The point is each and every year new pieces of technology come out that we become attached to.
I´d be willing to argue that 20 years from now, if the Ipod managed to dissapear people would not know how to work a CD player.
All these commodoties are great, but they also have a dangerous side. I think we are becoming less “useful” in many ways. Machines now really do all the work for us.
So, fellow Dopers, do you think technology can, at one point in the future, make people “useless”?
I think the economy is doing just that right here and now.
However, maybe people who have to cancel the cel phone or forego replacing the iPod will be compelled to relearn the old ways…all right, the not-so-old ways.
Pfft, hardly. Show me a machine that can clean my apartment, take my laundry to the dry-cleaner, cook my dinner, download porn for me, and pay my rent. Then I’d really have nothing to do.
I rember someone comparing my generation’s forgetting how to do simple arithmatic because of the calculator to people forgetting how to use a mangle because of the invention of the washing machine. (or some similar comparison)
Basically the point was that it would be silly to assume that everybody should know how to do something from the 1800s, so why isn’t it equally silly to expect everyone to have good mental arithmetic skills when we all have calculators?
In this case, I still do basic math in my head all the time when a calculator is not readily available. I wouldn’t expect you to perform logarithmic functions in your head though.
I know I haven’t memorized a single phone number since I got my cell phone, and my handwriting has deteriorated seriously since I started taking notes with a computer, because I’m always at one. The few times recently I’ve tried to play an audio tape I had to put it in and start it up to see whether the tape was supposed to go left-to-right or right-to-left. I shudder to think what I’d do to a phonograph needle if I tried to play a record…
Disagree with the OP with all my heart. You have the situation upside down. If technology reduces the number of things we must know for a given application, it just opens our minds for other purposes.
This. There is no honor in knowing skills that are made useless by technology. If technology has made some particular skill unnecessary, then it just means that we can focus on something that actually matters.
In the movie Into The Wild there’s a great scene with the main character trying to kill and eat some large animal. It is not an easy task, and you’re probably not up to it. Does that concern you?
If our technology vanished, civilization would collapse and most of us die. We long ago passed the point where living without technology was an option for most people. Our only real choice at this point is which technology we will use; and given that, why not keep getting better technology ? Yes, the people of the future probably won’t know how to use a CD; most modern people don’t know how to use a buggy whip or a medieval alchemist’s lab either.
I disagree about knowing basic arithmatic being pointless – there is a point to it, despite the prevalence of calculators. But I do agree that there’s nothing terrible about losing knowledge of obsolete technology or crafts. There was an interesting article many years ago in the American Heritage Magazine of Science and Technology pointing out that few people know how to use a drawing horse these days – anyone making things out of wood is using moden power tools of the sort Norm Abrams uses, not a draw-horse. Similarly, people have lost the ability to use slide rules, now that they have calculators. How many people today could use an Edison cylindrical phonograph? It’s a form of sound reproduction technology, just as an iPod is.
I’m not saying it’s pointless. I’m saying it’s far less common a skill now that we have calculators. I for one wish I could do calculations quicker than it takes to find a calculator…
which for me usually involves moving my mouse pointer down to the little calculator on my quick-launch bar. (not even a real physical calculator)