Fair enough.

Of course I also remember the huge moral panic over us all going to hell for playing rock records backwards for satanistic messages. We all tried, and failed, to find one of course after hearing of this. :)

I'm rather surprised about the 1930s - early British radio was so worthy and busy and educating the populace. I'm surprised there was much scope left for panic.

Nice pink floyd reference, see my above post about the mexicans and the africans, too.

The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube. Thankfully my kids really like the learning series on Netflix (Umizoomi, True etc) instead of the horrible 'daddy finger' to cheap animation of babies which qualifies as 'child content' on YouTube.

The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube.

IF you're talking only about children-specific stuff, then maybe so. But otherwise I totally disagree. There is SO much amazing content on Youtube (especially educational content); where nothing on TV can come close to match it. Pick a subject you want to learn, and there are hours and hours of content, a not insignificant amount from top tier universities, covering same.

Yes, I'm talking about content for children; in my case children who cannot read/write. YouTube is a horrible wasteland of mind destroying insanity for that age group. I'm replying to a comment talking about the experience for kids.

I agree about YouTube for adults and older children; there is an amazing amount of top quality content there for people who are capable of searching for it :-)

To the downvoter(s): I assume that you don't have young children. If you want to get an idea of how bad it is, search for "baby daddy finger" and then only follow the brightly colored links featuring babies or recognizable cartoon characters. Randomly subscribe to channels you see. Then you get the full < 6-7 year-old experience of YouTube.

I don't know if people or specifically children were happier in the 80s/90s, but after spending a couple of weeks with my 10-year-old niece, I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube. It wouldn't be so bad if children were using the Internet to do something constructive or educational.

Of course, plenty of people from my generation spent their childhoods in front of the TV, but perhaps that was more easily regulated. (My parents, at least, wouldn't let me watch TV endlessly.)

I just realized that growing up computers were basically only for research and creating content. Now that bandwidth is so cheap computers are only for consumption.

Don't know when you grew up, but computer games were already a thing before the internet became widely available.

(Of course, a video game is vastly more engaging and interactive than a random YouTube video.)

They dont call us "consumers" for nothing....

soon they'll take away the keyboards and other ways/inputs to mess with the "insides" of a computer ... and all you'll have is a touch screen to choose this or that.. while consuming...actually thats happening already with iPad etc..

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html

"computers" as in traditional PCs are regaining their creator role. Microsoft even calls their windows update "Creator Edition". Phones and tablets are almost pure consumption devices with a few exceptions.

There's nothing inherently wrong with consumption, and it overlaps with doing research. You could be watching educational videos or deeply philosophical discussions on YouTube all day. I don't even mind pure consumption devices like my Kindle or my iPad because there's so much great content around.

> I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube.

...is that so bad? She has an incredible world of content at her fingertips; what's the virtue in refraining from involving herself in it?

There are studies about the benefits of boredom:

https://www.melbournechildpsychology.com.au/blog/the-benefit...

I think there's plenty of "cultural evidence" for this too: the subreddit for wacky revelations is called /r/showerthoughts, and the shower is the last place where we have no screens or books around us.

But you’re not bored in the shower. You are doing a task. The most creative thoughts don’t come when you are bored, but when you are doing something routine or low effort.

Sitting on the couch staring at a wall won’t have the same effect, but doing housework will.

I'm not the OP, but having also watched a ten year old consume YouTube videos... they tend to stay far far away from anything remotely educational.

For example, this is the kind of thing that the particular kid I know watches: https://youtu.be/5O66ssNpg_A

22 million views. So basically nothing is gained from watching these sorts of videos. But what's lost? Maybe the opportunity to connect with family members?

Define educational.

Watching stupid Call of Duty videos as a teenager is what allowed me to learn English (I am not a native English speaker) and I now owe my entire career to that.

On the other hand, proper “educational” stuff has yet to make me a penny.

Just because it doesn’t look “educational” (or should I say boring) to you doesn’t mean the kid isn’t learning stuff by watching (or listening to) the video. Chances are, those people are doing real-life stuff that is never taught in school and they would otherwise try to figure it out by themselves via trial and error.

I edited my comment and added a link to a typical video. The child watching this is already fluent in English.

That video is stupid but it is worse than reality TV shows or cartoons? It’s entertainment. Doesn’t always have to have a further purpose beyond passing time and satisfying curiosity.

My comment about English was just an example, when completely stupid (by my own admission) videos still somehow still managed to contribute to my life and career.

That's pretty funny. When I was in college I had a roommate from Colombia and mentioned that I'd like to learn some Spanish. He enthusiastically recommended watching the Spanish language soaps on Telemundo, he told me watching American soaps is how he learned most of his English.

