[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Ari

I was thinking about this, I wonder if the next big generational tech divide will be between those who are used to interacting with a smart learning algorithm and those that aren't.

That's true, and I think you're right.

But that's not what's happening that's bugging me in these cases. It's not the type of mechanism of controlling the devices, it's who's controlling them. And most of the time, the controls are no more advanced than they were in 1985, but you're locked out of them.

It's basic-assed undeleteable system, manufacturer, and carrier bloatware that you are required to host on your equipment, simple settings you can't change, "features" that you don't use and actively don't want that you can't turn off, and basic operations that any actual computer has been able to do since we started calling them 'computers' that you no longer can do.

(Unless you at least root your device, and ideally install a custom ROM, but that, as we have learned, is a risky proposition.)

I would suggest that a lot of young people literally have no idea that it should even be possible to control the basic aspects of your devices like that. Not only do they not know how to do things like look at the files or processes on their devices, or adjust settings directly rather than installing some bloated, intrusive software to do it for them, it would never even occur to them that these things would be possible. And that goes back to this thing I've been complaining about forever, which is how corporations use software to stick a layer of unnecessary obfuscation between users and technologies, intentionally designed to make things look harder than they are.

The problem isn't advancing technologies so much as it is pervasive, exploitative, and completely unfettered capitalism.