Whatever Happened to Computer Class?
Some days, particularly at the beginning of the semester, I feel like a majority of my job is not "English Professor" or even "College Faculty Member" but rather "Tech Support." This is a shame, in part because I know for a fact that Tech Support would pay considerably more than I'm currently making as an English Professor, but more so because with every passing year it seems as though my students (and my colleagues, and my friends, and my bosses) are more and more tech illiterate, despite the fact that more and more tech is becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives.
I'm far from the first person to point this out. Forbes and Futurism both wrote fairly popular pieces about how ill-prepared for the use of workplace technology Gen Z seems to be. When I tell lay people this (what else are you supposed to talk about at parties?), they're amazed. "But Gen Z is the iPad generation!" Yes, I say, that is exactly the problem.
Or at least, it was.
We'll get to the new problem in a minute. For now, stick with me on this iPad thing.
True, the defining features of Gen Z and Gen Alpha seem to be that they were given an iPad shortly after being born into this world. Common knowledge says being born into such a tech mediated world would lead to higher tech know-how, but that's not the case. The problem with iPads and Chromebooks, ironically enough, is that they just work. And if they don't work? Well, you can't do any work on them yourself without voiding the warranty so off to the Apple store you go!
In tech we call this a "Walled Garden." A walled garden is an environment where the user's access to network-based content and services is controlled by the people in charge of those contents and services. Accessing Facebook through the app is a Walled Garden experience. If I access Facebook through my browser, I can somewhat control my experience by using extensions such as FB Purity or Facebook Container. When using the app, my experience may be smoother but I have less control over it. Another example, and indeed the one that prompted this newsletter, is the practice of "side loading" or, as I like to call it, "downloading whatever program or app I want on the device that I own." Starting in September 2026, Android users will only be able to download apps from the sanctioned Google and Microsoft app stores. By limiting users to Google Play, Android is restricting their users to environments they control.
Walled Gardens have plenty of benefits, although most of these benefits are for the aforementioned people in charge rather than their user base. There's significantly less chance of downloading malware or a virus in Walled Gardens, for example. Users also typically have a smoother experience in the apps than on the webpage. But even these so-called "benefits" aren't as shiny as they appear. We've become accustomed to "data leaks" from big tech corporations, and walled garden apps with horrible back-end cybersecurity is often the cause. And the reason the app is often a smoother experience is because the website is often intentionally sabotaged in order to drive more users towards the app. Once they have you on the app, the content you see and can access is 100% controlled by the app owners. More marketing and advertising content, more pay-to-play options, more precious user data to sell or leak later. Facebook, for obvious reasons, wants your entire internet experience to be mediated through their app (and in certain parts of the world, this is already the case).
Chromebooks, iPads, and other app-driven "computers" are largely what Gen Z and Gen Alpha are familiar with using. Phones, Big Phones, and Phones That Look Like Laptops. They don't really understand how programs work, or what a program even is. They don't understand how to troubleshoot problems, because the act of troubleshooting is actively discouraged by the creators of these walled gardens.
I was born in 1990, and while my family was an early adopter of computers and the internet, the experience was wholly unlike what we see today. Before Facebook, before even Myspace, the internet consisted largely of forums and webpages. Sometimes things broke on your computer and you had to figure out how to fix it. In order to fix it, you have to know some basic things about a computer. At the very least where your files are located, how to open task manager, what the settings are even capable of.
Enter: Computer Class.
In Middle School people of my generation were required to take Computer Class. My high school and recently graduated students tell me this is no longer the case, which explains a lot. My Computer Class was taught by a kind, if slightly deaf, elderly woman who was also our school's librarian. Admittedly, the class was mostly typing, but we learned about different file types, how to use the Microsoft Suite of products, and basic internet safety. Later, in high school, we could take classes on specific programs like Photoshop and Excel. We learned basic HTML and CSS coding when myspace came around and how to torrent from someone's older brother who inevitably smelled of weed but burned the coolest CDs.
These skills are still so unbelievably useful to me. Even though we were learning on computers that weighed 50 lbs and required at least three square feet of desk space, most of the actual skills involved haven't changed that much. Start your task manager. Open your settings. Check your downloads file. I ask my students to do these things and they look at me like I'm speaking Latin, handing them chalk and asking them to summon demons. Never mind asking them to convert a doc to a pdf.
And it's not just Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Talking to adults who almost exclusively use the internet through their phone and apps is just as frustrating. Computer Class is a use it or lose it skill, especially with how fast things evolve.
Let me put on my Oracle-at-Delphi hat for a moment as I warn you that this problem will only get worse.
We're currently seeing a transition away from Walled Gardens and into Black Boxes, thanks in large part to Artificial Intelligence.
