Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
I teach math to undergrads, and damn it’s sad. They don’t know how to send a PDF file from their phone to laptop, and upload it to Canvas. One guy ended up emailing it to me. They don’t even know what a folder/directory is.
Well, in his defense, I could save a file from 8 different applications and they end up in 8 different locations on my phone file system. You would think they would all go to Documents or Downloads…nope. apps dont let you pick locations, and if they do, you don’t get to pick anywhere you want
Managing digital information today is a horrible mess of silos and big business driven incompatibilities. It often drives people to use PDFs, as there is nothing appropriate.
Blame the software/businesses, not the victims/users.
Why would they need to know what a folder/directory is? It’s a remnant from meat space and was replaced by tagging and is being replaced by LLM search/AI.
Why wouldn’t they be able to upload it directly to canvas?
I really empathize with people that didn’t have to figure out how to rip a CD at 2x speed or take a class on card catalog systems. They skipped a lot of critical problem solving learning opportunities.
Directory hierarchies are absolutely not a remnant from meatspace. The world “folder” is, but IRL folders are a totally different beast because they’re not nestable. Tags and searching serve useful purposes but they don’t replace directory trees.
The problem with virtual folders is you can’t have one document in multiple folders without causing chaos because of how limiting that hierarchy is. This is why tagging is better.
I teach math to undergrads, and damn it’s sad. They don’t know how to send a PDF file from their phone to laptop, and upload it to Canvas. One guy ended up emailing it to me. They don’t even know what a folder/directory is.
Well, in his defense, I could save a file from 8 different applications and they end up in 8 different locations on my phone file system. You would think they would all go to Documents or Downloads…nope. apps dont let you pick locations, and if they do, you don’t get to pick anywhere you want
Managing digital information today is a horrible mess of silos and big business driven incompatibilities. It often drives people to use PDFs, as there is nothing appropriate. Blame the software/businesses, not the victims/users.
I mostly agree with you. But it only works because users give in. They deserve some of the blame.
With USB cable? Because outside of that it gets complicated and/or vendor-specific quickly.
That’s what KDEconnect is for. Oddly enough I think it even works in windows nowadays.
Why would they need to know what a folder/directory is? It’s a remnant from meat space and was replaced by tagging and is being replaced by LLM search/AI.
Why wouldn’t they be able to upload it directly to canvas?
I really empathize with people that didn’t have to figure out how to rip a CD at 2x speed or take a class on card catalog systems. They skipped a lot of critical problem solving learning opportunities.
Directory hierarchies are absolutely not a remnant from meatspace. The world “folder” is, but IRL folders are a totally different beast because they’re not nestable. Tags and searching serve useful purposes but they don’t replace directory trees.
Folders are absolutely nestable.
The problem with virtual folders is you can’t have one document in multiple folders without causing chaos because of how limiting that hierarchy is. This is why tagging is better.
Tell me you’ve never used a filing cabinet…
For about a year I worked in a filing room. I saw a decent amount of filing methods.