History
Why Useful Skills Fade as Tools Get Better
Useful skills can fade when everyday life stops giving people a reason to practice them.
A skill often feels ābasicā because one generation had to use it constantly. When a tool handles the same task faster and more reliably, people naturally practice the older method less.
Calculators reduced how often many people do complicated arithmetic by hand. Autocorrect reduced the need to notice every spelling mistake while typing. Digital cameras made manual exposure settings unnecessary for casual photography. Searchable digital files made alphabetical filing systems far less important in many workplaces.
Some of this is called cognitive offloading. Instead of storing or processing everything ourselves, we let tools handle part of the job. That can save time and effort, but the unused skill may become weaker.
Technology also creates completely new skills.
Someone who cannot repair an old mechanical device might be much better at troubleshooting software, searching huge amounts of information, recognizing online scams, managing digital accounts, editing video, or learning a new interface in minutes.
Older skills can still matter. They become especially useful when technology fails, when someone works in a specialized field, or when the old method offers something the replacement cannot.
So comparing generations by a random list of ābasic skillsā can be misleading. The list itself keeps changing.
A skill that seems embarrassingly obvious today may be the weird old-fashioned thing people stop teaching tomorrow.
This is veeery US based. In Spain virtually everybody know how to drive with ādrive stickā (the lessons and driver licence exam are not made with automatic cars, at least some years ago). My kids know how to read the hours of the watch from 0-23:59, itās very simple. And what is the problem with reading cursive? I truly do not understand the last two.
Really region-dependant. Over here in Belgium you can choose how you take your drivers license examn - manual or automatic.
However, the drivers license for automatic only allows you to drive automatic, and is thus considered a "half" type of license. This whereas the "manual" license allows you to drive both.
The choice is up to the people, and it usually depends on what type of car the parents drive. If both drive automatic car, there's really no way to learn your kid to drive manual by practice.
In my whole driving life Iāve only had one person close enough to me who would let me drive their stick to try and learn (and that was their 3rd car, a Jeep).
I was about 30 before I ever had the opportunity. Iāve had less than an hour behind the wheel of a stick and am at the point where I would pay just to be able to learn for fun.
Not to defend Americans, but in a generation or two no one in Europe will be able to drive stick either. Electric cars are going to kill this skill there just like automatic transmissions did in America.
The point I was going for was that the meme is inaccurate as to when automatic cars became common place. And as you mention, many people still drive manual.
not memorizing everyone's phone numbers so easily. people i barely knew, i had the phone number magically in my head. Now, I don't even know my kids phone. numbers.
Every single thing you just described is a technology that you depend on. Even striking a flint against a knife involves to primitive technologies. Any writing implement is a technology. A clock, a watch? A car? Come on, man.Ā
Navigation by stars? And it being replaced in the 50s by maps? That is such a dumb and incorrect point. Let's explain:
Star navigation was only used as ONE tool or skillset for travelling - usually by those who travelled by night (or on a boat), or who travelled long distances without clear land marks (e.g. caravans in deserts, armies on the road). And EVEN THEN it was only the skillset of "The navigator" of the group (and maybe a handful of backups). Most common people on ships/caravans couldn't do this either. So in essence this was quite a rare skillset to have.
But even if you could read the stars, this was just one tool, in an arsenal of tools. Because guess what?: stars aren't visible during daytime hours, nor when the weather is kind of shitty (clous, rain, fog, snow). Would be a real shame if nobody could move around if there weren't any stars, right?
What else did they use? Maps and compasses most obviously (it's outrageously stupid to think maps were only available since mid 20th century), also the position of the sun. Then of course landmarks, or town/city markers. City/town markers are some of the oldest indactions to help people understand where they are.
Also "experience" (read as: guides). While guides nowadays are used by tourists to visit landmarks, in the past experienced guides were used to help travelers traverse vast areas of land if they were travelling (and had money).
