07-20-2017, 09:37 PM
(07-20-2017, 05:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: A brief comment on the original comment on how GPS makes you dumber.
There were earlier echoes of this. As the frontier vanished and more people moved to the cities, people thought we were loosing wilderness survival skills... which we were. One response was the Boy Scouts of America attempting to keep the old skills alive.
I have also thought the GI good with their hands. If it was broke, they could fix it. That seems to be fading as well.
I suspect that as technology and culture shift, the most useful skill sets shift as well. Overall, I would say the new internet and computer technology is putting a lot more information in the users hand, even if how to get the same information using dated hard copy methods becomes forgotten.
Note also that our objects are getting more complicated and intricate. If they are necessarily manufactured by a machine or robot, then we can hardly expect to repair those objects.
A Model-T Ford was so designed that the average person could repair it if it broke down. Contemporary cars? Could you replace or repair a catalytic converter? Or the car's air conditioner or radio? Obviously the car from a century ago had no radio, air conditioner, or catalytic converter.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.