17 year old teenagers baffled by rotary phone

originally posted by: gallop
Ask any single person you meet today, what it's like to hunt and take their own food.

Who cares? Everyone knows meat comes from a supermarket.

We're doomed as a species.

Totally agree and it's all because we lost that all important ability to spin a little dial on an ancient telephone. Ahoy-hoy!

I don't think it's humorous to laugh at the failings surrounding us.

I'm not laughing at them, I'm laughing at you.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: gallop
no... we're just becoming an bunch of inept, inane individuals. Who can't boil water like momma used to make.

Because we can't use antiquated technology? I have no desire to waste my time spinning a dial on a phone when I can just press the contact I need and it does all that wasted work for me. This way I can thumbs up someone's food pic on the Instiegram or the Facebook.

I wrote a script to do that anyway, gives the appearance I still use facebork..

stops the family from pestering me. And it's OK you old coot I'm positive you still know how far the 0 goes on a rotary. It's like programming a VCR, you never forget.

originally posted by: seattlerat
Personally, I believe that knowing how to use "ancient" technology, such as a rotary phone or Morse Code can enrich your life, in fact, it may even save your life!

Yeah? Like when you need to call 911 from say a closet or something like that? I can see how that would help.

"What does zero sound like?"

That's... super deep!

After giving the hint they had zero right, I thought they'd get it honestly.. At that point, its not so much about familiarity, but problem solving.

Not a particularly impressive outing, in that regard.

originally posted by: gallop
It's like programming a VCR, you never forget.

It's constantly 9, 9, 9 o'clock on my microwave*.



*which I cannot use anyway since I still cook my meat over an open fire in the woods by my lean-to.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: DAVID64
To be fair, it's technology that was outdated before they were even born.

Yeah, but we should retain all that tribal knowledge because we're all fuddy-duddies. Now excuse me, I need to go tan some hides for clothing.

Don't forget the ash to ensure the tans are properly treated.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin

originally posted by: gallop

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: gallop
Not a great argument for the affirmative.

next.

Right, because knowledge of how to operate a rotary phone is certainly a primary skillset to surveil these days. It's right up there with how to stoke a steam boiler.

no... we're just becoming an bunch of inept, inane individuals. Who can't boil water like momma used to make.

Really, you mean the civilisation that can communicate with just about any individual on the face of the earth instantaneously

Let me stop you right there. There.

You think it was the people USING this tech that made this tech? That is like the sci fi where the astronaught lands on an unforgiving planet full of idiots, and rebuilds his space ship to take himself and his hottie random chick home to earth.

IE; 1969 logic.

Not a single person with an iphone can even repair their busted up screen let alone build an iphone from the things around them. So... nice tech, shame no one using it, know what it even is.

No... Monkey see, monkey do.

Are you a monkey?

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Don't forget the coon skin cap

originally posted by: toms54
This is one of the new realities of modern life. Young people no longer possess skills that were ubiquitous only a short time ago. I'm talking about things like being able to read a round clock with hands, knowing cursive handwriting vs. typing, and being able to dial a telephone. Here we have two 17 year olds from Iowa trying to figure out how to dial a rotary telephone. They were given 4 minutes.

Hilarious video show 17 year old teenagers baffled by rotary phone
4:00

This is proof that knowledge is not cumulative. Before, I had a hard time with things like, "We no longer have the know how to go to the moon." If we knew it before, we must still know it now. Maybe not. After watching things like this, I am beginning to understand.

My niece didn't know what a pay phone was...After some time...found one...'told her to go see...

She came back and asked where the screen is and how do you text? I explained...and that she needed to put quarters in 1st...of course she couldn't figure out where to put/slide her debit card...

When told about TV's in the 60's and 70's w/out remotes? She asked me how you changed the channels (4 only then)?

She was stunned. "You had to GET UP to change them?!"

Try explaining what a party line was! You had rotary phone and shared the line with other customers. Pick it up...and if you heard someone on it...you had to wait for them to be done...to make a call.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Sure, chances are that you will NEVER need these sorts of skills, but, there have been cases where it might make a difference. I took a 3 week survival course in the Utah desert and learned how to stay alive with only a pocket knife 35 years ago, but have never used any of those skills (yet). It is a small comfort, though, knowing that I could keep myself warm and fed without modern tech such as matches or a rifle if the circumstance required. Here is a somewhat recent story of Morse Code "saving" a guy's life:

An army veteran who crawled across a rocky beach for two hours after breaking his leg revealed he was saved after he exchanged Morse code signals with his wife. Tim Robinson was walking along Seatown beach near Bridport, Dorset, where he was on holiday, when he slipped on some seaweed and broke his leg. Mr Robinson, a sergeant in the Mercian Regiment of the Territorial Army, did not have his mobile phone with him, so he used a torch to make SOS signals through the misty weather to his wife, Paula.

source

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: gallop
Ask any single person you meet today, what it's like to hunt and take their own food.

