Parents Are Dumb and Kids Don’t Know Anything About Computers Anymore
medium.com
medium.com
This piece paints the early 1990s as a golden era where you had to, and thus did, know about the computer at a low level. (And yes, I remember finding the DIP switches to change IRQ settings.)
But some of those of the previous generation would complain about how kids in the 1990s didn't know how to open up the box, and wire in new hardware, nor understand the circuit diagrams ... which no longer come with the computer.
Those of the first microcomputer generation, of the 1970s, would complain that those of the 1980s had no idea any more how to put things together themselves, like from an Altair kit, or go to Homebrew meetings and share schematics.
My uncle once drove me around in a Model A truck. The engine isn't sealed. The owner was expected to open it up an clean it every year. In earlier models, there was a door in the firewall to adjust the carburetor while driving. Obviously, we are now dumb, and know nothing about cars any more.
So here's a real example of utility. The son of a friend of mine, about 12 years old, uses his iPad to make stop motion animation. He once made a movie on the plane, and totally amazed a seatmate.
Could you or I have made such a thing in the 1980s? No. Well, not without a lot of expensive equipment.
Sure, there's no utility if you define "utility" as being able to understand hardware (or how to rebuild a Model T engine or a carburetor). But it's excellent utility for someone who wants to go into animation. He could be a co-founder of the next Aardman, for all we know.
The vast majority of kids with computers in the 1980s, btw, mostly used it to play games and do school reports.
Compare your experience to the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S in the 1960s and 1970s, who started with their own vacuum tube computer, had a teletype to dial into a PDP-8 until DEC donated one to them, and more. Do you think the kids of 1990 really learned something of utility compared to that?