I suppose it would be mostly practical skills, cooking, fixing things. Usually had to be done by people themselves.
Maybe also mental things like navigating (with or without paper map) and remembering their daily and weekly agendas.
What other things would be a big difference with the people today?
There is no significant loss in total skill with each newer generation. The paradigm is constantly shifting. Humans have always adapted and learned to manage whatever is readily available to them and how to maintain it. Your parents complain you don’t know their vintage skills. You complain they aren’t learning new skills. You complain younger people don’t know your “necessary” (vintage) skills.
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise” - some guy in 1907 summarizing Greek beliefs.
The generation that can navigate whatever it is kids navigate (flipper zero?) can’t modify an OS. The generation that can modify an OS probably can’t tune a carburetor. The generation that can tune a carburetor probably can’t change a horse shoe. Your skills are based on what you have to do every day. As technology removes the need to manage those things, the skill is lost and new skills replace it.
Pulse dialing (rotary phones)
by tapping? or just using the rotary?
This is the origin of “phreaking”. Tapping out the pulses (on the ‘hang up button’) on a rotary public payphone to make free calls.
Oh how sweet was our youth…
Cursive writing
Still taught everywhere in Europe.
Fun fact: taking notes by hand helps you learn better than typing them.
I use a graphical tablet (wacom) to write my notes. If i write my notes, i remember them much better.
I would type my notes in class because it’s faster, then rewrite them by hand to study off of. except by the time I finished rewriting them, I usually wouldn’t need to study off them any more
They stopped teaching it here in the US, which makes me wonder what people will use for a signature.
Not entirely, my son still had to have lessons on it in elementary school for some reason.
Because it’s better to take notes by hand, and you need cursive for that. Bonus: your writing looks like that of an adult. Bonus 2: you can read other people’s writing (mostly).
My daughter is learning it in public school.
My son is learning it in 1st grade at his school.
Writing thank you cards and letters.
People should definitely do this more often. Makes it so much nicer to receive an actual physical card from someone.
Postcrossing also still exists, nice to send some postcards to random people around the world.
I still write thank you cards. People really like getting them. In my mind, it’s worth the [small] investment of my time and effort to show my appreciation for something.
Remembering phone numbers.
That’s just because we don’t dial them anymore, fuck, we barely make phone calls anymore.
Nah i just had that card in my wallet written in microscopic numbers.
0118999881990119725
3i got you.
281-330-8004
867-5309!
That’s ability, not skill.
Driving a standard.
I always prided myself on driving a manual, never bothered paying for an auto. Then I bought and EV and dont even have a transmission any more
A manual transmission??
For those who don’t understand these words, I’ll translate: driving a motor vehicle (car, truck, van, or other) with a manual-shift or stick-shift transmission.
In an automatic transmission vehicle, you have steering, gas, and brakes. The car itself decides automatically which gear to be in based on several conditions. This is the form of driving to which most are accustomed.
The rest of us can actually drive.
If we’re going to gatekeep.
Then only those of us hand cranking the engine to start it model-T style can actually drive.
Yes, when temperature management was a proper skill. Now we drive cars with such sufficient cooling systems they never overheat! Imagine, just putting it in gear and driving through to your destination, no matter the conditions or duration. And fuel management! Gas stations everywhere? A fuel gauge? A range calculator? So lazy. Whenever that commenter grew up was the absolute peak of skill. laughs in horse mechanic
If you’re not driving a 0-0-2 steam locomotive are your even driving?
Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to please stop doing wheels in the locomotive and return it to a 4-4-2 configurarion
Getting places using a paper map.
Idling away the time, being bored.
Doing nothing. That might be the biggest loss in the last decades.
There is just this overtone of restlessness and tension that didn’t seem to be present prior.Also connection with your local community. 50 years ago, it was basically a given. It was part of life.
Now, not so much.
Learning how to do things yourself because you had to. Now people have an app for getting somone out to hang a picture
Sewing/mending and other forms of repairing worn items.
Yes, darning wool socks and other knitwear.
Spending is better than mending.
Reading cursive writing (especially from the 18th century or earlier).
Writing in cursive
My cursive is still excellent
This is such a good thing. Whenever I look at cursive writing it’s indecipherable. It being included in school curriculums really feels like someone went “no I’m good at writing! Cursive writing is good! Children need to learn it, in fact.”
At this point it’s actually kind of useful as a mild coded writing that excludes idiots.
Do you mean that you can’t read it at all? It’s really close to lettering, it’s just got swoopies attached to most letters. There are only around 4 that you have to know how they’re different, but the rest are super similar.
I’ve tried to read 19 century cursive journals and other historical documents. It’s impossible, and I’m old enough to have learned it at school.
