[sumtechguy]

Most likely basically because the cut off for atdt being any use to most users was mid 1990s. I still like the fact that it is still being used millions of times per day by cell phones.

DNS and SSH were/are things 'techie' people know. I can assure you most people had no idea what their IP was or what a DNS was. Being the "hey my computer is acting kinda slow can you look at it" guy. It felt like they actively sought out to not know. Honestly cellphones and tablets have basically ended my endless side job of 'hey can you look at my computer'. Because they hid all of that techno junk that is interesting to me but to most people isnt.

[reconnecting]

What I'm saying is that being a 'power user' is not a static thing, it's relative. It changes and evolves (or downgrades) over time.

But most importantly, and what the author missed, is that it works both ways. I know how to connect to a BBS, but I was literally paralysed by the fact that there is no LAN game in Counter-Strike 2. Where is LAN?! Why do I need a Steam account for every player to play with friends sitting in the same room? Why would I even need external servers for this?

idk, it's a modern world and I don't belong to it, so perhaps we should accept the slow death of 90s or 00s 'power users', and the rise of new 'power users' of the 20s, who won't even know what floppy disk icon on the Save button means.

[SLJ7]

I suppose it depends on what you think a power user is. Personally, I think it's someone who is interested in solving their own problems and thinking critically or outside the box. Someone who understands not only how to do something, but also why you do it that way.

In a Bash terminal, if something goes wrong, it's probably my fault and there's a clear path forward to troubleshooting and fixing it. That feels way more palatable than a bloated website that throws an "Oops, something went wrong" error. For us, that's hitting a wall, but for people who aren't living in a Linux terminal, needing to open one at all is hitting a wall.

LAN gameplay disappeared because it was the power user way. Steam is a complex centralized proprietary software stack that abstracts all the hard parts of online gaming away so anyone can do it. You can't just intuit the existence of Steam using knowledge of computer and networking fundamentals. That's a knowledge gap, not a lack of skill.

[sumtechguy]

That is totally fair. I never really looked at it that way before. I just see it as another blob of skills to add to my growing list of useless knowledge. :)