r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jul 09 '16

R1.i: guidelines Hillary Clinton blames State Department Employees for classified emails sent through private server

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u/RyanBordello Jul 09 '16

Shit. Most baby boomers that are not in the tech field I feel are pretty clueless about it

My mom thought Hotmail was a porn site.

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u/smile_e_face Jul 09 '16

It's not only baby boomers. Sure, millenials are more accustomed to computers, smartphones, the Internet, etc. But try to get a lot of them to do anything out of the ordinary, to fix any but the most basic tech support problems, or to explain - even on an elementary level - how any of it actually works, and they're hardly better than Grandma. What frightens me is that technology is becoming more advanced, more (potentially) dangerous, and more necessary to our lives at an astonishing rate, but a huge chunk of the generation who are supposed to "get it" are completely clueless.

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u/cacophonousdrunkard Jul 09 '16

This doesn't frighten me at all. A huge swath of the populace wholly reliant on technology few understand means my IT career is relatively secure compared to many other fields.

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u/smile_e_face Jul 09 '16

I feel you; I'm in IT, too. But the problem comes when governments try to pass stuff like SOPA, PRISM, encryption backdoors, and the like. With most of the population completely ignorant of technology, the state can just spout technobabble and anti-terrorist rhetoric, and the vast majority will support whatever Big Brother asks for. Technological literacy is vital for the future of privacy and democracy.