A black box system is one that can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs, without any knowledge of what's going on inside. A (usually secret, proprietary) algorithm outputs results without shedding any light on how the calculations were made. This is already a problem in places like Google or Facebook, who manipulate their (secret, proprietary) algorithm in order to manipulate their users.
But as more and more of your actual computing is done by an AI, more and more of those skills I learned in computer class are becoming not only outdated, but flat out unusable. I can't go into the source code, because there is no publicly available source code. I can't adjust a setting, because that setting is no longer available. Microsoft and Apple are embedding mysterious AI controlled black boxes into the basic OSes.
They're betting that their users will choose convenience over control.
And I get it - it is convenient! It's more convenient to download the app, to ask ChatGPT, to just buy a new computer when the OS becomes so bloat ridden that your hardware can't take it anymore but the old version of Windows you were running is no longer maintained. It's inconvenient and even, dare I say, difficult to figure out how your computer works and to make it do what you want it to do. That's why we used to have classes!
But it's important because your computer, your phone, your tablet - these aren't value-neutral logic driven robots (no matter how much Sam Altman & co. try to convince you otherwise). These devices are controlled by the same tech oligarchs who are burning the world to the ground. Google's algorithm isn't giving you a neutral collection of results, it's putting ad content and biased sources at the top in order to manipulate you. You aren't ceding control to your phone or your computer or the hypothetical "robot overlords", you're ceding control to Musk, Bezos, Altman, Nadella, Pichai, and Cook.
The final straw for me was Windows OS.
As anyone who has the misfortune to be around me knows, I'm an AI hater to my core. If AI has no haters then I am dead. One day the massive draft I have already started about all the ways AI harms our brains, our societies, and our worlds will be published but until then, just take my word for it. I've gone to great lengths to rid my computer experience of AI. I don't use ChatGPT. I don't use Google search. I switched to LibreDocs instead of Microsoft and I use Firefox explicitly because I have the power to turn off AI. As much as I am able, I do not use AI.*
I even switched to Linux this past weekend solely because of Copilot. I was sick of turning it off only to have Windows automatically switch it back on. You can't uninstall Copilot, and "deactivating" it is temporary. More and more of the settings that I use to control and customize my experience were disappearing in favor of "tell Copilot what you'd like to do!" (I'd like to delete Copilot, but apparently my computer, which has been functioning just fine without Copilot since I purchased it in 2022, will not be able to function correctly if I get rid of this "core system application" that eats up all my memory and storage).
You know what I can do in Linux? Open the terminal (brief aside: I fucking love the terminal. Makes me feel like a hacker in The Matrix), type "rm -rf --no-preserve-root /", and delete literally everything off of the device, rendering it inoperable until I boot up a new live disk to install a new OS. The terminal might ask "are you sure (y/n)" and if I type "y" it'll say "whatever you say, boss!" and poof! no more computer.
It really can be that simple! We had this! This was the standard experience for a long time!
Now, if you want to use something other than Android or Apple on your phone, you have to buy a special (usually foreign) phone that your wireless carrier might not even let you have on their network because the Free and Open Source (FOSS) version of Android is dangerous. They say it's dangerous because it's not as secure, it's easier to download malware, spyware, viruses, etc. But this isn't the real reason. Bear with me as I veer sharply into conspiracy theorist rhetoric. It's dangerous to the tech oligarchs for you to understand how their tech works. Not being able to hoard your data and control the content you see is dangerous to them.
Think of all the ways we cede control to tech. We build our social networks in their apps, we let the streaming giants own all our media, we rely on proprietary software to do our jobs, we ask ChatGPT what we should make for dinner and in return they feed us a steady diet of ads and data leaks, all the while demanding more data and more compliance.
It's inconvenient. It's hard. It's not a viable solution for everyone. It has taken me multiple days just to figure out how to work Linux, and the better part of a year to divorce my computer experience from the one the tech oligarchs want me to have. But, damn, is it satisfying. It's so nice to not be inundated with ads and sponsored content. It's so nice to get my news from an RSS feed that I personally curated. It's so nice to watch movies I own that I have uploaded to my own self-hosted server. It's so nice to have multiple ways of contacting my friends outside of the app-sanctioned messaging features.
As I tell my students, struggling is a sign of growth. Struggling with difficult materials or tasks is how we learn. Offloading that effort for the sake of convenience is tempting, I know, but please stay with the trouble. You don't have to switch to Linux, you don't have to learn to code, you don't have to take a course in computer science, but I'm begging you to understand the basics of what your computer is doing and to have the courage to play around with it. Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and countless others are all on a mission to turn your computer into a black box you don't own for their own purposes and all it takes to protect yourself is a little curiosity.
*Disclaimer: This applies to my personal usage, since I obviously need to use Microsoft Docs and Windows OS to teach. I suspect this will change in the coming years when the AI bubble bursts, but until then, I suffer.
