<p>Regarding GPS, I don’t think it has hurt because my observation is some people can read maps and some people can’t. If you can, you will want to look at the map views in your phone - sometimes for fun, like I do. If you can’t, you’ll follow turn-by-turn. </p>
<p>I assume the latter is how a car ended up almost in the middle of Haymarket last week. If there’s a danger, it’s that a driver like that believes a thing rather than his eyes when his eyes were saying “There’s a huge crowd of people here and tents in the middle of the street so maybe I should go another way.”</p>
<p>@Hunt The question is whether it’s a matter of degree or kind.</p>
<p>I venture to guess the average person has only the vaguest idea how the electricity in their house works, for example. I don’t even mean big questions like the way mechanical energy is turned into electrical energy, or what a step-down transformer is. I mean simple stuff, like what a circuit breaker is, and how it works, or how a three-way switch works.</p>
<p>CD players are relatively new, but how many people our age or our parents age understand how a phonograph works? Or a loudspeaker?</p>
<p>We’ve been taking simple stuff for granted for a long long time, I think.</p>
<p>@Nrdsb4, my husband asked his elderly great aunt what she considered the greatest invention of the 20th century to be, and without any pause at all replied, “Paving!” I loved that answer! What we take for granted! The one part of Colonial Williamsburg that isn’t realistic is the street paving, but I guess tourists wouldn’t like walking through dust or mud.</p>
<p>This year’s college freshman mindset from Beloit College: </p>
<p>2018 List</p>
<p>Students heading into their first year of college this year were generally born in 1996.</p>
<p>Among those who have never been alive in their lifetime are Tupac Shakur, JonBenet Ramsey, Carl Sagan, and Tiny Tim.</p>
<p>On Parents’ Weekend, they may want to watch out in case Madonna shows up to see daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon or Sylvester Stallone comes to see daughter Sophia.</p>
<p>For students entering college this fall in the Class of 2018…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>During their initial weeks of kindergarten, they were upset by endlessly repeated images of planes blasting into the World Trade Center.</p></li>
<li><p>Since they binge-watch their favorite TV shows, they might like to binge-watch the video portions of their courses too.</p></li>
<li><p>Meds have always been an option.</p></li>
<li><p>When they see wire-rimmed glasses, they think Harry Potter, not John Lennon.</p></li>
<li><p>“Press pound” on the phone is now translated as “hit hashtag.”</p></li>
<li><p>Celebrity “selfies” are far cooler than autographs.</p></li>
<li><p>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has always been the only news program that really “gets it right.”</p></li>
<li><p>Hard liquor has always been advertised on television.</p></li>
<li><p>Ralph Nader has always been running for President of the U.S.</p></li>
<li><p>They never sat glued to Saturday morning cartoon shows but have been hooked on FOX’s Sunday night “Animation Domination.”</p></li>
<li><p>The water cooler is no longer the workplace social center; it’s the place to fill your water bottle.</p></li>
<li><p>In their lifetime, a dozen different actors have portrayed Nelson Mandela on the big and small screen.</p></li>
<li><p>Women have always attended the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel.</p></li>
<li><p>FOX News and MSNBC have always been duking it out for the hearts and minds of American viewers.</p></li>
<li><p>Pepsi has always refreshed travelers in outer space.</p></li>
<li><p>Hong Kong has always been part of China.</p></li>
<li><p>Courts have always been overturning bans on same-sex marriages.</p></li>
<li><p>Joe Camel has never introduced one of them to smoking.</p></li>
<li><p>Bosnia and Herzegovina have always been one nation.</p></li>
<li><p>Citizens have always had a constitutional right to a “dignified and humane death.”</p></li>
<li><p>Nicotine has always been recognized as an addictive drug requiring FDA oversight.</p></li>
<li><p>Students have always been able to dance at Baylor.</p></li>
<li><p>Hello Dolly…cloning has always been a fact, not science fiction.</p></li>
<li><p>Women have always been dribbling, and occasionally dunking, in the WNBA.</p></li>
<li><p>Ads for prescription drugs, noting their disturbing side effects, have always flooded the airwaves.</p></li>
<li><p>Hell has always been associated less with torment and more with nothingness.</p></li>
<li><p>Whether to embrace fat or spurn it has been a front page debate all their lives.</p></li>
<li><p>Parents have always been able to rely on a ratings system to judge violence on TV.</p></li>
<li><p>They never tasted the “texturally enhanced alternative beverage” known as Orbitz.</p></li>
<li><p>There has always been “TV” designed to be watched exclusively on the web.</p></li>
<li><p>The Unabomber has always been behind bars.</p></li>
<li><p>Female referees have always officiated NBA games.</p></li>
<li><p>There has always been a national database of sex offenders.</p></li>
<li><p>Chicago, a musical about a celebrity getting away with murder, has always been popular on Broadway.</p></li>
<li><p>Yet another blessing of digital technology: They have never had to hide their dirty magazines under the bed.</p></li>
<li><p>U.S. major league baseball teams have always played in Mexico.</p></li>
<li><p>Bill Gates has always been the richest man in the U.S.</p></li>
<li><p>Attending schools outside their neighborhoods, they gather with friends on Skype, not in their local park.</p></li>
<li><p>While the number of Americans living with HIV has always been going up, American deaths from AIDS have always been going down.</p></li>
<li><p>They have no memory of George Stephanopoulos as a senior White House advisor.</p></li>
<li><p>The PGA has always offered golfers with disabilities a ride—reluctantly.</p></li>
<li><p>“African-American Vernacular English” has always been recognized as a distinct language in Oakland.</p></li>
<li><p>Two-term presidents are routine, but none of them ever won in a landslide.</p></li>
<li><p>The family has always been able to buy insurance at local banks.</p></li>
<li><p>One route to pregnancy has always been through frozen eggs.</p></li>
<li><p>They have probably never used Netscape as their web browser.</p></li>
