Navigating a paper map.
You want to drive to a suburb of a big city. You have an address. The internet doesn't exist.
How do you get there? Well. You use a map. Almost every glove box would have a local and state map, if not a full map book like a Thomas brothers.
Even more scarce is the ability to navigate a city by simply understanding it's road system. Give me an address in my home city (a labyrinthine nightmare to visitors) and I can just drive there without looking at a map. It's practically a party trick now that I can tell where people live by just hearing their address. Which sounds absurd until you realize they no one ever needs to do that anymore.
Road networks in most cities in my country are like someone just dropped a pot of spaghetti. The oldest urban areas here are at most 150 years old too, so it's not like we can blame the Romans.
You should become a cabbie in London. They all have to memorise 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 places of interest, e.g. hotels, stations, tourist attractions and so on. It's called The Knowledge. There's some evidence that mastering The Knowledge actually alters the structure of the brain!
Memorizing phone numbers
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
If you knew how to drive, you most likely knew how to use a manual transmission.
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.
Writing in cursive
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."
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.
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
Meeting up with people, no phone. You arrange a place and a time, and you show up, if the other person isn't there... You wait.
It was super important not to leave people hanging
Recently I have started having to ask hours before a plan is meant to execute, whether the other parties are still attending. Three times out of four I've been cancelled on - forgot, too busy, whatever the reasons were.
When was I meant to find out? When I called you asking how far away you are, only to find you're not coming at all?
Basically, those people were not going with you. I wouldn't consider them your friends. Friends would at least tell you they are bailing so you don't go
Apparently recognizing and handling fascists.
Using a card catalog at the library to look up books.
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.
Folks would generally have been better at mental math, or at least working it out on paper, because at the time there was some truth to the notion of “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket.”
I personally don’t consider it bad that we rely more on this little device most of us carry everywhere now. That’s what it’s there for, and using a calculator app is going to generally give more accurate results than trying to crunch numbers in our heads anyway. At least for those of us who aren’t math wizards.
I heard an anecdote that one of the reasons older structures last longer than newer buildings was until the days of using Log Tables, engineers had to round up to the nearest values to match the values in the log table when calculating complex forces, and this rounding compounded when multiplied against other rounded values. Once computers were being used with design, you could calculate the forces exactly to minimize material costs.
Skill most people had:
Difference: The whole world doesn't smell like cigarette smoke anymore. Even when I was a kid in the early 00s, it still smelled of cigarettes basically everywhere.
So y'know. We can't sew a patch on, or speed rap to avoid collect call fees, but at least drunk driving is illegal, and we have seatbelts
State your name:
Bob, the Adababyeetza boy.
Cursive writing
Still taught everywhere in Europe.
Fun fact: taking notes by hand helps you learn better than typing them.
Operating a slide rule. Managing a menstruation belt. Navigating adult life without having your own bank account (if you were a woman in the US). Mending clothes, ironing clothes, making clothes.
Definitely more than 50 years ago, but this little piece of Americana is interesting
Families often had small nail-manufacturing setups in their homes; during bad weather and at night, the entire family might work at making nails for their own use and for barter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: "In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail maker."
Thomas Jefferson made nails for commercial profit in purpose-built workhouses on his estate. Or to be specific, his child slaves made the nails
Writing thank you cards and letters.
Reading card files in libraries.
Servicing and repairing many things in the house, but devices were far more easily diagnosed and repairable due to not being computerized. Really the “it’s broke and I gotta fix it” ability across age groups has really dried up. Doesn’t matter if it’s changing a tire on a car, or a kid having to fix a punctured tube on a bike tire to get to their friend’s house. They don’t ride anywhere for that matter. Changing brake pads. Changing the air filter in the home HVAC. People don’t do this stuff anymore.
Being bored.
Reading newspapers, books, magazines, etc. I don’t think people read as much anymore.
Hobbies. I think they’ve kinda died off, at least the physical ones. Model planes, trains, building stuff in your garage, cars, etc. Some of it’s been priced out of range or has gotten too technological for some, like cars, but manually creating something as a pastime has really disappeared.
Remembering a lot of phone numbers in your head.
I’m sure I’ll think of more, but it’s been a while since I was a kid and thought about pre-modern tech society.
Basic shoe maintenance
Attention spans.
I, for one, have a great attention span. I can easily spend several hours browsing lemmy shitposts.
What was this in response to?
What other things would be a big difference with the people today?
The lack of cigarette smoke everywhere, at least in the US and probably most other developed nations. In 1965, around 43% of American adults smoked. Today, just over 11% do. You no longer have to sit in the "non-smoking" section of a restaurant that still smells strongly of stale cigarettes. They no longer put ash trays or cigarette lighters in vehicles, which were a standard feature up to at least the late 90's.
Reading analog clocks
Remembering phone numbers.
0118999881990119725
3
I saw an interesting thing about textiles recently. Sewing and knitting were considered basic essential skills until a generation or two ago.
cursive writing
Reading cursive writing (especially from the 18th century or earlier).
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.
Navigation. You used to remember the way to all these places. Now it's just on the phone.
Social skills. Everyone, especially the young, seem more inward focused than ever.
Sewing/mending and other forms of repairing worn items.
Using a rotary phone. looking up a book in a card catalog. The ability to solve your own problems.
Mending clothing, basic auto repair and woodworking.
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