As the OP describes - we all remember our grandparents struggling to use computers with any degree of effectiveness at all. Is that just because they grew up in a time where tech just wasn't evolving that fast? And so weren't used to having to constantly update their stack? Or is it just that their brains no longer could cope.
Even if it is the former - might the rate of change in 20 years time itself dwarf the rate of change that we grew up with such that we'll end up like our grandparents anyway.
This fear sometimes leads me to do stupid things. I bought a nexus 7 tablet - before I knew what the hell I really needed it for. I still don't know where it fits in my life - except for more pleasant web browsing in bed. I've enabled just about every google location, search history this n that - just to see what on earth all this shit does for me. And as far as I can see - I still don't use it as anything other than a web browser.
Is this THAT object that defines my bewildered obsolescence? Are people using these things in ways I can't even imagine that gives them an edge over others in their everyday lives?
I assume I'm not going to be able to tell until some ten year old looks over my shoulder and tells me I'm doing it wrong.
But I don't bother enabling it - because none of my friends want to (even though quite a few now have android phones). They'll say it's too creepy. And maybe it is.
But you can easily imagine a culture where it's not. Currently - people probably think it's creepy because they are very protective of their social networks - and don't like the idea of them blending. Largely this is because they don't want to be judged by the standards of one group when in the company of another. So they split their social realities.
A culture that found services like latitude not creepy is one where standards are more liberal or more homogenised - such that mixing social groups is less likely to cause negative consequences.
Ironically - if people mixed their worlds a little more then society would almost certainly become more homogenised and liberal. So it's a bit of a chicken egg problem that probably won't be solved until there is substantive generational change.
I've turned 40 and I already see where my demise will be. It won't be in what I consider tech (gadgets, languages, frameworks, HW, etc...), but rather how to use social networks. I already am like my grandparents when it comes to Twitter (does this message go to everyone or not?). And with Facebook I'm always unclear about who can see what (private, friends, Facebook users, everyone?). And I have virtually no understanding why instagram and pinterest are "must have" apps.
I've seen where I'll be like my granddad and it will be in social networks.
For instance, I used to think I got my publication settings down pretty good (by dividing FB friends into groups), but it turns out Facebook ignores and resets your preferences every once in a while for good measure. So even if you belong to the small minority of users who go through the trouble of trying to compartmentalize their message publication, Facebook will override you and enable interesting things like your coworkers commenting on party pictures they shouldn't even be able to see.
it seems cruel to say this is your fault - Facebook's UI for determining this is terrible and basically only .05% of Facebooks users have an idea of where their messages go (probably).
I've seen this argument a lot, and I hate it. my grandmother can use computers more effectively than many university undergrads (even computer science students). why? she's been using computers, in one form or another, for forty-five years.
I don't think age has much to do with this. age brings some lessening of cognitive capability but it doesn't make you automatically bad at things. were you good at things before you got older? good news, you will probably still be good at things.
> Are people using these things in ways I can't even imagine that gives them an edge over others in their everyday lives?
Probably! but they are probably also ways people in their age group can't even imagine either.
I find it slows me down, but it's just yet another attempt at "simple," by hiding the desktop. Turns out consumers like simple and the desktop is too free-form for most people (What are icons? Heck, what's a "double click"? I just want the Internet -- this does the Internet, right?), just like the terminal was too free-form for people before that, just like that's limiting compared to soldering transistors. The desktop is still there (you can remove Unity), as is the terminal (you can remove all desktops). The desktop PC/grampa box isn't going anywhere, even after the laptop, and the laptop is still useful after the tablet/smartphone. The only thing you have to worry about is not being able to choose what works best for you. Otherwise, just hang onto your towel, and remember: "don't panic."
As noted in another reply, computers are becoming entertainment appliances for most/many people - so the UI is trending to their skill and interest level. Remember the flashing 12:00 on your VCR? That's the level of UI we're heading for.
This race to the bottom leaves the rest of us, thems of us that actually use and understand these things, behind.
For unrelated reasons, I installed Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.10 yesterday and I don't hate my computer anymore. I don't "love Ubuntu" again, because Ubuntu is now just the substrate on which Cinnamon runs. If reinstalling the OS weren't such a pain, I would, but for now I can live with Unityless freedom.
/Openbox/Slackware. This whole Linux thing is about choice.
Where do you turn to for a modern Desktop if everything is going the same (=OSX) direction? The whole point is that staying with Gnome 2.x will put you into an entrenched situation, whereas everyone else is moving on, but in a way which just doesn't fit your way of working, and without perspective that it'll ever fit?
I installed Lubuntu on an old machine to use on my TV, and it's just like old times on the Window manager, except it uses up to date packages. Why all the trail of tears? The author is willing to install Cynagenmod 10 on his phone, but he's not willing to just install a different flavor of Linux on his desktop? That's just silly. I conclude the author doesn't know about Lubuntu or many other seriously good alternatives to make the pain go away.
They also need to do it before 14.04 LTS and before the rumored SDK for Ubuntu is ready, if they actually plan to create design resources for "Ubuntu apps". They need to decide right now what Ubuntu needs to look like in the future, and how efficient it should be, unless they want to rebuild everything 1-2 years later.
The new UI also needs to be inspired by Windows 7 not Mac OS X. The developers working at Canonical might be Mac OS X fans, and using Macs but that should be completely irrelevant. They need to follow their target market, and that is Windows users not Mac users. Ubuntu will never get much market share by being installed on Macs and replacing Mac OS. But it could get some potential significant market share from the fallout of Windows 8 and the Windows ecosystem. The market share of Windows is like 20x greater than that of Mac OS. They have a lot more opportunity for growth there.
Someone like me who is coming from Windows would much rather use something like Linux Mint or Zorin OS than Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu and it took me a while to moderately get used to it, although I still found it frustrating by the time I gave up on it and tried Mint, which I found very "intuitive" to use, coming from Windows. That's what Ubuntu needs to go back to. One of the reasons I gave up on Ubuntu was also about feeling it's not faster than Windows 7, which again, is a major problem with Unity right now.
One final thing, I'm using an iPad to read and respond to this post. On this iPad I have an outstanding code editor and development environments for Lisp, Scheme, Python, J, F# and JavaScript. This is the way of the future.
For example making Chrome full screen stretches one tab across the entire width of my iMac screen, which is a stupid waste of space on most websites, and looks horrible on some websites which try to fluidly expand to the entire width of this huge screen. A better user of the horizontal space in Chrome would be to show multiple tabs side by side or even history, with the most recent page in a pane the far right, and the page that you came from in a pane to the left of that, the page before that in another pane to the left, etc.
Unfortunately after the amazon adware fiasco, I'm starting to lean on the former.
