Platform Literacy Is a Problem

There's something I've noticed growing up that I want to talk about. Not too long ago when I was a kid (around ages 7-13), I used to be called some sort of a "tech prodigy" because I knew how to "fix everything" wrong with people's phones and computers, especially of those from my own family.

I have no idea if this is related to my autism or just curiosity, but I also used to spend an unusually long time fiddling and trying out options in the settings of programs whenever there was no internet connection, whether it be on the phone or on the computer. At one point, the entirety of Windows 7's control panel was ingrained to my brain, and I always knew where to look for things without using the search bar. It got to the state where it wasn't rare that I'd either be mocked for being "attached to the screen" or be forced to hear things like:

"He's a wizard, he taught me how to use the internet!"

"He made my Facebook account private in a few seconds, while I was trying to find out for days!"

"He downloaded a YouTube video to my phone's gallery! I can watch it without internet!"

"My grandson is so smart, I would be very lost without him!"

"Today's youth are amazingly tech-savvy!"

But, are "today's youth" really savvy with digital technology? What does it mean to be "tech literate"? Knowing where to look for things in convoluted GUI menus and dropdowns? Is this what "tech literacy" has been reduced to?

The youthful demographic is actually the most technologically "dependent," rather than "literate." Their expertise boils down to memorizing the layout of interfaces of whichever platform or "service" is currently dominant. These are conventions which shift periodically, rendering much of that surface-level knowledge useless as soon as the UI conventions are restructured. When these "prodigies" have their own phones or computers behaving abnormally, they don't know what to do or even where to start looking. In fact, they often fall for online scams more than their grandparents do.

Nowadays, I simply can't remember anything related to Windows, Android, iOS, or most GUI programs. I've even become disgusted whenever I cross paths with GUI menus, with a very visible discomfort on my face when using the mouse to click buttons, and in response I'd hear things like:

"I don't know what's got to him, he doesn't know anything about [popular platform] now!"

"He's always in that black-and-white Lunix stuff! He might be doing criminal activities like in [hacker movie]!"

"Whatever he does now is useless and nonsense, because it has no direct contribution to [current thing]!"

Even then, I still can figure things out regardless of how a platform is built, though I'm not used to them so I may take a longer while to adjust. As a side note, I really hate how people assume that I can fix their shit just because I'm a programmer. I mean, I certainly could do that but... not because I'm a programmer. There's something called "having a brain" (which is something these people seem to lack), and it kinda feels condescending how they don't understand what programming is about.

Hence, what most of these "tech-savvy" people have is mere "platform literacy," which is a huge problem. They only know the ins and outs of software set about by the artificial limits of whatever walled garden they chose (or were born into). They never know how to do things outside of a vendor's sacrosanct methods, because it's not profitable for the overlords to see their cattle escaping the farm. Even basic concepts such as a "filesystem" or an "operating system" have become extremely hard to explain to your average normalfag, because basic functionalities have been so abstracted and dumbed down for them, in the name of "accessibility" and "user-friendliness" (an issue I've already mentioned in Gatekeeping Is Essential for the Survival of Communities).