more confused with every new development

I seem to have missed a vital hurdle in my understanding of the recent developments in computer technology. I no longer know how to organise my stuff, and I'm terrified of the likes of facebook etc. Can anybody recommend a source of explanation about exactly what is going on, why websites are so unfriendly, etc.?

londonjo said:

I seem to have missed a vital hurdle in my understanding of the recent developments in computer technology.

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I think that you need to be MUCH more specific. Saying you don't know how to organize things…and are terrified of Facebook…is not enough info.

We have no idea what you mean by "recent developments in computer technology". This could mean the last 6 months or the last 6 years (we have no idea what sort of timeframe you are referring to).

Regarding Facebook…if you're terrified of it…don't use it!

You really need to be more specific before we can help. Maybe you can tell us where you are coming from (when were you comfortable with things)…and what happened to make things confusing??

- Nick

londonjo, what does "stuff" mean to you? It could mean many different things to the dozens of people reading your post.

londonjo, you posted the same complaint in 2011. Did you try what was suggested then? I'll confess that the world is more complex, but if you need instruction, waiting three years is not the best path to take. Is there a local junior college, or whatever the equivalent is if you are in UK, nearby where you can take some introductory courses?

EDIT: from your spelling, I deduce that you are not in UK, but either the US or Canada. In which case your best bet is a local community college.

londonjo said:

I seem to have missed a vital hurdle in my understanding of the recent developments in computer technology. I no longer know how to organise my stuff, and I'm terrified of the likes of facebook etc. Can anybody recommend a source of explanation about exactly what is going on, why websites are so unfriendly, etc.?

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londonjo, I am 63 what age group are you in?
My Mother in law has similar problems to you, if she received an email a month ago she cant find it, if someone sends her a picture in FaceBook she doesn't know how to save it, if she does save it she can't find it again. If an app stops working she just stops using it.
If this sounds like you I would suggest an excellent series of books called "For Dummies."
You can get Mac Computers for Dummies, FaceBook for Dummies etc. Don't be put off by the title we are all dummies until we understand something. These plain english step by step guides will explain a lot.
Web sites are not intrinsically unfriendly but they do presume a level of understanding and sometimes offer so many options that they become a little overwhelming. You did manage to post this question so you are not computer illiterate.
Confine yourself to the things you really need to know but start at the basics. I would suggest learning everything you can about the Finder that is command+F it will improve your understanding of how information is stored on a Mac and where.

Thanks to the people who responded so generously. I actually did start replying to the first, but it got too long and it was the middle of the night,so I abandoned the attempt and it disappeared. Luckily I had copied and pasted it into a word file, which I had huge difficulty finding because I didn't know its name so had to teach myself how to find "recent" files. It answers a few of your questions, by no means all.

Here it is. I'll respond later to other questions.

Sorry to be so vague. I have struggled alone since 1982 when a Tandy Radioshack all-in-one computer with a broken disk drive was airfreighted to me in London by an American client. I have always been self-employed so never absorbed the natural mutual learning which I imagine happens with colleagues working in offices. Mostly I did word processing, using a series of WP programs from "superscripsit" through WPD to Word, until the frustrations of Vista (about which I had no warning) drove me into the Apple shop four years ago. I am delighted with my iPhone 4 and my Macbook Air, my second one (hard drive of the first one crashed and could not be saved). But I'm glad this one has two USB ports!. I bought it in about June 2013 and everything is updated to Mavericks.

I don't know how to file my information, since nothing seems to fall into neat categories. I spend hours trying to devise systems which link people to their emails and associations - like a kind of personal wikipedia or private website...

I no longer work for others, having retired and moved to New York. I have many interests and use the macbook for gathering information, organising and recording my life, taking digital pix, communicating with others, etc. I guess it's the last few years with the massive internet growth and universal use of mobile devices, clouds, cable, social media, apps, skype, etc., that has completely overtaken me. I no longer understand what is happening or how it all works. I feel uneasy about the necessity to be always "on-line", and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to interact with badly designed websites (tiny fonts, minute triangles to click), confusing layouts and obscure jargon. I know what I want to do, and have a long list of what I think would be useful, which I could describe separately. I don't like any sentence beginning "all you have to do is ..." or "you just ..." or "it's a piece of cake" especially from anyone who fails to see what is counterintuitive about going to "start" in order to close down.

By the way, I also find TV remote controls, car radios etc difficult, and I don’t think it’s funny that so many other older people share such problems.

You didnt mention your age group but thats OK. My advice; don't interact with web sites you find difficult to work with. Only use the technology you need. For example I don't use cellular data on my iPhone, just WiFi when I'm at home. So no big data charges on my phone plan. I don't use skype just email. If someone wants to reach me on Skype they can but they pre arrange a time so I know I'll be available.
Create folders to organise your "stuff". A folder in Documents called my Grandaughter (name) with photos, emails, links etc is an easy way to organise personal info. Perhapes you need some basic skills like copy link. Investigate the right click (control click) functions of links. You can save links to pictures in FaceBook for example or download the actual pics. I have discovered so much by experimentation but maybe you need to document your own instruction manual. Create a folder, call it instructions, type your own instructions into a word document and save to that folder like "how to save photos from facebook" this will mean you will have your own instruction folder for doing stuff that maybe you might forget how to do. Alzheimer's is just around the corner for us all. Create a folder in your browser for usefull stuff and file the instructions you find or helpful hints in that and keep it on your desktop. I'm happy to reply to any questions you might have, don't worry about the intolerant members of this forum, they will be old one day too.

You might like to visit this site https://www.apple.com/support/macbasics/

One way to think of your filing system is like that of a real office. You have files and folders. Files go in the folders, and you could even put a folder inside another folder and that's exactly how it works on a computer, whether it's a Mac or a Windows machine. They give you some folders to get your started for popular categories like Movies, Pictures and Downloads.

Your Documents folder is yours to organize as you wish. You can just have all your files thrown in together, or you can create another folder within the Documents folder for, say, Short Stories, another called Finances, another for invoices, and so on.

To view the contents of your computer, click on the Finder icon in your Dock. The Dock is the long strip of icons at the bottom of your screen, the Finder is the first application on the far left, the icon that looks like a blue smiley face. When the Finder window opens, you'll see your Home folder (with your name) on the left hand side. Click on that to see your folders. You can create a new folder by clicking File>New Folder from the top menu bar while in the folder you want it to be inside of.

Tags are a good way to organize things. In iPhoto, for example, you can tag each photo with a keyword that you can search for later. A tag is just a piece of information attached to a file. For instance, if you have a photo of your Aunt Sofie at a cafe in Paris, you can add tags like "Sofie", "cafe", and "Paris" to the folder. These words aren't part of the photo's name, but they are there and will let you search for photos using any combination of keywords that you want. You can also do with this with files in the Finder.

These are just a couple of the ways you can organize things on a Mac, but your questions are rather broad, and I don't want to over explain things patronizingly, so you might want to ask more specific things in their own threads or ask people to private message you with certain questions.

The support page Rod provided above is a very good resource. You'll also notice that there's almost always a Help menu in the top menu bar. It's pretty easy to use; just type in a keyword or topic or question and results will appear as you type.