Every year, with the start of college, out comes the list to help us codgers understand the mindset of college freshman:

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union. 2. They have known only two presidents. 3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt. 4. Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S. 5. They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes”. 6. There has always been only one Germany. 7. They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register. 8. They are wireless, yet always connected.

What I found most interesting, though was this comment (partially, I think, in response to this one):

38. Being techno-savvy has always been inversely proportional to age.

...My daughter and oldest son (20 and 22), both learned to drive a standard shift and are very good at it. My daughter, who needed a car for where she went to school (had to drive to several remote sites for classes) acquired a 1993 5-speed Honda. Upon returning from school, she complained that it would lose power going up long hills. They are bright and alert to the world, and would have few problems with the 75 items in the list, including having played the “state licence plate game.” My most recent failing as a father, though? Not having taught them to downshift.

Young people are certainly early adaptors when it comes to using new technology, and faster to pick up the user interface. But I'm not sure that the current generation actually understands the technology that it uses as much as previous ones did. They don't have to understand how things work, because we rarely fix things any more, and when we do, we take them to professionals to do so. Electronics are lost, or become obsolete, before they stop working, and even when they do break, they're rarely fixable, and are cheap enough to simply replace. Cars break down, but few people work on them (partly because things are so densely packed in them that it's quite difficult these days), other than those who do it professionally.

I just wonder if not understanding why and when to shift a manual transmission is a symptom of this. It just struck me as an interesting metaphor. For something.

I wonder if this young woman ever rides a bicycle. Anyone who ever rode a ten-speed (outside of Florida, anyway) knows you are supposed to downshift uphill. Transferring that skill to a stick-shift does not take much brains.

Oh, and your link is broken.

I noticed that at the beach in California in the eighties, the popular bikes were single speed. I never understood it. Even on the flat, it's nice to be able to shift.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--Arthur C. Clarke

It's interesting to do thought experiments about this. I've thought about it while watching "Lost" (and the new CBS television show "Jericho" poses a similar question). Simply put, how useful are the average person's knowledge and skills outside of their society? If you are stranded on a tropical island, or if society collapses, will you be able to survive? A computer programmer or an aeronautical engineer may have a hard time surviving, whereas a farmer (what we consider more primitive skills) will have an easier time.

Similarly, modern society is able to compensate for physical infirmities that would render many people useless outside of that society. What happens if you are stranded on that tropical island without your eyeglasses or your asthma medicine?

As society has become more "sophisticated" and tightly connected, has it become more fragile--as in, unable to continue effectively if those connections are suddenly severed?

I've noticed this greatly amongst "geeks" when it comes to computers. I find myself a little stunned when I interview an undergraduate from MIT or UCLA majoring in science and engineering, for a job that has a lot to do with computers, and they say, oh yes, they've worked with computers a lot -- but no, they've never programmed one, and are a little vague about what it means to do so.

I have the feeling being a "geek" or "nerd" isn't quite what it used to be. It has less to do with taking things apart and learning how they work than with being good at picking and using widgetry or figuring your way through video games or digg.com.

I guess the common theme is a taste for and ability to rapidly grasp complex algorithms. But previously these algorithms were what real machines implemented in steel and electricity. Cars, electronic circuits. Now it seems to be algorithms implemented in software. MySpace and how to google.

in one of the ShadowRun series of novels, there was a term that i thought was brilliant.

"Iconerate" It means that technology has become such an integral part of life that general society is no longer literate, they can't read words, and formulate idea's based on the broad spectrum of the written language. Instead, people are Iconerate, operating only on graphical summaries of language, without understanding the underlying language associated with it.

Instead, people are Iconerate, operating only on graphical summaries of language, without understanding the underlying language associated with it.

Surely true. But maybe strike that "only" from the sentence. "Iconerating" is a rational and clever technique for coping with overwhelming complexity. Call it "just in time" thinking -- you don't try to understand mechanisms any deeper than you need to for their use. It's a reasonable way to conserve your time and energy for where they'll do the most good.

A baseball team that began spring training with a course on Newtonian dynamics would be wasting its time. For that matter, if I teach Newtonian mechanics, I don't feel the need to derive calculus from scratch in class. Perfectly reasonable to accept that derivatives and intergrals work the way they do, and go on.

Maybe someone's going to say you should know "something" if not everything about the mechanisms you use. Fair enough. But then we're arguing about exactly how much to "iconerate" instead of whether it should be done at all. Which isn't especially interesting.

Indeed, I think an argument can be made that the ability to make abstract simplified cartoons of complex processes in one's mind is one of humanity's greatest intellectual strengths. It allows us to control processes of increasing complexity without having to get smarter and smarter. If to use them we had to understand jet aircraft and computers at the same level of detail as we understood flint axes and bows and arrows, we'd be utterly screwed.

See Jay Leno's column in this months Popular Mechanics,he talks about how0to articles from the 20s & 30s,says todays kids couldn't do those projects.

I never owned a bycycle with a gearbox. I did have one with a hand brake, when I was very little.

My daughter refused to drive my old 5sp car, and hogs my wife's car which has auto. I bought myself a car with an automatic tranny this year because, you know, it's about time. It's 2006 out there.

I once wondered at how many layers of avstraction there are in the function of a microprocessor from the sub-atomic to the desktop interface and how many people actually understand all of them.

How many high level programmers understand they are really switching electrons?

