Basic Trope: Young people struggle to use and comprehend (or are completely unaware of) older forms of technology.
- Straight: Alice, a 22-year-old intern at Trope Co. Inc., doesn't know how to send a fax, seeing as by the time she got to High School, faxing was mostly obsolete.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice doesn't even know what a computer is (much less how to use one), even though her smartphone and tablet are computers.
- Anything that's other than the latest and greatest technology is completely unfamiliar to Alice - cassette tapes, CDs, MP3 players, flip-phones - she doesn't know about any of it.
- Alice only understands modern technology, to the point in which she's completely clueless about how books are supposed to work.
- Downplayed: Alice is unfamiliar with old technology, but nobody really makes a big deal about it and she easily finds ways around it.
- Justified: Alice was never taught how to fax, since by the time she got to High School, people sent documents as email attachments, or even through cloud-based file-sharing services; faxing was (mostly) obsolete.
- Inverted:
- Alice calls up her adult children every night to ask them how to use The Google.
- Despite being a younger person, Alice understands how to use older technology very well and even likes it better than some forms of modern technology.
- Subverted:
- Alice eventually figures out the fax machine.
- In a story set back in 1994, Alice doesn't know how to program her VCR to record her favorite show.
- Alice is just Hopeless with Tech in general.
- Double Subverted:
- She sends the fax to the wrong person, or accidentally makes a copy instead of a fax.
- Eventually, Alice gets the hang of the VCR, but when Technology Marches On again, she struggles to program her DVR.
- She particularly struggles with older forms of tech.
- Parodied: Alice brings about The End of the World as We Know It by struggling with the fax machine.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is proficient with some forms of technology, and struggles with others.
- Averted:
- Alice knows how to use the fax.
- Alice doesn't send a fax in-story.
- Enforced:
- The series is an Edutainment Show and is trying to teach viewers about older forms of technology.
- Lampshaded: "You young people don't know anything! How do you expect to get a job if you can't send a simple fax?!"
- Invoked: Alice, who has never been taught how to fax (due to it being largely obsolete thanks to PDFs and the like), is asked to fax a memo.
- Exploited: One of Alice's coworkers (or boss) sets her up to fail, so that she'll be fired, or as an excuse to lay her off or not turn her internship into a job.
- Defied: Alice figures it out, and sends the fax as quickly as she can.
- Discussed: "My nephew just found my CD collection, and asked me what they are. I'm feeling old..."
- Conversed: "I feel like fiction tends to exaggerate how younger people don't understand older forms of technology. Maybe they don't know how to use them, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of young people today have at least heard of fax machines."
- Deconstructed: The company's reliance on outdated technology is a sign that the company either cannot (due to no available budget) or will not (due to intransigent management) invest in newer, better quality machines that do their jobs more efficiently. This means that the company will not be able to attract young workers who would have to learn outdated, cumbersome ways of doing business (and that's on top of any snobbery and ridicule from older co-workers on the new blood which is not good for employee morale), as well as spend more and more time and money finding and contracting outside vendors who are still familiar with older tech as they become fewer in number. Eventually the company goes bankrupt and closes.
- Reconstructed:
- The organization is one that uses old technology because it is used to control a very critical or specialized piece of infrastructure that cannot be upgraded easily, such as the control systems of a nuclear reactor or the software of a space probe that is way way beyond the reach of possible retrieval. The unique skills needed to maintain it by the worker as well as how critical the job is means the worker is paid relatively handsomely for it.
- Being young and unfamiliar with an older piece of technology does not prevent that young person from becoming curious about how it works and learning about it.
- It was calculated that the cost of upgrading to the newest system outweighed any benefits in improving efficiency and work productivity because the system was just upgraded only a few years ago. Perhaps in a few more years the cost-to-benefit ratio may change, but right now it isn't worth the hassle. Alice not knowing how to work even tech that's only outdated in the most nominal sense seems more damning about either her insularity and lack of even the most basic expectation of experience in whatever schooling she had.
Potholes? Oh, aren't those the things you click on TV Tropes? What "other kind"?
