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Having worked for an internet service provider its common for people to literally refer to their internet connection as their "wifi" and fail to differentiate between their network and their upstream connection or even fail to differentiate between more obvious categories of things like their computer being able to turn on and "the internet". Their mental model isn't a graph its an amorphous blob.

It's humorous if you ask them if they have a wire and wired device to test they frequently act as if you asking them if they have a vacuum tube or a teletype. Meanwhile they frequently struggle with wifi configuration problems with devices that are 3 feet from one another.



> its common for people to literally refer to their internet connection as their "wifi"

This. It's the same sort of error as when people refer to the web as "the internet" -- which common even on HN.


It blows my mind that people can be that disinterested in how the things they use actually work.

I would never want to be that dependent on first-level helpdesk to solve my problems for me.




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