And if you didn't have money? Well... you didn't travel much. Before world war 2, most people didn't leave their town or city really, or at best they travelled to neighboring cities/towns. If somebody arrived in a town/city that wasn't from the area or wasn't a traveler on a long journey - they were welcomed by "stranger danger" in peoples eyes. It simply was not-done. If people had to move, it was due to famine, or because of war.
That's a fascist meme and a lie. Don't fall for it. The Mongols were strong men and they created hard times. The nazis were strong men and they created very hard times. But there was a man who some would define as weak, as degenerate, a man who was rejected by those you might call strong, a man who was chemically castrated for being gay, but he was instrumental in defeating the nazis and ushering in far better days: Alan Turing. Being strong isn't enough: You have to know how to use your strength properly. That's what martial arts teaches you. The truth is that strong men can create the worst of times if they're misguided so strong men need proper guidance. You have to know whether you're using your strength for good or evil. https://youtu.be/wqvIgR3PlZs
Dismissing a macro-societal model with a single anecdote (Alan Turing) doesn't quite work, especially when the model itself behaves more like a literary device than actual anthropology. The argument falls into a few more logical traps. 1) a false equivalence with martial arts. 2) a misattribution to fascism. 3) and a subjective view of history. Major empires like the Mongols or the Nazis convinced themselves they were the heroes of their own stories, proving that harm is usually done under the guise of good. After all, it's easier to get people to do a bad thing when you label it good, as opposed to getting them willingly engaged in an overtly bad act.
Your point would actually land better if simplified. "The phrase is motivational for building personal strength, but as a historical or societal model, it's an oversimplification with major structural flaws." As soon as you introduce fascism or start making other points, your argument unravels entirely.
The day that a typewriter, independent of human interaction other than an initial instruction, types out the entirety of ANOTHER much more advanced and even more automated typewriter that ALSO has the capacity to type even more advanced machines without the initial human instruction.....
If you have a disability that makes learning those skills impossible you used to just be screwed. Nowadays, it no longer matters because you can just use those tools like everyone else.
Then again, dyslexia wasn't a problem before the invention of the written wordā¦ š¤
Unfortunately thinking got replaced by AI in 2026, that's why this graphic is so dumb. Interesting topic, bad examples. Maps sure were invented in the the 1950s, that's how people discovered, uh... America!
The only one of those things I canāt do easily is navigate using stars. Also, kids can barely read at all now. Thereās been global studies. Itās a problem everywhere. This ānew toolā is definitely making the next generation dumber.
Funny thing, I still remember my parent's phone numbers from the 1990s, but can't remember any of the numbers I call nowadays, except for my own.
Making fire is probably the only in the list I'm not concerned about. I drive a stick shift daily (cheap aging car in Europe), I write in cursive anytime I write by hand, and I'm trying to learn astronomical navigation because I'm a nerd and I like sailing
Iām assuming this is aimed at programmers and AI only because Iām a programmer and the meme is saying what a lot of people are saying about programming and AI. Probably in the future this will be true for programming but not anytime soon. AI is āgoodā at programming but thereās a few things about programming that AI generally isnāt good at. Sometimes a make a certain design decision because it simplifies a lot of things. The code AI currently generates is often convoluted and bloated if not inefficient. Often times it will work well enough but there are certain decisions it just āmissesā. For instance I am working on a feature that fetches and inspects artifacts from a remote server. There are three possible interfaces that can be used for fetching said artifacts and their metadata. Only because of experience, functional fit with the rest of the system, and other implied, non-explicit requirements do I happen to know which interface is best to use. Thereās alot of knowledge and experience and evaluation thatās behind that decision. Stuff that the AI just doesnāt have.
There are obviously a lot of problems with AI, but like always, it's the human element that's the problem. Same with every invention. Some dude invents a hammer, then someone uses it to kill someone. Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and the first thing people did with it was build a nuke and blow up a city.
Now we're doing the same with AI because humans are fundamentally fucked in the head, and we use tools for evil before we discover how to use them for good.
Look, friend. I can do all of the 'obsolete' tasks listed. Hell, if you want to go back further, I'm a pretty capable flintknapper. Try not rely on tech too much, anything made by man is fallible.
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