Why back in my day, we had computers made out of knapped flint.
And we liked it!
My old coot rants are about personal responsibility, too. The rules were not invented just for people to beat it; people are not “getting away” with something when they do things like parking in handicapped spots, speeding through school zones, and littering. I think people need to monitor themselves, and do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because a cop is standing there watching you. Jeeze, I think I aged a couple of years just typing that.
I think people need to take responsibility for their own spelling, too. 
Oops, I think I slipped away from the OP’s intention. Okay, I think old coot rants about kids these days all being disrespectful potheaded libertines are full of poo.
(Regarding analog vs digital clocks, I looked at the digital clock on my computer, and then the analog watch on my wrist, and it was funny to feel that I was using different parts of my brain/different methods to tell time on each. Very interesting.)
There’s an old coot named Bill Gates who just said that. High Schools Are 1.0 in a 5.0 World, Gates Says
Of course, he’s a college dropout himself - left school when the first million rolled in
Just out of curiosity, how precisely does not being able to use a rotary phone make someone stupid or incompetent? It’s not an issue for me, since my family had a black rotary phone, but dialing just isn’t as intuitive as pressing buttons, especially when you’ve been raised on touchtones.
I wish I could find a cell phone with a rotary dial. For the life of me, I cannot dial a number with the same hand that is holding the phone.
Sheesh.
I see them all the time at antique stores! Cheap! And flea markets. Some are new enough to use modren plugs, but even those that have the 4 prong style, have adaptors that you can find at a hardware store. My father has one, and uses it exclusivly.
It doesn’t , just makes people aware of how much the simple things have changed , those same people may have looked askance at being asked to wash their clothes , if that was not a womans work household , with those old style washers , and then hanging stuff on a line.
Declan
But that means you have to teach them to tell right from wrong on their own. That’s the sort of thing some fear is eating away at the fabric of society… :dubious:
Well, I am an old coot; I’ll be 65 next month. I laugh at other old coots when they sound off about the way kids dress today, and their hairstyles and sloppy sneakers. I always ask how they dressed and wore their hair when they were teenagers and all I hear in response is a bunch of lies. I think we live in an interesting and exciting world; I wish I were still young enough to see it develop a lot further.
Damn kids these days, half of 'em haven’t even heard of that sketch …
It didn’t hit me for years how the idea of the 50s being such a marvelous time was such a white perspective. Remember that Rosa Parks didn’t even make her first bus seat protest until 1955. So about the only thing integrated (sort of) in the south, or even many other parts of America, was the military.
Nitpick: if the old coot is going on about how good it was “back in my day” then he is “raving”, not “ranting”.
MAD Magazine had a bit once titled, “American Jokes They Tell in Poland”. The only one I can remember went like this:
Q: What does an American call years of poverty, unemployment, hunger and war?
A: The Good Old Days!
Time is set in base 60 which makes sense from a “real” clock but not from a digital clock. The time reference of “quarter after” is lost on small children who get a digital watch as their first time piece.
Not sure why teenagers can’t make change today without a calculator but it might have something to do with their math books. I was looking at my nephew’s 2nd grade math book and it would show 10 different ways to add something. I was more confused when I was done reading it. Their homework consisted of a lot of estimating. 
Maybe I’m over the hill but everything I have to do at work involves the EXACT number. Estimating is nice as a quick mental check but it doesn’t mean squat if you can’t get the correct answer. Sure wish I could convince a police officer to believe that I was doing the estimated speed limit.
You’d wear that clothing until it wore out and wouldn’t be going out to buy the newest styles. They will never let something like that happen. 
Heh, My Grandfather used to chastize me for going to college. He said I was wasting my time and that I should step up to the plate; be a man and get my ass to work.
That ol’ hard ass!
Gotta lov’em though…
“Television was so much better 40 and 50 years ago. That’s why they called it the Golden Era.”
Sure. No black faces appeared, except on rare occasions on one of the ubiquitous variety shows. If it wasn’t a variety show, it was either a sitcom – most about dull upper-middle-class families in the suburbs of New York – or a western. There was wrestling in prime time, and it was extremely popular. Let’s not forget commercials for cigarettes and hard liquor, and corporate-branded shows that usually had names like “The Texaco Variety Hour,” “The Lucky Strike Variety Hour” and “The Canadian Club Variety Hour”. You got three channels if you were lucky, and maybe four if you lived in a very large city.
What was better back in the good old days of television? Local kids shows. That’s about it.
A couple of years ago there was a piece in the Sydney papers about a local council changing all its clocks to digital because kids can’t read analog clocks.
One of the workers at the local swimming pool was overjoyed because she was sick of teens coming up to ask her the time, which she then read off the same clock they could see. Apparently the staff were regularly abused about kids not coming home on time because they couldn’t read the clocks.
What about spelling? Children today are taught spell check will do it all for them. I’m really worried about losing our language skills.
I agree with math. Calculators do it all for them. I can do simple arithmetic in my head, and find younger people can’t.
It always amazes me when older people talk about how much better life was with the double sexual standard: Grandpa was doubly praised for being “moral” and Grandma was doubly damned for being “immoral.”
Actually not really a Python sketch - it was stolen from At Last the 1948 Show, which explains why all my friends used to shorthand it as “Luxury. Sheer bloody luxury.” which doesn’t appear in the Python ripoff. They first used it on the album Monty Python Live at Drury Lane.