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Still too complicated. I saw a comic version once, working through an actual example with some example IDs and it used phrases like "sends to the hospital" or "asks the hospital" etc. instead of downloading from the cloud.

Very non-technical people are not familiar with the basic concepts involved.

"Makes up a new random name and broadcasts it to nearby phones" is something they'd struggle with if they never heard or thought about random number generators, don't understand Bluetooth etc.

Also don't underestimate learned helplessness. Many will stop reading if it looks technical because they "can't understand that sort of thing. " Many such people never ever read such lengthy step by step technical documentation. It seems to them as a quantum physics experimental setup description sounds to the average programmer.




> Also don't underestimate learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is so real. My partner works at a help desk, and I constantly hear stories of older folks just mentally shutting down as soon as she has them open the start menu or a settings menu.

I even see it in myself, a super curious neophile software/hardware hacker. Sometimes I'll come across some particularly arcane API docs and it's like my brain just goes "tl;dr" to the whole thing and tries to immediately find a way to avoid interfacing with it.

That mental switch of "ah this is overwhelming, eyes glaze over" is all too easy to trip, even if you push through it and it really is not that bad after the fact.


It's also an ego-threatening thing. Often the older folks or otherwise nontechnical people are socially higher status and being lectured about something that they may not understand sounds dangerous to them or they take it as being challenged by them, especially if the person explaining it is lower social status, younger, "just a kid" etc.

It's easier for them to just refuse to participate and dismiss the topic as irrelevant, than to take up the game and then perhaps be seen as "dumb".

And this state of affairs is actually quite unnatural. The natural course of things over the millennia was that older people are more experienced and can give direction and advice to the young ones. Sure, this is still true in some "soft" topics, but the generational gap in understanding how the modern world works has never been so large.


When someone has lived 70+ years and done fine for most of those years. What is the use for them to learn what an "icon" on the "desktop" is, and why should they care about "browsers"?

This very much feels like justification for victim blaming.


Because the world changes. You don't change, you get left behind, sometimes in very important ways. (For example, my wife's licensing board now sends the renewal stuff only by e-mail, not snail mail. There are a few old-school people who have to get someone else to get the form for them.)


So progress is an excuse to be unempathetic towards people who may not had your introductions to technology?




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