My wife and I were just talking about this the other day.
I’m not in IT but I work as an industrial maintenance electrician, and knowing how computers work solves more problems than people realize!
People feel the same way about cars, electricity, food preservation. People’s lives are interdependent on massively specialized technical disciplines and most of them couldn’t care less. I understand that the amount of specialization that goes into some topics means you can’t be an expert on all of these subjects, but some people just could not give a single shit how any of it works, and do not have any understanding of the ways in which it might stop working.
I’ve come to greatly resent any sort of technology or design being dismissed as “magic”, because I’ve met too many people who mean it literally.
Absolutely. I’ll be the first to admit my knowledge of cars is lacking, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning about it. It’s fine to not know things, but it’s weird to not want to know things.
Yeah, and I’m sure you’ll agree there’s a gap between “my car is a machine that occasionally requires service by someone who knows how” and “my car is a metal horse that should go as long as I put gas in it”. I don’t expect people to be the mechanic, but the second group of people is very much real.
My wife and I were just talking about this the other day.
I’m not in IT but I work as an industrial maintenance electrician, and knowing how computers work solves more problems than people realize!
It’s so frustrating when people are like “Well I don’t need to know how computers work.”
Every aspect of our lives is governed by computers in one way or another. I can’t imagine not being curious to know how they work.
People feel the same way about cars, electricity, food preservation. People’s lives are interdependent on massively specialized technical disciplines and most of them couldn’t care less. I understand that the amount of specialization that goes into some topics means you can’t be an expert on all of these subjects, but some people just could not give a single shit how any of it works, and do not have any understanding of the ways in which it might stop working.
I’ve come to greatly resent any sort of technology or design being dismissed as “magic”, because I’ve met too many people who mean it literally.
Absolutely. I’ll be the first to admit my knowledge of cars is lacking, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning about it. It’s fine to not know things, but it’s weird to not want to know things.
Yeah, and I’m sure you’ll agree there’s a gap between “my car is a machine that occasionally requires service by someone who knows how” and “my car is a metal horse that should go as long as I put gas in it”. I don’t expect people to be the mechanic, but the second group of people is very much real.
This one is fun because horses require so much more effort and upkeep than cars. Your horse can suck because you made it sad.