With the increase in smartphone usage, particularly the iPhone, many assume that younger users are more technically-oriented than their ancestors. Flash: They aren’t. This belief is a scam that even top-level Amway reps have fallen for. Using an iPhone does not equate to being technically literate. In this article, we’ll explore the differences between iPhone usage, and technical literacy. And we’ll point out the many ways iPhone “experts” are doomed.
Technical literacy is the ability to comprehend and use technological devices and processes to solve problems and accomplish tasks. This is an essential skill in the digital age, where almost every aspect of our lives is intertwined with technology. Technical literacy enables individuals to understand, engage with, and innovate within the digital world. Unfortunately, ninety-five percent of iPhone users are completely unable to do any single one of these things, much less all of them.
Technical literacy requires a deep understanding of technology and the ability to solve problems that have nothing to do with shooting the perfect selfie of your duck face. An iPhone expert who can advise you how to insert an emoji eating its own snot into a misspelled text message is sure to lack the technical skills to troubleshoot actual real-life network connectivity issues, or to diagnose even the simplest hardware problems. In other words, the kinds of jobs people actually get paid to do that don’t involve hamburgers. Unfortunately, emoji proficiency, playing inane YouTube videos at full volume in restaurants, and waving iPhones in front of your face in dark movie theaters is the highest technical level most iPhone users will ever achieve.
iPhones were supposedly designed for usability and convenience. They were built to be accessible to a wide range of users — no matter how stupid they are. Using an iPhone may make you more proficient at trial-and-error fumbling through Apple’s crappily laid-out menu structure. But it certainly doesn’t translate to any kind of useful (that means ‘paying’) technical literacy skills.
iPhone users know how to use “What’s Your Nickname” to give themselves cool monikers, and they know all about playing with springy digital door stop apps (they make a ‘sproinging’ noise!). But no one who has actually done something for himself in the world will pay actual money to a screen-locked phone-twerp to troubleshoot that flaky PHP on the DNS server. The only good news for iPhone failures is that American welfare benefits, selfish GoFundMe scams, and fake disability programs continue to become more generous every year.
iPhone users who think they are so smart should consider that their forebears had to first build their own computers, then use assembly language to program them back in the 1980’s. You probably had no idea that your mom had to create Excel from scratch, just to get a grocery list going. Or that your grandad got bored and invented Call Of Duty after he hand-built his first computer from discarded Craftsman lawn mower parts. Meanwhile, other dads (not yours) were hammering out the first Pentium microprocessors in their basements or soldering up the internet that you have ruined — when they weren’t busting their asses doing overtime on the night shift screwing wheels on at GM. They didn’t need the “iPhone Blower” to squelch the candles on their birthday cake. They blew them out with their highly-developed masculine lungs. Their manly bronchi vigorously processed the oxygen for the knockout birthday sex that followed.
Our forefathers had true technical literacy. They didn’t while away their hours swiping right in the hope of getting a ninety-to-one shot at the chance of contracting a new STD in their parents’ basement. They were living the real guts of the American Dream. They invented Game Boys and Boom Boxes, made a shitload of money, and didn’t spend it on you. The sex followed the money, and the sex back then was a lot better in the bachelor pads that they bought just as soon as they could get the frigging hell out of their parents’ house.
The fact is, our know-nothing Boomer parents were technically literate…and most still are. They’re too busy counting their money to give a flying shit about which emoji can best capture the flowing fountains of their inner being.
You think you are more technically literate than your ancestors because you can multitask Daddy Yankee’s latest musical travesty on endless repeat while playing with “Zips” on your iPhone. If your supposedly technically-illiterate old man needed to unzip some clothing on a more curvaceous human being, he didn’t need an iPhone to do it with. And, he got a hell of a lot more practice at unzipping real zippers than you ever will.
Developing technical literacy skills involves learning the basics of technology and continued learning. It’s essential to understand the foundational concepts and skills behind technological devices and processes. You are unlikely to have built many skills of any kind, since you spent your teen years making fun of “nerds” while pretending to suck on an “iBeer” in class. Now those same nerds are knocking off $450,000 a year designing robotic sex dolls over at General Dynamics. You? Never mind.
Now the Pakistanis and Indians have arrived with their PhD’s in advanced number theory and their $500,000 per year GPU-design skills. The problem for today’s iPhone “experts” is that these ‘newcomers’ sell their high-priced skills in America for $48k a year And they’re more than happy to cram fifteen of them into a two-bedroom apartment. They were troubleshooting flaky PNP junctions and hard-wiring the bugs out of quantum computers while you were checking your iPhone app to see if it was dark outside Mom’s basement.
The Feds have finally recognized that under-educated American punks need more STEM degrees to compete with immigrants with perfect SAT scores. Unfortunately, most American kids can’t hack actual honest-to-God STEM programs. In order to keep the taxpayer moola flowing and especially to enhance equity of outcome, socialist bureaucrats are pushing the colleges to make iPhone Plunking the newest “STEM” field.
In conclusion, using an iPhone is not the same as having technical literacy skills. Technical literacy is a skill-set that enables individuals to engage with, understand, and solve problems within the digital world. With products like this, you can actually improve your skill set and have fun, too. As technology continues to evolve and become more integrated into our lives, it’s essential to develop technical literacy skills. If you are among the five percent who can do this, the world is your oyster.