I hate how true this is. Watching teens flail and panic at the library as they have to spontaneously learn how to use a non-chromeOS computer has been an upsettingly nostalgic reminder of one of my first jobs

It's always been that way. Even most people who used the internet "way back when" have no clue how it actually functions. Terms like DNS and IPv4 are vaguely familiar concepts at best outside of professional or hobbyist circles.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that either. There's too much stuff for any one person to know. You learn the stuff that interests you and ignore the rest, which hopefully means somebody is interested in all of it. That's why it's good that there's all different kinds of people out there.

We just need to integrate conversational AI into everything, so people never have to understand tech or learn to use it

To play devil's advocate, I imagine your view isn't too far removed from folks who know to work on their cars being aghast that no one knows how to fix their own any more.

Computers are tools, and the more complex they become the harder it is to learn how to use and repair them.

Aye, we've almost all learned digital skills. And as time passes the skills required to perform digital tasks reduces as user interfaces and automation improve. What many of us don't have however is digital understanding.

This is from a speech by the founder of lastminute.com and now member of the UK's House of Lords

We have let these things come upon us, but it is not too late to wake up. If we want to change this dynamic and shape the future, we need to recapture some of the internet’s original promise and more of its positive transformative power. That means we need to understand – at all levels of society – what our digital world really is. We need to address the challenges that already exist and preempt the ones we don’t know about.

We live our digital lives this way because we have the skills to do so. 91% of us in the UK have the ability to use the internet. This is a remarkable achievement – and it’s important to continue the work to close the remaining gap and include those who are still without the skills or the access to use the internet.

But we also need to move beyond skills to understanding. Nearly all UK internet users have the digital skills to use a search engine, but only half know how to distinguish between search results and adverts. Around two-thirds of our digitally skilled population can shop and bank online – but a third don’t make any checks before entering their personal or financial information online. More than 1.4 million of us work in tech-related jobs – but, as the recent WannaCry attack showed us, hardly anyone is investing the time, resources or expertise to keep our systems safe. The list goes on.

Becoming a nation of people with digital understanding will be different and more complicated than becoming a nation of people with digital skills. For starters, digital skills are tangible and teachable: download this app, program this device. They also reinforce the idea that digital is something we do – time-bound and transactional.

But in a world where we spend more time online than we do asleep and where everything from our televisions to our kettles can connect to the internet, digital is something we are. Understanding is not a race to be run and won. It is a lifelong process of learning, one unique to each of us.

The full speech is available here. It was given in the House of Lords and is obviously directed towards UK parliamentarians but the concepts apply globally. I recommend reading the whole thing.

I wish we'd refer to early internet era as something other than the 1900s. WWW ostensibly started in 95. Maybe we just call it "The 90s" and be good with it?

When we start referring to the "turn of the century" as the early 2000s, I may just outright die.

I grew up when the internet was already a thing but I didn't really get to use it until I was a teenager. We had a family computer with space cadet pinball on it, and as a small kid I didn't know how to surf the web, I only knew how to play the games like solitaire. I knew you could connect your DS (It's not a Gameboy, mum!) to the internet for online multiplayer, but it was too complicated to figure out without a grownup's help. When I got a bit older, I got My own laptop for schoolwork and discovered the internet. I got hooked on webcomics and Reddit. I had a dumb phone for emergencies, which was later replaced with a smartphone on a prepaid plan, with too little data to use it for the internet. So I browsed the internet from the Ubuntu desktop I built at home. Eventually I got a monthly plan and joined the 21st century, but it was a long way getting there.

Technically I fall into your third group, but I don't have anything in common with these kids.

I mean, both JavaScript and PHP are still widely used.

Dude, I'm an electrical engineer born in 02.

The oldest zoomers are 29 rn

Change the name of what to Jones?