computers today

content/do-kids-know-computers-today.md

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+---
+title: Do kids not know computers know?
+date: 2022-03-28
+---
+
+> This post is day 7 of me taking part in the
+> [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/) challenge.
+
+
+One discussion point I've seen around is that kids nowadays don't know how to
+use computers. Okay that's a bit of a strawman, but this article titled [File Not Found](https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z).
+
+The gist of the article is that Gen-Z kids are too used to search interfaces.
+That means they don't actually know about where files are stored, or how they
+are organized. They only know that they can access the files by searching for
+them. The article talks about how professors ended up having to teach them how
+to navigate directory structures and file extensions.
+
+As the article claims, it seems to be related to how modern user interfaces are
+designed. Our UIs nowadays are more focused around search capabilities: you just
+type in a search bar and find what you need.
+
+![bemenu, displaying a partial search and several matching applications.](/img/app-search-bar.png)
+
+In some sense I do like this sort of interface. I use something like that when
+launching applications, both on my Desktop and on my laptop! It's actually a
+better interface compared to hunting for icons on your desktop. I use similar
+interfaces in VSCode to switch between open editor tabs.
+
+However, this is a complimentary interface to hierarchy and organization. Going
+back to the file systems example discussed in the article, being able to search
+through your files and folders is useful. But it's not a replacement for
+hierarchy. You can't just throw files into a folder, and expect to always find
+them accurately.
+
+Let me give an example with Google Photos. I have been keeping all my photos on
+Google Photos, and between migrating photos from old phones and ones I have
+taken on new phones, I have over 8,000 photos. This is completely disorganized
+of course, but Google Photos has a search functionality. It even uses AI to
+recognize the items in the photos, which you can use in the search. A search for
+"tree" brings up photos of trees, "cat" brings up cats, and you can even tag
+people and pets and then search for their names. Very useful, right?
+
+Well, it is sometimes. I recently had to remember what my wife's car license
+plate is. A quick search for "license plate" on google photos and luckily, I had
+taken a photo of her car that included the license plate in the frame. Success!
+On the other hand, I was trying to find some photos from a particular gathering
+with my friends. Searches for their names, names of the place, or stuff I know
+are in the picture turned up with nothing. I eventually had to painstakingly
+scroll through all photos to find the one I wanted.
+
+This reminds me of 2 things. One is this article named [To Organize The World's
+Information](https://dkb.io/post/organize-the-world-information) by
+[@dkb868@twitter.com](https://nitter.net/dkb868). One thing I found interesting
+on that article was that the concept of "the library" has been lost over the
+last few decades as a way to organize information. They define the library as a
+hierarchical, categorized directory of information. The article also talks about
+other organizational methods, and is worth a read.
+
+The other thing is the note taking software we're building at my workplace,
+[Dendron](https://dendron.so/). One of the core tenets of Dendron is that the
+information is hierarchical. Something the founder Kevin recognizes was that
+other note taking software make it easier to make new notes, but they don't
+support hierarchical structures which makes it hard to find those notes later.
+I've also experienced this, when I used other note taking software (or sticky
+notes!) I found that it was easy to just jot down a few notes, but they very
+quickly get lost or hard to find when you need them. A hierarchical organization
+makes it possible to actually find and reference the information later.
+
+Requiring organization creates a barrier of entry to storing information, but
+what good is storing information if you can't retrieve the information later?
+This seems to work pretty well with Dendron. Would it not work for other things?
+Why not for taking photos? You of course want to be able to quickly snap a photo
+so you can record a moment before it's gone, but perhaps you could be required
+to organize your photos afterwards. Before modern cellphones & internet
+connected cameras, you'd have to get your photos developed or transfer them off
+an SD card: a step where you would have to (or have the opportunity to) organize
+your photos. I wonder if we cloud services could ask you to organize your photos
+before syncing them as well.