You're viewing a single thread.
I wonder: Has this happened with anything else?
Where an older generation struggled to understand at all, a middle generation adapted to it early enough to witness all of the quirks, and then a later generation was born into an already-smoothed out system — and they all lived simultaneously?
Seems like a uniquely modern thing, but then again agriculture and clothing and currency have all had periods of rapid change in the past.
Like were there Generation F dudes out there like “omg we’re the only ones who understand knitting frames smh”?
Ford Model T came with a complete manual for disassembly, maintenance, and repair. It made a generation of Americans fluent in mechanics who then went on to win World War II, to the Moon, and higher up skyscrapers than ever.
“Learn this as a child:”
“Do this as an adult:”
Never again. Right to repair doesn't do much when the manual is so expensive only brand-dedicated repair shops can afford it.
Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour, iFixit?
For real though, look it up. Some 100k or so free repair manuals in twelve languages from phones to washing machines. And often enough, the necessary toolkit in their shop.
Upgraded every old MacBook (2009pro, 2015 pro) I had with bigger harddrives and did small repairs with ifixit instructions. But you notice they get less repairable over time. The 2009 thing was built like a tank and you could upgrade ram, replace a broken GPU and this thing over all felt very repairable. I still works but isn't that useful any more 16 years after release. 2015 was way less repairable.
Yeah sure, repairing devices got harder over years and some devices simply aren't repairable at all (at least not for laypeople who aren't training or experienced in certain techniques like soldering) or you need very special equipment. But the manuals are less of a problem.
Re-Legalize Right To Repair and pirates will take care of the rest
The old cars were also designed in such a way that you had to understand how the thing was constructed and functioned in order to make it work. Nowadays, I only barely understand how shifting gears works mechanically and drive an automatic. Modern cars do much of the work for you, much like modern computers.
Cars also used to be a lot less reliable. Knowing how to change a spark plug for example used to be common knowledge.
My library gives us free access to Chilton online. It's not the best for everything, but all of the information comes from the factory service manual. Plus you can find a lot of information online. You just have to learn what to look for.
There's loads of places scattered around the internet where full service manuals are hosted for free for nearly any consumer product that has one available. The trouble is actually finding them....
Artificial scarcity enforced by capitalism.
Analog mechanical systems are so much more intuitive than digital ones though. The ability to physically see and touch and connect and tinker with things feels vastly more human than pointing and clicking and cursing and screaming.
Not unintuitive for lack of trying - some big minds tried hard and failed. Jerome Bruner, Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, Bret Victor.
Alan and Bret are mentioned in the "Sick sad history of computer-aided collaboration":
https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-modern-computer-look-and-feel/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
Never thought of it this way, but you could be right
Such a shame americans seems to think the only thing they need is to be american now. Don't get me wrong, you're still the most innovative (with europe?) but that's what it feels like from the outside anyway.
Feel free to tell me I'm wrong though, it's just a feeling 😅!
I think OP mentioned “a generation of Americans” because that’s the example they thought of, not because they think being American made the people exceptional.
You’re not wrong though - a lot of Americans definitely seem to think that just “being American” is some kind of accomplishment in and of itself. Meritless jingoism is intense here.
But I don’t see it being related to the previous comment.
This happened with the shift from manual to automatic transmissions. I used to frequently hear/read people complaining that no one knows how to drive a stick anymore.
no one knows how to drive a stick any more!! .
Oh, your mom can drive a stick all right
Sticky stick
the last car she drove was a stick i believe it was a 1990 mazda protege in a blue green color. but i know she had a Camaro at some point too
its a lost art
My parents tried to teach me how to use a manual transmission, but I simply could not get the timing down no matter how much I practiced.
No shade to your parents, but they were teaching you wrong. It only takes a few hours of good instruction to properly drive a stick, and it's not about timing, it's about clutch feel.
You start by sitting on your right foot (like half Indian style) so that only your left foot can work the controls. Push in the clutch and find 1st. Let out the clutch until you feel it just start to grab and the car starts to move forward. Clutch back in a bit to keep from stalling, then back out until you are idling forward in 1st. You are gonna stall the engine A LOT here. This is the most important foundational skill. Keep practicing until you can start the car moving with the clutch alone. Then, using both legs now, add a bit of gas and shift to 2nd, then back to a stop. Should be a small addition to what you now know.
Next, we learn to reverse. Hold the engine from neutral at 800 to 1200 rpm (don't rev the nuts off it) and let the clutch out to the friction point again. The clutch is like an inverted gas pedal in an automatic. Push the clutch pedal in to slow down, let it out to speed up.
All that's left after that is figuring out starting uphill. You are going to stall it a few times, but in two weeks of driving a manual, you'll be good at it. Only thing from here is double clutching, which doesn't buy you much since syncros were added to transmissions.
Landline telephones.
Original ones you rotated a hand crank to talk to an operator.
Then came rotary phones, that knowledge is slowly going away and old farts are like 'young people are stupid because they can't use a rotary phone'.
Now we have touch tone phones.Maybe commercial flying or electricity
Electricity definitely spent a generation or two in the "requires technical knowledge from the user" zone before all the standardization and safety requirements got figured out.
Yes, but not as widespread.
Multiple toolmaking skills has been lost and had to be rediscovered. Metalworking, mechanical computers (clockworks), etc.
Secrecy in trades and lack of documentation used to be the main cause. Now the cause is lack of interest...
I'm also really curious. I feel like this has to have happened, but I wonder if the level of change from a technical and societal perspective in such a short time frame has happened. As the world becomes more global, the speed that technology impacts other aspects of society also becomes quicker.
I assume it's happened with pretty much every technology at some point.
You start with a product that isn't very reliable or user friendly. You need good knowledge of how it works to even use it, and the manual process it replaced. It breaks often enough that maintenance is done yourself. Entire manuals will be provided that tell you everything about how it works.
Then as it gets reliable, the need for the user to poke around falls away. You can still do that, but you don't need to in order to just use it.
Eventually, they realise the reason they're still getting failures is that people are poking around and breaking it, so they make it harder to do that.
And then you end up with an opaque black box. It just works (until it doesn't), and people don't concern themselves with how it works. When it breaks they get a new one, or take it to a master of the old ways.
Looking back, I don't know why people are so surprised it happened to computers as well.
How many people you know could explain to you what happens when you turn on the light?
An electrical current runs through a thin wire with an extremely high melting point in a vacuum, safely using resistance to turn electric potential into heat and light. Do kids these days not know that?
LEDs kinda ruin the simplicity. Current runs into a chunk of Gallium Nitride and mumble mumble quantum mumble mumble bandgap and light comes out!
TL/CCFL kind of ruined that simplicity already.
Tru tru
Yeah, pretty much.
The whole thing about guys not stoping to ask for directions and never reading instructions for assembling things all comes out of that generation where you never left home unless you knew where you were going, and everyone had basic level carpentry, plumbing, and electrical skills because had built a barn or assembled a kit house or installed a sink before.
Hand someone from that generation a manual of a swedish amorphic blob giving you a thumbs up to assemble an IKEA end table and they're like "yeah I don't need that". It's not about the end goal of having a table. It's about having the knowledge to assemble the table. What is this part? How is it used? What would it do if I put it here vs there?
