I miss it. I do. Or rather I miss it in other people.
I am exposing myself as a nearly 60 year old IT-adjacent curmudgeon. But I have been running servers and supporting people in their use of technology — one way or another — since the early 1990s.
It seems to me like no one can set up their own email account any more. And I’m bewildered. I’m talking about extremely smart people with multiple degrees and lengthy experience with technology and computer use through long careers as well as newly-minted graduates who’ve grown up in a world that has always had the Internet, two factor authentication and facial recognition.
It seems like we all have lost the ability to dive into any application with more than two pieces of information at a time. Name and password. More than that and people of all ages and experiences seem to behave like the digital equivalent of a non-swimmer cast out of a boat without a life jacket.
The older ones have their preferred way to do email. And it has always been thus and the ‘how’ of making an adjustment or addition to it has been purged from their conscious memory like so many song lyrics. Configuration? Settings? Add server? What?
There was a time when you could just feed them the server names, ports and credentials and they’d be good to go. Sometimes they might get in touch to confirm the password but that was it. Nowadays the smart ones are the ones that come back with ‘Is that like Outlook?’ The rest? Well it’s webmail or a screen share.
Under the hood it is a bit weird, I admit. There’s frequently just one server, but there’s usually two. And the port (what is that anyway)? Well they can be two of several. And you have to authenticate twice. With the correct method, naturally. And of course you need a password. Finding where to key in this info can be a bit Where’s Waldo. But people used to be able to cope with that.
Now if I ask if they’re okay to set up their email client, the chat/phone/zoom call goes silent and I get a look like a Masters student who’s walked into the wrong exam wearing only their underwear.
And I want to tell them “But you know, it used to be so much worse. First you had to telnet into the server, then fire up pine, set up your editor, specify your path for attachments…” yadda yadda. But it’s hardly relevant. As email goes the way of hard copy mail and is replaced by a myriad of instant messaging and group collaboration applications, a person’s ability to remember the port for IMAP over SSL is becoming as useful as the ability to craft wooden barrels.