I am sure the journalists write this kind of rubbish through the year so they can all go on holiday at the same time and still produce a newspaper/web site.
Does technology now mean small electronic devices? When did cars, televisions or for that matter buildings stop being artifacts of technology?

What do we mean by understanding? I've just written the firmware for a video over ethernet camera, but it took me ten minutes last night to disable the oven timer so I could cook a pizza. Does it count as understanding if you only know how to program operating systems but have no idea how to put a consumer device through safety approvals?

Grumpy Old Man Comments:

People young enough to have grown up with "pervasive devices" mostly have a broad but shallow understanding of how they work, and are on average better with smartphones / tablets / phablets than people who are 40+. However, those who are Very Interested or professionals typically find this stuff easier than anyone else, regardless of age.

If by "using technology" they mean "can receive email on my phone, might check Twitter or browse the web occasionally" then I'm probably e-enabled* the majority of the time I'm awake. But outside work I'm mostly not "using technology" so much as "available via technology". Unless, of course, you count playing games or watching TiVo as "using technology"...

I would also like to make a ritual old person protest against the use of "technology" to mean "computational devices, preferably portable and online" rather than, you know, the application of science, or the collective tools of humanity, or something.

Going off on my own private rant now... can we also Do Something about the use of "startup" to mean "a small web development company", "geek" for "website programmer", "creative" for "does visual design or writes text for websites", "digital" to indicate "made of information, not physical stuff" and also "totally different to the same thing when it's not digital" (e.g. digital games are totally different to tabletop games, digital books are nothing like printed books, etc etc) and, most of all, "fintech".

In a spirit of compromise, however, I am willing to settle for "fintech" meaning "bio-engineering which gives people fins (see also: furtech, scaletech, etc)" rather than, Oh God, this...




* Hey, I made up an e-word!

I'm 43 with a score higher than all age groups at 117. Presumably when I hit 44 my level of competance will drop to the range of a 6 year old.

I can't really fill out this form, most, if not all of my friends and work colleagues would be high, if not above average. How this measures proportionally against the general population I do not know. I've had my fair share of people expecting me to be able to fix their broken computers or unconnecting internet when they hear I'm a computer animator.

As to hours using technology, animating or writing a thesis can easily involve being glued to a blasted screen for more than 8 hours, you might as well say people have been found to spend more than 8 hours a day working. Le shock!

Edited at 2014-08-08 10:50 (UTC)

I see using technology being something distinct from understanding it. I suspect that a good chunk (around 40-50%) proportion of the young people who are confident in using technology don't know much about how it actually works. The same being true of users of the technology being discussed here of any age.

I consider myself primarily a user with a reasonably good laypersons grasp of what's going on under the hood. I am confident enough to physically replace bits of a computer under instruction.

But 'understanding' and 'using' are not the same thing. I've read Jon Agar's In Constant Touch - a short history of the mobile phone and Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble - both of which gave me new 'understandings' of technology that clearly aren't what's being asked here (Do you know about this, do you use it, would you recommend it).

I get the sense that mobile phones/ internet have changed teenagerhood. Social media arrived after I'd done the most tempestuous bits of forming my identity. Young people are forming their identities in part through their use of mobile/internet technology - and in a very much more public way. Working with young adults I can see that there are some clear impacts of this... but I'm not sure anyone is either a) considering this an 'understanding' of technology worth pursuing or b) knows what to do about it.

The main question I'm trying to get answered is at what age tecnhological learning capability and technological knowledge peak.

I'm not sure that age is the most important variable affecting people's ability to absorb new technology.

For example, I'm someone who's been picking up new computer-based technologies since I was 13, and the whole smartphone / app / swipe interface thing is just another one. In fact, it was far simpler to learn than most because it's based on a good, consistent metaphor that's been carefully designed to be easy to use.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people at the Oxfam bookshop who've never really got to grips with GUIs, and who pretty much stopped learning new interfaces after the typewriter, the car, and the video recorder. They, I suspect, would be more likely to struggle with a phablet.*



* There's a TV program in this. Possibly involving celebrities thrown into a mud pit with a crate of iDevices.

Yeah... I just don't see how any of this fits into ticky-box age brackets. People who have the right turn of mind to deal with technology are better at any age than people who don't. There's a much clearer understanding of and much more intent put into designing things for specific users these days, to make them easier to use; whether or not someone can use something says as much about who designed it as who's using it.

(And having done that survey, surely the problem is just the name? It's not asking about tech as in all of technology, it's just asking about current popularly available technology, mostly telecoms, in which case you can say that it's unsurprisingly the most well-understood among young people because they're the both the target market and the people who are making a lot of the stuff for it. It's less to do with how well you pick up technology than how well the technology's been made for you.)

I feel that children growing up with this tech have an instinctive feel towards it. I have to use it for being part of my job.

It is too vague. Jam is technology. Typewriters are technology. Cars are technology. I challenge of on to find a cohort of 6-year-olds who can make jam or drive cars better than a bunch of middle-aged people. There is a series of YouTube videos of kids being aghast at the incomprehensible technology of the previous generation.