Is it really substantively different from “imaginative play”?

My own kids watch similar stuff quite a bit, and while I don’t enjoy watching it with them, they enjoy it and talk about it with their friends. They even make their own (private) videos for fun.

Ask any kid age six to twelve or so these days what they want to be, and most will reply “I want to be a YouTuber!”

Having grown up in a small town in the 80's where it was hard to get access to all the media I might have wanted, I can really appreciate how great it is that kids today have access to this incredible world of content! And there's a lot of fun and engaging ways that kids use modern technology, whether it's playing Minecraft or keeping up with friends and family.

I'm mostly concerned about the specific category of content that tries to be as addictive as possible to young minds. Yes, people in the 80's tried to make content as addictive as possible, but people today are so much more skilled at it.

I think it's over-simplifying the issue to blame children for that.

I mean, when I was 12 we built a little fort in the woods. My parents didn't mind letting us disappear with hammer, nails, saw and sandwiches for the weekend, as long as they knew we weren't going alone.

Now there's places where the parent can get in trouble just for letting their kid walk to school. So the kids end up building their fort in minecraft instead of the woods, but I don't think the kids can take 100% of the blame for it.

The children shouldn't take any of the blame - that falls on the parents and society that have allowed things to come to this point.

We are faced with technology that is designed to be as addictive as possible, and unleashing it on the developing brains of our children without limits. Personally I think it's absolutely terrifying the effects that we'll be seeing down the road from this.

Who is unleashing this on kids without limits? It’s quite easy to limit screen time. (Not talking about any parental controls stuff, just “turn that off.”)

My son has been able to keep in touch with friends and play video games with them online that he hasn’t seen in person in years.

They live in the same metro area but being an hour and half away in traffic they might as well be in different parts of the country.

Do you consider those to be just as meaningful relationships with the people he would otherwise have to meet in going out with in person?

Keeping in touch with people is great, but I think there is value in children learning the lesson that the people you hang out with today might not be your forever friends. To lesson most people don’t learn to well after high school would’ve been beneficial to know earlier.

Just posing the question. I don’t know your kid. Nor our specific kids but I was talking about my post. Of course her benefits and features, at the cost of possibly losing the ability to deal with people in the real world. Maybe.

The male friends that I grew away from wasn’t because of distance, it was because our interest and lifestyle changed but I’ve actively kept in touch with a few even while we have lived in different parts of the country since 1997. We see each other maybe once a year since we are both from the same hometown and go back to visit relatives.

What benefit do you get from seeing people in person? When I see my friends in person we talk, play cards, and play video games. We may go out and eat/drink but everything else we can do online. I don’t need to physically see other men to keep a friendship with them.

I did specifically call out my male friends. I purposefully distanced myself from my (platanic) female friends after getting married except for the ones where I was friends with the couple because having friends of the opposite sex as a married man just brings in too many complications.

>What benefit do you get from seeing people in person?

Yea, IDK, social ques maybe? Are you really arguing that there is no difference talking to friends in person vs on the internet or phone?

The short version is, your digital friends, aren't real people. You can hang up on them, or not answer when you don't feel like. The second you put your controller or phone down, they disappear and wait to be pulled back into your existence. Real people you can't manage like that, so you have to use different methods of interaction.

Yes I’m arguing exactly that. One of my best friends I’ve had since 1992 I talk to all of the time to the point when we do see each other in person we really don’t have anything new to talk about.

I don’t have any friends that I don’t want to talk too to the point I would hang up on them. The friends I talk to in person - I can just as easily not hang out with them if I don’t feel like seeing them either.

I have a group of five friends that I use to work with and we’ve all gone our separate ways as far as jobs, we mostly talk on Slack but we do go out of our way to meet for lunch at least once s month. Honestly, at this point in my life, it takes an effort to keep friends because I know I should. I’d much rather spend my limited free time with my wife or working out in my home gym.

I'm not sure whether people were happier or not, perhaps some people were happier because they lived in ignorance of what was happening around them... I know for me that is probablly true. I grew up in the 70s / 80s, in my family / community bubble I was unaware of bad things. Only later through the internet and people telling their stories on the internet that I realized my experience of life being pretty good for everyone I knew was completely wrong and quite a few people were having a miserable time... but I thought they were relatively happy.

Judging by the article, this number is only going to go down; the numbers are in the 2-3% range for everyone under 50, and are made up by a whopping 34% offline in the over-65 age bracket.

I would also be strongly suspicious of childhood nostalgia were I in your shoes.

There are at least some signs that our childhood nostalgia is not misplaced:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behin...

(I don't live in the US, but I'm afraid this trend will arrive here soon enough.)

And nearly 55% of Chinese don't use Internet.