Who cares? Everyone knows meat comes from a supermarket.

If everyone knew poor bessie before she became steak, or if people had to grow their own bessie, raise her, feed her, care for her, we'd be inundated with bloody vegans.

Thank christ for supermarkets.

We're doomed as a species.

Totally agree and it's all because we lost that all important ability to spin a little dial on an ancient telephone. Ahoy-hoy!

How else do you call your butcher when the power and 4g goes out? Tin cans and string? Try telling the kids how that even works... Oo

I don't think it's humorous to laugh at the failings surrounding us.

I'm not laughing at them, I'm laughing at you.

Why? I know how to use a rotary phone, eat steaks, kill my own food, and hunt. I'm not the one who will be going feral and making YOU lock and load.

a reply to: gallop

Actually I can and have fixed a smashed up phone screed I used the internet to figure out how to do it.

My point is quite simple.

Kids these days are not more or no less intelligent than kids of 60 years ago. Take a kid from 60 years ago into this world and the would probably freak out just as much as if you took a kid of today and put them back 60 years ago. The difference between the two groups is simply that they are working with different technology, living in a different time and society has adapted to these different times.

I mean you can disagree with that if you want but I disagree with you because I see no actual real evidence that kids are any more or less smart than they were a few years ago and not being able to use a rotary phone to me doesn't really prove much.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

I don't believe there ever was a time most people could send a telegraph. It's not like there was one in every home.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: gallop
It's like programming a VCR, you never forget.

It's constantly 9, 9, 9 o'clock on my microwave*.



*which I cannot use anyway since I still cook my meat over an open fire in the woods by my lean-to.

Never ever try to microwave, a microwave.

Just some advice. Kids these days, with all their tide pods and selfie filters, you never know.. probably needs a warning on the chord, like a toaster when it reads "Warning: Bread may burn. Always keep attended when in use."

999? Mine is always 102. every time I plug it in. Wonder if there is something to these strange numbers.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

Yeah, we are wonderful. But let one thing go wrong, like a power failure, the whole house of cards collapses.

a reply to: valiant

How about things like simple arithmetic? How many people can even balance a checkbook or do a simple tax return? When I was in school, we couldn't even use calculators. I think computers should be removed from elementary education.

originally posted by: gallop
Don't forget the ash to ensure the tans are properly treated.

No worries, I cooked my intern so I'll use his.

originally posted by: DAVID64
Don't forget the coon skin cap

I have one just like that great American outdoorsman, David Bowie.

originally posted by: seattlerat
Sure, chances are that you will NEVER need these sorts of skills, but, there have been cases where it might make a difference.

He wouldn't have to resort to such primitive technology is he just had himself a handy sound-power.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
a reply to: gallop

I mean you can disagree with that if you want but I disagree with you because I see no actual real evidence that kids are any more or less smart than they were a few years ago and not being able to use a rotary phone to me doesn't really prove much.

Kids of 50 years ago had a wider skill set than any kid today. It was more about being a human, than experiencing being human. Everything today is online, social media of the most unsocial kind, and being better than the other kid doing something. Usually, those things are not valuable traits.

All of them? no.. obviously not. plenty of malcontents back then as now, but parenting today is plop the kid in front of a screen, and let the machine do the teaching.

Take that away. Take the internet away. You'd have parents with uncontrollable kids. Kids that can't swipe away real life. It is inevitable, I understand that. But it's still a broken thing. I certainly have no answers. For all the things we lose as a species, and we are losing our ability to even survive without it, technology brings with it a lot of good.

But we do lose. We were once a species that could traverse entire landscapes, survive, thrive, build and grow. Now we just have to have a bad storm, and we're reliant on things that are not always going to be there.

Remembering things that once were the norm, is not being a fuddy duddy, it is knowledge. And I don't just lay blame on some randoms who can't use a still viable method of communication, I mean in general.

It's one thing to laugh along with kids who can't work out what a CD is, but another to think it's funny to laugh at them unable to use something still so fundamental like a damn phone.

It has no screen, no face time, and you need to actually hold it.

"Hey google, why aint this phone working?"