"A kid puts his hand up. He tells me he's got a virus on his computer. I look at his screen. Displayed in his web-browser is what appears to be an XP dialogue box warning that his computer is infected and offering free malware scanning and removal tools. He's on a Windows 7 machine. I close the offending tab. He can't use a computer."
[...]
How the hell did we get to this situation? How can a generation with access to so much technology, not know how to use it?"
Why the hell do we expect kids to know things nobody ever told them that they exist? That seems to me like a more reasonable question. Kids don't know how human body works till we tell them, they don't know how to read unless we show it to them, why would we expect them to know how to reinstall operating system when no one ever used the word operating system in front of them?
If no one ever show RAM to kid, the kid wont be able to react on request to change it. That is the default state, the state when a kid knows a thing is a state achieved by somebody teaching the thing to kid.
Computers are now appliances rather than power tools.
I think that all the kids should be taught enough about computers to know it is no magic, that it is learnable and actually easy once you want to do it (and you dont actually need to be genius to learn it as many believe).
However, I really don't think they all need to know Linux administration.
Cars are so reliable and take so little maintenance nowadays, he marvels at them. OTOH they're also very unfriendly to the shade-tree mechanic. The engines are covered by plastic cowling panels. Everything is packed in so tightly it's a nightmare to change anything. And it's all controlled by proprietary black-box computer systems.
I think people are overreacting to simple facts of life: if a technology is mature and the services around it plenty and cheap, there's no point wasting your time learning the ins and outs of it.
I don't see what the problem is if someone doesn't know how to add a RAM stick just because I do, the same way I don't feel compelled to know how to replace a light bulb to save myself a tenner
"[Some of us chose] to debug viruses, worry about floppy disk compatibility, learn how to change out failed hard drives, etc. if we simply wanted to use technology at all"
Now, Millennials is a pretty uselessly broad term, so depending on what age range you are actually talking about, there is slightly more truth to this. If you are talking about someone who is 29-34 today, then you would be an early adopter of these technologies and it did require a high level of expertise. However this was a very small portion of the population.
If you are talking about 22-25 year olds, then computers and the internet had become more common in households and de-skilling. I know plenty of people who have used and owned computers most of their lives and have never debugged a thing.
Nerds have the inability to understand that most people use computers like any other tool. They do not obsess over it, seek to understand how it works, or otherwise care.
Like a microwave, they buy a new one if their current computer "breaks." Like a light fixture, if it malfunctions, most people hire a repairman instead of doing it themselves.
This has always been true for the mainstream users of computers. It only seems more absurd now because 16-19 year olds have had smartphones and other technology luxuries their whole lives, and so we expect them to have invested more interest into truly learning how to use them and how they work.
But availability of a technology does not have much of a connection to proficiency of said technology.
Ironically, I am sure most of the people here who whine about how little other people understand computers have a similar lack of understanding for other objects they use everyday. How many people in programming/I.T. know anything about plumbing or car maintenance?
As an aside, I always thought that the age rage for millennials was about twice as broad as it should be. I don't really find myself identifying with the older members of the cohort.