many people in general lack the literacy. my entire school thinks I’m able to hack the pentagon because I accessed the boot menu and installed mint on a school computer for my sanity, because last time I used windows on a school computer, I was going through some tough stuff, so on top of it being clunky I have bad memories linked with it. I did not delete windows or touch system files, but I really, really want to. They all treat me like I could hack government systems, even though I’ve never hacked anything in my life. The average user should be able to access that.
A more relevant example:
fucking everyone at school, staff and otherwise can’t do anything with tech. basic shortcuts? nope (except copy/paste)! indenting in word? nope! using anything other than google as a search engine is seen as suspicious, and no-one can really tech there. most of my school is average in every way, and this is no difference. my english teacher believes that wikipedia still hasn’t added any security to who’s able to edit articles, spoiler: they have (on most articles) such as peer-review and most of them requiring peer-review and account requirements of 500+ approved edits. the list goes on.
“why isn’t the printer printing my 3 page essay done in 30 mins?” It’s out of cyan. really. go change your cyan, mrs. b. “but the essay is b&w (black and white)” the printer won’t work till the cyan is replaced, go tell mrs. b (principal) that the printer is out of cyan. printer says “fuck you, no cyan”
On top of this, don’t assume someone’s tech literate just because they’re in a certain field. It took me seeing first hand at a previous job how the IT techs did their job to realize why we ran into so many issues.
We were having some software installed on every computer which apparently had to be installed via PowerShell. While watching our usual IT tech go through the steps on the machine next to me, I offered to help him get this job done faster by starting it up on my machine then he could run his credentials whenever the prompts came up. He knew I was computer literate since we had talked about tech stuff and about how I was at the time trying to get a job in IT, so he gave me a copy of the .txt file with all the instructions and commands to run.
In the file was an 11 step process written by the director of the IT department explaining how to open PowerShell, copy the command below, and run the command. 3 of the instructions were to highlight the command (between the quotation marks without including the quotation marks), right click the highlighted portion, then click on “Copy”.
The tech didn’t believe that I had actually copied the command when I just did Ctrl+C, so he specifically stopped me to tell me to right click the command. I told him that it was copied already with Ctrl+C, and he told me, “No, it won’t work if you don’t do the right click.”
I also found out later that said IT director didn’t seem to be aware that there were multiple types of USB cables. He was setting something up in my boss’s office and sent someone to ask for “a USB cable.” Said person knew I had a bunch of cables at my desk as part of my work at the time so they relayed the request for “a USB cable.” I asked them, “What kind? USB C to C? A to C? Micro? Mini?” “Idk, they just said ‘a USB cable.’”
I think, “fair enough, my coworker isn’t very tech literate so I’ll just ask the man myself.” I bring over an assortment of cables and walk to the office with my coworker. Director see my coworker with me now next to them and ask me for “a USB cable.” “What kind?” “Just a regular USB cable, if you have one.” I show him my bundle of about 6-10 assorted cables, explain that I have a variety, see that he’s working on a small printer/scanner, and offer him one. “Would a type 3.0 USB A to B cable work?” “What? No, I just need a regular USB cable.” I show him the A to B cable and he responds “oh yeah, that’s what I was saying. A regular USB cable.”
a less relevant example:
many people in general lack the literacy. my entire school thinks I’m able to hack the pentagon because I accessed the boot menu and installed mint on a school computer for my sanity, because last time I used windows on a school computer, I was going through some tough stuff, so on top of it being clunky I have bad memories linked with it. I did not delete windows or touch system files, but I really, really want to. They all treat me like I could hack government systems, even though I’ve never hacked anything in my life. The average user should be able to access that.
A more relevant example:
fucking everyone at school, staff and otherwise can’t do anything with tech. basic shortcuts? nope (except copy/paste)! indenting in word? nope! using anything other than google as a search engine is seen as suspicious, and no-one can really tech there. most of my school is average in every way, and this is no difference. my english teacher believes that wikipedia still hasn’t added any security to who’s able to edit articles, spoiler: they have (on most articles) such as peer-review and most of them requiring peer-review and account requirements of 500+ approved edits. the list goes on.
“why isn’t the printer printing my 3 page essay done in 30 mins?” It’s out of cyan. really. go change your cyan, mrs. b. “but the essay is b&w (black and white)” the printer won’t work till the cyan is replaced, go tell mrs. b (principal) that the printer is out of cyan. printer says “fuck you, no cyan”
On top of this, don’t assume someone’s tech literate just because they’re in a certain field. It took me seeing first hand at a previous job how the IT techs did their job to realize why we ran into so many issues.
We were having some software installed on every computer which apparently had to be installed via PowerShell. While watching our usual IT tech go through the steps on the machine next to me, I offered to help him get this job done faster by starting it up on my machine then he could run his credentials whenever the prompts came up. He knew I was computer literate since we had talked about tech stuff and about how I was at the time trying to get a job in IT, so he gave me a copy of the .txt file with all the instructions and commands to run.
In the file was an 11 step process written by the director of the IT department explaining how to open PowerShell, copy the command below, and run the command. 3 of the instructions were to highlight the command (between the quotation marks without including the quotation marks), right click the highlighted portion, then click on “Copy”.
The tech didn’t believe that I had actually copied the command when I just did Ctrl+C, so he specifically stopped me to tell me to right click the command. I told him that it was copied already with Ctrl+C, and he told me, “No, it won’t work if you don’t do the right click.”
I also found out later that said IT director didn’t seem to be aware that there were multiple types of USB cables. He was setting something up in my boss’s office and sent someone to ask for “a USB cable.” Said person knew I had a bunch of cables at my desk as part of my work at the time so they relayed the request for “a USB cable.” I asked them, “What kind? USB C to C? A to C? Micro? Mini?” “Idk, they just said ‘a USB cable.’”
I think, “fair enough, my coworker isn’t very tech literate so I’ll just ask the man myself.” I bring over an assortment of cables and walk to the office with my coworker. Director see my coworker with me now next to them and ask me for “a USB cable.” “What kind?” “Just a regular USB cable, if you have one.” I show him my bundle of about 6-10 assorted cables, explain that I have a variety, see that he’s working on a small printer/scanner, and offer him one. “Would a type 3.0 USB A to B cable work?” “What? No, I just need a regular USB cable.” I show him the A to B cable and he responds “oh yeah, that’s what I was saying. A regular USB cable.”