Because "using a computer" doesn't just mean having a Facebook account

How can a generation with access to so much technology, not know how to use it?

... and why this is important is what Marc Scott talks about in his blog post Kids Can't Use Computers... And This Is Why It Should Worry You.

First of all and most importantly, ignorance is never a good thing.

I'm not saying everyone should be a computer genius, but let's think about this for a moment.
I'm in the second half of my twenties, and many people in my generation didn't have a computer at home before they were in high school, or even in university. Their encounter with computers is relatively recent, but this didn't stop most of these people from having a Facebook account, or using Wikipedia for their essays.

They learned these basic things, like googling and opening an account on a website and post things. Why most of them should feel so lost every time their "internet doesn't work"?

My mom has always preferred the latest technology to designer's clothes, so I was lucky enough to have a computer at home since I was in primary school. This is how it looked like:

I absolutely loved it. It wasn't just another game consolle, I could do so many fancy things with it! I was so fascinated by everything. There was this family friend who helped us with our first computers, I still remember when he taught us the ctrl+alt+del trick. It sounded like magic at the time.

I wanted to learn all the secret of this computer thing first hand, so I explored the system, played with different softwares and had a lot of fun doing so.
I decided to wrote my final primary school essay on word and print it out, because I thought it'd look much prettier and more clean, so I asked the teacher if I could. Some classmates saw me as a computer genius, some others complained that "it's not fair", because they believed the computer would do everything by itself -- pretty much what half of the clients of any person working in the creative industry still think.

Truth is, I was quite slow at typing back then, I didn't have Photoshop to create my fancy diagrams and if I wanted to include pictures I had to scan them from books and add them to my Word doc because Google Images wasn't a thing yet. Basically it took longer with a computer than by hand, but the result was so much better.

Or so I thought. I hope it wasn't in Comic Sans.

What I want to say is that I'm not a computer genius, but I'm also into computers more than the average person. There are computers in all price ranges these days, which means the average person is probably an average computer user, too. Many of these users are younger than me, and in the newer generations, much more people had access to a computer or a smartphone as early as me... or even earlier!

I do understand that not everyone can be interested in technology or not everyone want to be a programmer, and that's fine. But when you're a frequent computer and internet user, you should at least know a few things about them.

Ignorance leads to stupid decisions, see Cameron's latest announcement about default internet filters in the UK. Technically these things should filter out any rated content, so that children could surf the internet without being traumatized.

If you ever surfed the web with any family filter on though, you know these things rarely filter just sites like YouPorn, but even perfectly safe blogs and sites.
Yeah I know, I know: you can still call your provider and deactivate those filters... but that's not the point!

Censorship is never the answer. Censoring websites is the solution of someone who's acting like they're scared of the internet, like it's a mysterious monster we don't know much about and that acts on its own whim. These people forget that the internet is made by people: people who create contents and people who read and elaborate those contents. Instead of just hiding some contents that are inappropriate for some people, isn't it better to educate these people about how the internet works and what is the appropriate netiquette?

I know many parents would want to protect their children from the outside world, but let's face it: they can't live in a happy bubble forever. Your duty as a parent is to teach them how to be grown-ups. So instead of just hiding things, tell them why they shouldn't visit certain websites, or that they shouldn't click on all the shady ads they see... whatever you want, but please tell them why should they do that, and not that they just have to.

Teach them how to think with their own mind and how to take their own decisions, instead of just deciding for them. I went on the internet when I was a child too, but I knew the rules: don't click on things that wants money from you, don't tell your real name to strangers (that was before Facebook), don't be on the internet for more than an hour a day. Can you believe this last one? The perks of being on a 56k connection: living the real life! :P

Are people so tech-unaware because they weren't taught to think with their own minds, but they were accustomed to other people doing things for them? I hope this is just an exaggeration, but there's one thing I know for sure: if people were a little more tech savvy, no one would ask things on Yahoo answers before simply googling them.

Why are things creepy

Yesterday's post and the creepy countdown videos in the Pronunciation book Youtube channel, reminded me of another video I watched recently: Why are things creepy?

The video original thumbnail. Creepy? I'd say quite so.

