Thursday, March 5, 2009

Hypothesis: The better your parents are with computers, the worse you'll be.

I spend almost all my free time online, but I'm still pretty clueless as far as the basic workings of computers go.

I think it's because every time I fuck something major up (which is often), my dad goes immediately into fixing it and I'm usually good to go again within six hours. He adds protection to my computer and tells me what not to do, but I've never been forced to contemplate why I'm not supposed to do things or what exactly went wrong. All I know how to do is follow instructions.

A lot of my friend's parents will call on my dad to fix their computers when something goes wrong, and I've found that most of their kids are more skilled than me. I have two friends who are also the children of software engineers/analysts, and they're even more technologically retarded than I am. When something goes wrong they just go, "Daaaad." One of them is really stupid because her dad tells her lies to prevent her from wreaking havoc on the Internet, but that's for a whole different post.

The only thing that's helped me at all is that now I have some, er, private content on my comp and have become less willing to let my dad come to the rescue when I can help it. If I'd ever been forced to figure things out on my own though, or to find a way to prevent an error from being made in the past, I'd have been motivated to find out what went wrong and why.

I know how bratty it sounds to basically be complaining about being coddled, but it's extremely difficult to find intrinsic motivation to learn. I've read that people don't learn as well from a school environment because it's hard to remember information you take it unless you're fully conscience of how it's applicable to help you. I wonder if I'll become better with computers when I move out and will be in situations where figuring them out for myself with have a direct reward, a quicker one than asking for help.

Unfortunately though, I've also read that it's more difficult to acquire new skills as you get older. Your adolescents are, supposedly, your golden years of learning by applying. I've read that type of intelligence peaks are fourteen or something like that, but I don't remember where. I'm eighteen now and I can already tell that I'm never going to be particularly impressive with software/Internet/programming skills, even though I'd like to be. Would I have become a techy nerd had my parents called on me for help instead of the other way around? Would I know how to prevent future problems if I had to live with the fear of a stranger needing to fix my computer if I messed it up? I wonder this a lot, because it seems funny that there would be a subject that having skilled parents could hinder you instead of help.

This is just speculation from an outsider's point of view though. I hope no second generation 1337 person reads this and tells me I'm completely misunderstanding the technological learning process.

1 comment:

  1. To be honest, you can still learn just fine as you get older. Unless we're talking about language acquisition or really old age, I think a lot of that it's harder to learn stuff is a myth. This should be evident when you tend to learn shit all in high school and everything else which you need in college. Keep in mind, not everything you learn in college is relevant to the rest of your life, and if it is you don't always see how it will be, but you still learn it just fine. However, it is true in that if you can see how it works in the real world, it's easier to learn.

    I think you have a point about being coddled hindering your learning how to use a computer. If your parents walked you through on fixing your computer instead of just doing it themselves (which is easier and quicker anyway usually), you would have likely learned more.

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