Yes, that is nearly 800M still without Smartphone or Internet. There is going to be a very long tail, likely 10 years plus to bring the last 500 to 600M online. The rest are likely not going to be online in their life time or has no interest in doing so.

Out of the 7.4 Billion people on earth, there is 5B Mobile Phone users, 3.5 Smartphone users. So it will likely take another twenty years before we reach 6 Billion Smartphone users.

Diffusion of Innovation always has "Laggard" All of us have been in different part of spectrum for various innovations... when the innovation/trend is irreversible, everyone eventually converts.... remember rotary phones, VCRs etc

refer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

Do we need another type of operating system interface to solve this? Something simpler, like TV or Minitel?

It would seem that Apps have helped to bring the last 20% of Americans online, would we need something even simpler to bring the rest onboard?

My 96 yo neighbors use internet, without too much hassle. Just like most people they don't understand it, but they use games, search, chat .. funny.

My 90 year old father-in-law has never used a computer or the Internet directly, but my wife buys from Amazon and searches Google for him.

I have social anxiety. I only use the interact when interacting with people outside of work or in a business professional setting.

That's pretty cool. I think we need a reminder that the Internet isn't a prerequisite for life. :-)

My mom, aunt, and grandma are among them.

Bernie Sanders needs to add this sad statistic to his spiel about how America isn't doing well. It fits in perfectly between "We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth" and "Only major country that doesn't guarantee right to health care".

I wonder how many members of Congress fall into this category...

I would like to know what portion use the Internet for whorthwhile activities and what portion uses it only for browsing Facebook and Twitter.

I find it interesting that you consider those activities not worthwhile. I'm sure you use the internet for things that are "less worthwhile" than those things, at least to me. But that's what it's really all about anyway right? Different things have different value to different people.

What's worse is that 99% of Americans, or rather the global population, (including businesses) use it for BS.

89% of Americans use the internet.

At home I'm very proud of my triple monitor setup and second iteration of my hand assembled computer. The setup is built with ease of use in mind. To lazily chat with friends, unwind, and keep up with bleeding edge news.

When I leave my little tech temple, my mobile computer of choice is a flip phone. A substitute calculator and unit converter.

With no GPS it's great reading the land and people in it. Very occasionally I'll cheat and bum around in front of a cafe and use the tablet to find a spot but most plans are made at home on a printed map.

As stated in other articles here, it's great not having a slab fight for your attention with bleeps and red notifications while out on adventure.

TL;DR / Long story short: Be the friend at the restaurant conversing, not on the glass slab.

i saw a Dad the other day on a playground with his kid. The Dad stood there staring at his phone the entire time while "playing" with his kid.

Kinda sad to see this...

I see this complaint about parents a lot. I interact with my kids all day. We cook dinner together, we play playdoh, I read to them endlessly. And I'll bike them to the park, and then I sit there and play with my phone while they run around.

I do not find it fun to climb on kids playgrounds. I don't enjoy helping my son across the monkey bars, and he makes more progress at it when I don't.

Parenting can be mentally and physically exhausting, and it's really not fair or at all useful to judge a parent based on a glimpse of 5 minutes of their day.

Certain parts of my family do not operate on the same timescale as me wrt tech. It's not just a generational divide in my families case.

To me, tech is all-emcompassing, I follow new developments as if it's second nature. To the more tech literate of my family they see the stuff that comes out as usually unnecessary in most cases but upgrade to have the new hotness every second major cycle (iphone 4->6 for example).

For the final part of my family, they operate on a different time scale altogether. For them a computer is a computer, they don't really "get old" unless they break. It's difficult to tell them (when they have been told to use the internet for some system of government) and you need to explain to them that their computer from 1995 can't use the internet in the modern day.

To them, they have a computer, a working computer, it cost a lot of money. The vacuum cleaner they had for 25 years works, the TV too, why can't they use the thing that cost significantly more than that. (my grandparents ironically have that compaq PC that says it's future-proof on the front).

For them to get back into technology it needs to be a form-factor change (IE; Desktop->Tablet) which was how they started to use the internet.

Anyway, that's my anecdotal story.

It's really not an age/generation thing at all. There are plenty of millennials who know shit about computers, while there are "old farts" like Bill Joy, Brian Kernighan, James Gosling, Rob Pike, Patrick Winston, Gerald Sussman, Bjarne Stroupstrup, etc. who know more about computing than most of us will ever know, and are more comfortable with technology than most kids out there today.

I think it's always been the case, and probably always will be the case, that some people intuitively embrace / grok technology, and some don't. Stereotypes aside, I haven't found that age has much to do with it.

> It's really not an age/generation thing at all.

You're right, that's why I clarified that originally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com