You do know ‘millenials’ refers to the age group currently between around 22 and 37, right? Your new college students are probably ‘generation Z’ (nice apocalyptic feel, that name). It’s not just you, half the articles you read claim ‘millenials don’t know x!’ and when you read it, it’s a survey of 14 year olds. 14 year olds don’t know all the stuff adults do, especially when it comes to totally obsolete stuff. Why should they?
I’m a millenial; we had a rotary phone until I was 8. It’s not a skill I consider in any way useful, and I highly doubt I’d bother teaching it to my hypothetical children, but yes, I can remember how to use one.
Regards,
The only generation that could set the time on a VCR.
In the system we had (only 4 digits), you could cut-in on a line that was in-use by dialing the number, except minus one on the final digit (if the number was 4567, dial 4566) and just when the dial clicked the last click, if you clicked it manually, it would connect you to the line in use. So, if someone was hogging the line of someone you needed to call, you could get in. I have no idea how or who figured this out,
This got me curious. I had to use Google maps and street view, but I looked at my old suburban middle school, and there seem to be lots of bikes there.
I’ve completely forgotten how to use a rotary phone. I used to know the Hayes AT command code to switch to pulse dialing, because we had two phone lines: one with touch tone, and one that was dial only. Now I don’t remember what that AT command is. I remember atdt to call a number, but not how to switch to pulse. If it were 1985 and I was trying to get on a BBS I’d be flailing around like those kids.
Personally, I don’t think they should know this. I’m just amused that something that was common knowledge for everyone is not now known by the newer generations. There are probably things that I never knew how to do that were common knowledge for generations that proceeded me. (For example, until 100-150 years ago or so, most people had regular experience riding horses or horse carts or oxcarts and relied on candles or lanterns for illumination. Sending and receiving telegrams was common, but not for decades.)
I raw thinking about this when the thread first started (but didn’t want to take it on a tangent yet.) You used to have to rent the phones, not own them. I still remember as a kid in the 80s my family buying a phone for the first time (with Green Stamps!) and there was this special number you were supposed to call to register your new phone with the phone company (surely entirety bogus–the thing was purely plug and play.)
I don’t think that it’s necessarily staged, per se, but edited to the same effect. Show a piece of old technology to a bunch of youngsters, some will already know it because they like retro stuff, some will find it intuitive enough to figure it out quickly, some will experiment a bit and figure it out, and some will show various degrees of bafflement. Pick and choose the right set of genuine reactions, and show only those, and you can spin any narrative you want.
It’s the same effect that you get with those “man on the street” interviews that have been popular on late-night shows since forever.
I still have a dial phone in my house and it still works (that is the cable company I get phone service from still accepts pulse phones). I don’t use it very often. Now if only I could figure out all the functions on my cell phone.
My 87 year old father emailed this same video to me last week. I thought it was funny but doesn’t necessarily say anything bad about the kids. I am in my late 50’s but have worked with folks in their teens and 20’s. It is fun to discuss with them all kinds of different things. And fun to make fun of one another about all the crap we don’t know relative to our ages.
(the email was forwarded from a cousin in Australia; I guess this video has gotten around a bit)
Everyone that makes fun of youth and their lack of skills with older technology should be required to show proficiency in harnessing a horse and connecting it to a buckboard. Taking it for a 2 mile trip would earn a gold star. Then they can laugh. I did this all not too many years ago.
Never thought this anecdote would be relevant to a Dope thread, but J.R., my best friend in 7th grade, had a phone number that took FOREVER on a rotary phone (588-0088). You’d crank those eights and zeroes around and tap your foot impatiently as it clackety-clacked back… sooo slowwwwly…
Suddenly it was the future, and Touch-Tone™ phones showed up. And my friend’s number was the fastest. A couple of taps down the middle of the phone.
(Hmmm, I should ask my old friends if any of us phoned J.R. more often after that)
In my dorm (1975), the switch panel was in the hallway. I showed someone how I could take a pair of headphones and tap the plug on the contacts of any phone line I wanted to place a call. The problem was that there was no microphone so I couldn’t talk.
We were just talking yesterday about whether some classic pieces of art, like this by Claes Oldenburg, make any sense to anyone under 50.
If you don’t want to click, it’s a scaled-up sculpture of a “Typewriter Eraser”.
ETA: I miss phone-hacking, using pranks from Steal This Book and 2600 (the hacker’s magazine named after the frequency used with pay phones… if I got the number right).
The first phones you could buy were push button, but the one I had included a switch you could set for dial pulse or touchtone. The BoCs charged more for touchtone, though since it tied up the network less during dialing it was cheaper. We had dial pulse service, but I found that if I set the phone for touchtone it worked just as well. I think they figured this out about three years after I started it.
That’s nothing. My aunt was babysitting her grandson, and he pointed at the phone on the wall on her kitchen, asking what it was, since my cousins don’t have a landline.
Oh, what I wouldn’t GIVE to be able to do that to telemarketers again. And prank calling isn’t as easy as it used to be, like it was when we were kids.
But what really sucked is even after you got a push-button phone, you had to have your house rewired for it, otherwise you’d still get that da-da-da-da…