<li><p>Everybody has always Loved Raymond.</p></li>
<li><p>“Salon” has always been an online magazine.</p></li>
<li><p>The rate of diagnosed diabetes has always been shooting up during their lifetime.</p></li>
<li><p>Affirmative Action has always been outlawed in California.</p></li>
<li><p>Boeing has never had any American competition for commercial aircraft.</p></li>
<li><p>U.S. soldiers have always been vaccinated against anthrax.</p></li>
<li><p>“Good feedback” means getting 30 likes on your last Facebook post in a single afternoon.</p></li>
<li><p>Their collection of U.S. quarters has always celebrated the individual states.</p></li>
<li><p>Since Toys R Us created a toy registry for kids, visits to Santa are just a formality.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I had an fun conversation with our 26 year old son the other day. He asking about the first portable music. We ended up on record albums, or I guess “vinyl” these days. I explained the different speeds (33, 45, 78) and exactly how a record player worked. (We actually were still using our turntable when he was quite young but he didn’t remember.) I explained about how the grooves worked, how you could see where each song started, and how you could put the needle at the start of each song. Then I explained what a “broken record” was.</p>
<p>My first job in high school was punching cards at the local university’s computer center. And I didn’t get my first hand calculator until after college - it had four functions.</p>
<p>My husband works for companies that build atomic force microscopes, which work by scanning a small probe over a surface, bouncing a laser off the back of the probe, and using the movement of the reflected laser to measure the bumps on the surface. He used to be able to explain it in laymen’s terms by saying, “Imagine you have a very small record player…” </p>
<p>It was odd when different parts of the country were at different stages. When I was in high school, the tellers (remember them?) at the banks in CA had computer terminals. I think there were even proto-ATMs starting to replace the pneumatic tube drive-up lanes. I went to college in TX, and the bank tellers just wrote down the amount of the deposit on a piece of paper. I wasn’t convinced that it was a “real bank” though it seemed like it because they had free coffee and cookies over by the loan/new account desks.</p>
<p>We had a very nice set of encyclopedias which of course was out of date the moment it was published. </p>
<p>We have an IBM Selectric at work for typing the odd label or envelope. Younger workers always have to be shown how to load paper, set margins, etc. </p>
<p>I was a member of the Look It Up club in (I think) junior high. We had lists of questions and had to find the answers in the dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, atlas, Book of Quotations, and more kinds of references that I can’t remember!</p>
<p>It is a bit scary to realize how much that we used or did when raising our kids, who are merely young adults, is now obsolete. Car seats, computer use, cell phone ages and uses are vastly different. Social expectations- ethnicity, gender… It’s just remembering when we were kids, but when our kids were kids.</p>
<p>I still like a landline. Multiple handsets throughout the house to pick up instead of needing to be tethered to a cell phone. Retired we are more often home and either of us can pick up the phone or receive messages. Cell phones are ideal for young singles with changing abodes but for families??? Call the father/mother and not get the one at home at the time? Repeat yourself? </p>
<p>I think this is mixing up degree and kind, Wasatch. You never needed to understand switches and circuit breakers to use them.</p>
<p>Not knowing how to do basic math, or read a map, hampers your ability to know basic life processes. These two things encompass two very basic knowledge bases–the manipulation of quantity, and location of self and objects in relation to others. Not understanding these has real, consistent, and vital effects on one’s being in the world.</p>
<p>Most people never knew how a circuit breaker worked, but know to flip them when the lights go out. The error is clear (darkness) and easily identifiable. But innumeracy’s downfall is that the innumerable don’t know when they have wrong answers, and the lost don’t know when the GPS is sending them up the river without a paddle.</p>
<p>"My husband works for companies that build atomic force microscopes, which work by scanning a small probe over a surface, bouncing a laser off the back of the probe, and using the movement of the reflected laser to measure the bumps on the surface. He used to be able to explain it in laymen’s terms by saying, “Imagine you have a very small record player…”</p>
<p>Wow, what a small world - AFM is a very familiar subject to someone I know. :)</p>
<p>My 20 y/o daughter (the one with the clock) was shocked when I told her many kids her age don’t know how to read a traditional clock. Or know how to write cursive (“but how do they sign their names on documents?”), or know what a record player was, or even a cassette tape player. Lol, I guess we raised her rather backwards.</p>
<p>A few years ago, my daughter was driving our ancient (late 80s) cheap car, taking two kids she was babysitting to a playdate. At one point, the kids asked how to open the window. Just roll it down, said my daughter. The kids looked at her blankly. She told them to grab a handle and turn it. The kids, highly doubtful, did as they were told. When the windows descended, both exclaimed THIS IS SO COOL!!</p>
<p>D2 and I have been texting tonight and she says she knew what a record player is because we have that antique victrola in our music room. It’s a hand crank style which can play vinyl records. Lol, she probably thinks that is what I grew up with. :D</p>
<p>“Do you guys remember having to go to the library for research?”</p>
<p>OMG. I have fond memories of digging in those dusty Chemical Abstracts volumes and then trying to hunt down the references on the shelves in the chemistry library. Or trying my limited knowledge of German with Beilstein! Kiddos nowadays have access to Scifinder and the like online databases and can do the same stuff in a fraction of time it took to do it 25 years ago.</p>
</p>
Kiddos nowadays have access to Scifinder and the like online databases and can do the same stuff in a fraction of time it took to do it 25 years ago.</p>