I'm game; let's see if I can list them.

There is the bare strata of atoms and subatomic particles being exchanged by the atoms.

Above that is the concept of electricity, which is not as well-understood as most people seem to assume it to be.

Above that is the physical circuit set that makes up the CPU, which circuit set is an abstraction for selecting and arranging materials that make it easier for electricity to flow in certain directions than in others.

Above the physical circuit is the logical concept of the circuit.
Above that is the CPU, which is a conceptual arrangement of logical circuits.

Above that is the concept of the system hardware that encapsulates the CPU. The CPU alone cannot do much, because it has no inputs or outputs until it is connected to other hardware.

Then there is machine language, which is really just an abstraction of the sequence of current switches in the circuits that drive the CPU and other hardware.

Then there is assembly language, which is a way of representing machine language that maintains the concept of direct understanding of which components are doing what, but rolls up many actual switches in current into a single instruction.

Above that is a high-level language, which allows direct manipulation of the physical circuits, but does not require it, and loses the entire concept of connection to the physical system in most cases.

Above that is the operating system kernel, which manages the system hardware and presents a series of interfaces for manipulating it.

Above that is the operating system itself, which is a set of programs written in high-level languages that abstracts the interfaces presented by the kernel into a set of services to do certain tasks. Thus the programmer above this level does not need to understand what the system is doing to its components, just that invoking a certain call with certain arguments ends up activating the monitor in a certain way.

Above that is the user interface, which allows a user to interact with the hardware (say, using a keyboard, monitor and mouse) to drive the system.

Of that, what do I truly understand? Well, for simple systems (like a Tandy Color Computer, for example, or a Commodore 64), there was a point where I understood everything above the subatomic level quite well. As it is now, with modern systems, I understand all of the concepts, and understand the bits I need when I need them (learning to learn is vital).

As to how many high level programmers understand the system at more than the highest level, it is frightfully few. But the beauty of the abstractions is that, except in extraordinary circumstances, you don't have to. I used to think that, were I ever to teach at the college level, I would have students write a word processor in 4K of RAM that could open a 2K document. Then I realized that such skills are utterly pointless today: the "iconate" interfaces are good enough that only a specialist needs to understand them to get functional applications.

partly because things are so densely packed in them that it's quite difficult these days

Its far worse than that really. Most car engines have specific tool requirements that go way beyond star heads on bolts in the engine block. A lot of what was mechanical in my day like points and ignition is now a single electronic block. Timing is electronic and mostly computer controlled along with a bunch of stuff on fuel injection systems.

Having said that, I do find cars, along with TVs and a bunch of other stuff, to be more reliable than they were when I was younger.

Well, why didn't he just teach her to downshift, then? It would only take a few minutes, since she obviously already knows how to do the rest.

I used to "downshift" with my automatic (I never learned to drive a stick, I'm too lazy and they are annoying in city traffic), when I needed to go slowly with more power -- using the "low gear" settings. Miami is flat but there a couple of bridges and things that were virtual hills, at least to me.

I have the feeling being a "geek" or "nerd" isn't quite what it used to be. It has less to do with taking things apart and learning how they work than with being good at picking and using widgetry or figuring your way through video games or digg.com. I guess the common theme is a taste for and ability to rapidly grasp complex algorithms. But previously these algorithms were what real machines implemented in steel and electricity. Cars, electronic circuits. Now it seems to be algorithms implemented in software. MySpace and how to google.

Carl --

Most people (even most geeks ;) can process only a finite amount of information in a given time. And when top technology level becomes complex enough, there is simlpy no time or energy to spend on the lower levels. Mastering all the functions of a PDA and/or researching vaious models in order to make an intelligent decision which PDA to buy, can easily soak up the mental facilities of an average geek.

Now that I think of it, geeks always concerned themselves mostly with whatever was the top technology level at the time. For example, when it was cars and circuits, very few if any geeks machined their own parts.

Oh jeez I experience this phenomenon on a nearly daily basis. Someone procures a new peice of hardware or software and they get documentation with it that tells them how to get started and what do they do. Call the helpdesk, "I know nuttin', I see nuttin', just tell me everything i need to know and I'll figure it out later." So, I just roll people down the hill into a briar patch and let them get themselves untangled. Perfect example:

Customer: "Uh yes, I just bought a brand new wireless router and I need help setting it up."
Me: "Okay, have you plugged in the ethernet cable that came with the router into your laptop and attached it directly to one of the LAN ports on the router?"
Customer: "Uhhhh, I threw that away because I don't need the wires. Do you understand that this is a WIRELESS router?! Is there someone there that is familiar with this?"
Me: "Um yes, I most certainly am and do, and I also understand that the GETTING STARTED quick guide clearly states that in order to setup the wireless access point you need to connect directly to the router through a wired ethernet connection first"
Customer: "Oh uh, *silence*, since I do not believe we need it lets just set it up without the wire"
Me: "Why yes, we most certainly can right after I get finished typing in 'Demonstrably Imbecilic' into your call ticket description."

Josh --

While I appreciate your exasperation, your example is not what we were talking about. A typical 18-year old computer geek (or what passes for computer geek nowdays) knows better than throw away the manual, and will follow setup instructions to the letter. But he does not know what TCP/IP or packets are, and will get very frustrated if things do not work exactly as manual says. (OK, flip switch A and light B comes on. Light B is not on! WTF!?)