If you're interested in a logic, fast-paced and charming analysis of the topic, I suggest you watch the video (and all the other videos on Vsauce channel for that matter! They're all brilliant). Don't worry, the rest of the video is not as creepy as the thumbnail... most of it, at least.

So what makes things creepy is the fact we can't explain why they (kind of( scare us or what looks odd about them.

There's nothing shiver inducing about a video with a black number on a white screen, but the fact a mysterious someone is telling us that something is going to happen is creepy, because we don't know who, we don't why... we don't get the context of it all. We know it's not a countdown to the end of the world (... right?), and yet we would feel more safe if only we know what was happening exactly.

Creepy things both scare me and fascinate me greatly. Maybe it's their nature.
In the above mentioned video, what caught my eye the most is the singing android. The video is more hilarious than creepy (what's with those random nature shoots?!)... but again, try to watch it all alone in the silence of the night. Believe me, it's not the last thing you want to see before going to sleep.

What fascinates me the most though it's not the android itself, but the person behind it. This person has decided to spend time and money (lots of money, the mechanical parts cost quite a lot) to build this thing. He/she has the the right knowledge to build this thing. Then this person decided to make an artistic (?) video with his android... singing. Why he decided to make it sing in the first place? Is that voice computer generated or just recorded from someone? Last but not least, how this person sleep in the same house of that thing?! (sorry android to call you thing, I'm sure you're going to have a soul too... like, in a couple of years. Don't kill me!)

By the way, I obviously can see the potential of human-like androids in the future, but they're also one of the thoughts that scares me the most. I guess I just watched too many tv series where it didn't end up very well.

(I still want that Cylon toaster gadget by the way)

If the normal sweat rate of an adult is 10lt per day, at the moment mine is 20lt

England is melting and so am I.

My body can't tolerate these high temperatures, as it keeps forgetting that I come from sunny Italy.
Expat Italians often complain about the weather here, so at least I hope those people will take this as a chance to shut their mouths and finally enjoy the summer.

Complaining might be part of the human nature, but it's a bigger part of the Italian nature. I can't say I'm guilty free here. I don't really like complaining too much, but you know, in Italy it's often a way to start a conversation!
I think I noticed the difference much more since I started living in London.

To make you an example, thanks to a friend I ended up on this online magazine for fans of the Italian culture and language today. It's always intriguing to see how we are perceived by other cultures, so I decided to navigate around a bit... and when I found the language lessons I couldn't be more excited!

Being a languages fan (I wish I could speak them all... if only I had a babelfish in my ear!) and having tried to study a few of them, I'm sort of acquainted with language books. I never found many books for foreigner italian students though, so when I have the chance to read dialogues and exercises for those books I do, because believe me, they sound quite funny -- and they make you realize how ridiculous you sounded all these years while doing the same on your own foreign language books.

This language article talks about how to talk about the weather in Italian.
I quote the article: "When we learn the basic Italian weather expressions, [...] we can discuss the weather with Italians". You see, technically the sentence is (obviously) correct. It's the approach to the language that's wrong.

In Italy you don't discuss about the weather, you complain about it. The weather is never lovely, and when it is, well it was about time because it rained/was too cold/too hot/too mild all this time, damn it!

I can't say these complaints are totally unmotivated. I don't know about other parts of Italy, but Rome can't cope with any extreme weather, and by extreme I mean everything that's not "basic sunny". When it rains it's a disaster (impossible traffic if you go by car or by bus, delayed or cancelled trains... I've seen it all), let alone those rare times it snow (imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario, but with kids throwing snowballs at you. Yes, a double nightmare).

But it's also true these people complain about basically anything: food, the price of everything, travelling, the air they breathe... nothing's like home. Especially when they meet other Italians outside Italy.
"Wasn't the breakfast awful?" is a great way to bond over your toasts at the morning buffet if you're in a hotel, and "Is the bus ever going to come? I pay taxes!" is perfect for the bus stop.
If you're old enough, you can also add the classic "Ah, when I was young, these things worked better!". You know it's now true, but blaming youngsters for all that's wrong nowadays always feel good.

I hope I got away from Italy just in time not to be permanently affected by this syndrome, but I guess we'll know only in a few years time. If you ever meet me at the bus stop, complaining about youngsters and the weather, please, punch me in the face.