Short comment: Only really relevant if you think navigation is an irrelevant skill, and replacing it doesn't matter.
Longer comment ...
Nice, neat, glib, clever, and completely ignoring the research that's starting to come out in response to the plethora of anecdotes.
People used to be able to add columns of figures without difficulty, and now they generally can't add two 2-digit numbers. People used to be able to make change, and now they rely on the till to tell them how much change to give.
Maybe these are skills people don't need, but they are skills that have declined at the same time technology was introduced. Furthermore, places where the technology has not been introduced, the skills remain. I won't argue cause and effect, I'll leave you to speculate.
People now buy gadgets for "brain training" and guess what - they make you do sums! Wow! Calculators that make you do the work!
It's true that fire gave us more and better food, and it's true that better clothes have made it possible to live and work in harsher climates, but the point remains. Research is starting to show that people's abilities to navigate are declining.
Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it's a good thing, but dismissing it as glibly as you have simply seems to miss the point.
I'm not pining for the old days. I reach for a calculator as easily as the next person. But when someone today said they'd bought 400 Christmas cards for ukp95, then couldn't decide if that meant they'd been 24p each or 2.40 each, that's a concern. I'm equally concerned when someone tried to find my house recently and turned up three hours late. We're not on his SatNav map, and he couldn't read the map.
Maybe it doesn't matter, but it's not in the same class as fire or clothes or glasses or pottery to keep food or sewerage to take waste away or any of the other technological marvels we take for granted.
Longer comment ...
Nice, neat, glib, clever, and completely ignoring the research that's starting to come out in response to the plethora of anecdotes.
People used to be able to add columns of figures without difficulty, and now they generally can't add two 2-digit numbers. People used to be able to make change, and now they rely on the till to tell them how much change to give.
Maybe these are skills people don't need, but they are skills that have declined at the same time technology was introduced. Furthermore, places where the technology has not been introduced, the skills remain. I won't argue cause and effect, I'll leave you to speculate.
People now buy gadgets for "brain training" and guess what - they make you do sums! Wow! Calculators that make you do the work!
It's true that fire gave us more and better food, and it's true that better clothes have made it possible to live and work in harsher climates, but the point remains. Research is starting to show that people's abilities to navigate are declining.
Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it's a good thing, but dismissing it as glibly as you have simply seems to miss the point.
I'm not pining for the old days. I reach for a calculator as easily as the next person. But when someone today said they'd bought 400 Christmas cards for ukp95, then couldn't decide if that meant they'd been 24p each or 2.40 each, that's a concern. I'm equally concerned when someone tried to find my house recently and turned up three hours late. We're not on his SatNav map, and he couldn't read the map.
Maybe it doesn't matter, but it's not in the same class as fire or clothes or glasses or pottery to keep food or sewerage to take waste away or any of the other technological marvels we take for granted.