There’s a reason engineers and technical disciplines used block/print letters.
F, R, and z
Capital letters:
Swoopies. ❤️
This is definitely dependent on the person writing. Some cursive is illegible, others is totally fine.
I mean, some non-cursive is totally illegible. My print is pretty bad, but my cursive is fine
That’s true. I learned cursive first, but never really properly. Then learned print instead. Now my writing is a mashup of cursive and print, with the same letter in a single sentence sometimes using different writing styles. Great!
There’s a bunch of different systems that vary how close they are to standard print
Memorizing phone numbers
Why wife’s phone number is ‘babe’ and ill die on that hill.
We didn’t memorise numbers! We just remembered them after having to manually dial them a hundred times.
That’s memorization in action
That skill morphed into remembering user names and passwords.
I feel like it’s still important to remember the numbers of some important contacts, so you can actually call them using somebody elses phone if yours dies or breaks. But I suppose not many people would bother
Lol, not only do I memorize phone numbers of family members, I did my parents taxes so often, I can memorize the social security numbers of all my household members and all their birthdates.
Also I still remember addresses I used to live in.
Same here. I even still remember my phone number from 40 years ago, living as a child in Tehran, Iran. Numbers just stick in my brain.
Mmmm, interesting, can you list off that data along with your mother’s maiden name? It’s uh for a friend…
Sure it’s [data expunged] and [data expunged] and [Error: Security Clearence not found]
Lol, sorry, you seem to lack the credentials. It’s “need-to-know basis” only. :P
Seriously tho, my family is so like… idk I guess “emmeshed”? Like everything is so entangled.
Like my mom literally use my brother’s legal identity to take out loans… and also some assets are put under his name
Also like mom used to not even have a screen lock on the phone until someone robbed her so now there’a a screen lock.
And like I have access to their phones… and sometimes messed with settings and mom got mad at me.
I don’t even have any legal papers in my physical posession except like my state ID, cuz my mom wanted to “keep it safe” for me…
To be fair: I held on to my first US passport as a teen, and I kinda damaged it lol (got it just to make sure my Citizenship status is properly documented in the legal system), never even had a chance to actually use it since parents were so busy all the time.
If there is ever a family issue… oh shit we all know each other’s info, we could theoretically do so much damage to each other like a family “civil war”.
Eh even before the Internet people had other tools to help with this. Physical books with people’s addresses and phone numbers. Specialized holders for various business cards. Yellow pages and white pages. I suppose a lot of incidental memorization is lost but I don’t think it’s really a skill lost so much as the tool changed.
And those tools pre-date the invention of the telephone, so it’s not like people spent hundreds of years memorizing phone numbers before writing was invented.
If you knew how to drive, you most likely knew how to use a manual transmission.
In Germany nowadays everybody who has a license also know how to drive manual.
I have to add that you’re 99.9% correct, there are rare people who only learned automatic and may only drive those. I know exactly one person, so it might well be 0.1% 😁
Lots of semi truck drivers know how to drive a manual and semi truck driver is one of the most common occupations in the US. Everyone at my company’s location knows how even though we have an all automatic fleet.
Is it really?
How scary is it to drive down a big hill?
Yeah it really is. Most everyone trained before the last 15 years were likely trained on an asynchronous manual transmission.
In good weather? Only the first few times. In bad weather? I’m on high alert like a dog who knows the mailman is delivering a vacuum cleaner. Take it slow, make sure the brakes work, and know where the runaway ramps are. A manual transmission is usually preferable for mountains for better control or for at least the illusion.
Stay safe out there! Godspeed!
You likely already know this but if anybody else reading is interested, this is because if you test for your commercial license in an automatic then you’re restricted to only automatics. The schools are still teaching manual, so it doesn’t make any sense to learn that then test in an automatic and get that restriction.
This one depends on where you live, I suppose. In some european countries it’s still quite common to learn to drive with a manual.
Quite common as in, I’ve only met one person here in my life who can only drive automatic. Electric cars being more mainstream means many more people are driving automatic, but if you do your licence in an automatic you are not allowed to drive a manual car. So I’d wager over 99% of people can drive a manual. This is in Belgium btw.
I still have a manual
Almost every adult in the UK learns on manual - I’ve known about three people in my life who learned on automatic and are only licensed to drive automatics - but with the rise of electric cars (and an increase in automatics generally) I wonder if my kids will learn.
What I never learned, but which my parents did was exactly when and to use the choke on a car. I know fuel injection made chokes unnecessary and I’ve never driven a car that had one.
Did u ever use a different kind of motor with one?
I don’t think so. Oh, wait, I have a petrol strimmer / bushcutter that has a choke! So, yes!
cursive writing
