We are doomed young people don't know directions

a reply to: Cloro

It's not that they are not smart, heck, the first person I look for when I have some sort of phone or computer issue is the first younger person I see. A seven year old would be better at operating certain technical items than me and most of us on here. But reliance on technology is becoming an issue, lots of young people would struggle to sign their names since in many school districts they no longer teach cursive writing.

I have trouble with phone numbers, if someone ask me what's so and so's number and I didn't have my phone, forget it cause I barely remember my own number. The phone remembers for me, but I still know my number from 35 years ago when cell phones didn't exist as they do today. I recently went shopping for a new stove, too many of them are wireless. I don't need a wireless stove nor refrigerator. We still need to teach the basics, and we all should stop our dependence on technology, although its nice.

www.thestar.com...

a reply to: DJMSN

Yeah.

Just think. Before most of the population became literate, they had to remember just about everything.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Technology is great, but it really makes people a slave to technology... These are some of the things the old generation took for granted...

-Reading a Map = (Now we rely on GPS)

-Talking on the phone or in person = (Texting is the new preferred way of communicating with young people)

-Consideration and Respect = (Texting reduced face to face social interaction and now young people can call others names
without feeling an immediate and possible physical repercussion of their insults.)

-Math calculation were taught on paper = (Now students can use their cell phone calculators)

-Counting change back = (Heaven forbid if the cash registers today get a glitch. Some young people are clueless if you
hand them extra change so the change will all be in bills, lol)

-Cursive Writing = (What's that? I guess it's no longer needed...What about legal documents? I guess a future thumb print
will be more secure).

-Taking hand written Notes + (Now just record the lecture on your phone or recording device).

-Getting up to change the channel on your TV or have your kids do it = (Now we can switch channels to our hearts desire
without getting a little bit of exercise walking to the TV!)

I'm sure we can add another page to this list, lol.

a reply to: Phage

I confess, I've deliberately walked in front of pedestrians who were glued to their devices.

Phage, you are an evil man.

And I like it!

TheRedneck

a reply to: dragonridr

I tend to watch for road signs... so if I am a little ways off the beaten path, and I see a road number that rings a bell, I can usually find my way back to familiar territory. That's how I found the route we were taking, and why I was the lead until we got to the Interstate. Once I drive an area, I tend to remember it.

When I was driving a truck, I didn't have a GPS... I could still start off in New York and work my way out to California. I had a map of the entire continental USA in my head, including Interstates, major US routes, where the tolls were, where the scales were. where the truckstops were, and which truckstop had which restaurant.

If I was going into a difficult area, I would stop someplace with WiFi and pull up Google Maps... everything I needed to know was right there, down to a street view so I would know what the driveway looked like. A lot of others were trying to use GPS and getting stuck behind bridges that were too low, or routes restricted for trucks, or turns that were unrealistic for a truck, or some other such thing. I never had that problem... glance at a map and I'm good to go!

TheRedneck

Eventually, like a fish swimming in the ocean, we are unaware of the water that surrounds us, we become unaware of the Matrix…

You know you're doomed when you see old people standing helplessly in front of the self checkout like that's #s a replicator or something.

**shrugs**

a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

I'm old (so they say). I always head for the self checkout.
But sometimes I scan the wrong bar code and the idiot machine doesn't know how to deal with it.

I was terrible with cardinal directions when I first got a drivers license in Michigan. Too many trees! Moved to California and got the hang of it - ocean is west, mountains are north, San Diego is south and everything else is east. Moved to PA 10 years ago and had to get a compass for my car.

Thomas Guides were my GPS when I was young. Now I use Google Maps when I'm going somewhere new.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Try sign language

and i am the cheekiest monkey you ever met

slag them rotten

originally posted by: AScrubWhoDied
You know you're doomed when you see old people standing helplessly in front of the self checkout like that's #s a replicator or something.

**shrugs**

I do self checkout all the time. The problem is that the machines can't keep up. Either they don't scan correctly, or the sale is not sensitive enough to weigh light items. The other thing is some produce items just don't show. It has really made me wonder about how cashiers have been inputting them in all these years, I think they just guess on some things.

The greatest absence in 'millenials' is common sense, this is why the human race (if common sense continues its absence from future generations) will die out. It will die out due to dependence on convenience. The more technological we become, the more fragile and high maintenance our lives will be. It will simply collapse under the weight of its own complexity. That is to say, all the stuff in the background that maintains complexity in working order for the sake of top-end convenience cannot continue indefinitely.

It's a societal problem due to lazy mindsets. Why teach how to use a compass or read a map, or teach basic directions based on sun position or landmarks, when smart phones and gps exits? Society no longer cares for a 'backup' just in case all power generation is lost.

By the way, if it ever occurred that we lost all power and could not get it back, you do not want to stay in one place, you will have to move daily and live off the land. Staying in one place will see you competing with others for water and food resources that will eventually dwindle and be used up. Conflict is inevitable. So staying clear of others will be a must.

a reply to: WeRpeons

Cashier: "That´s 5€ and 20cents"
Me handing out a 10€ bill and 20cents.. "I have a 20cent coin, too, makes it easier for you"
Cashier looks iritated and begins to pick collect his coins from the register, get´s confused because I gave 20cent on top of the 10€...instead of just giving me 5€ bill and we both are happy.

I know cashiers need/like small change, most are happy or even ask. Some are totally devoid of this and unable to grasp. If not for the register telling them the amount of each coin, they are lost.

I've had two young people (old enough to drive) recently that did not know how to get to their own homes because either their phones were dead or GPS was not available!!!!!!!!!!!

Heck, that describes half the adults I know these days. Nobody knows how to use a map. Put them in the woods without a compass -- or even with a compass -- and they'd be irrevokably lost within minutes. Many of the adults I know cannot follow directions while driving a car, unless they are being told what to do by Google or their Garmin. Even with Google/Garmin they are driving around in circles half the time. They don't recognize the place they are traveling to until they practically crash into it.

As for the young-uns, they wouldn't know a track or a scat to save their lives. Birds to them all sound the same. Bugs? Who remembers bugs...we don't have many bugs in the Borscht Belt any more. Part of the global collapse of the world insect population.

I'm not even 60 yet and I feel like a total anachronism. I actually know how to type at a keyboard, use a trackball mouse and navigate my file system on the command-line. These are rare skills these days.

Suri, beam me up. There is no competent life here!

originally posted by: Shamrock6

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: JAGStorm

Well we all know that anybody over the age of 30 never gets lost, turned around, bewildered, or reads the map wrong. It's those damn millennials again!

Old people get lost of course, but we know how to go by things like landmarks, where the sun is setting and other directional clues. Young people solely rely on GPS / google maps etc, and then do a mind dump. They pay absolutely no attention to things like landmarks.

And old people have to rely on making broad, sweeping generalizations because it keeps things neat and tidy and easy to keep track of in their feeble minds.

Yay! Now we're all doing it

Yes, everybody who's young enough to understand how to actually use technology to their advantage relies on said technology more than old people do. That being said, I'm entirely willing to bet if you were to come to my metro area and ask for directions downtown, you'd find plenty of hipster millenials who used street names, numbers of blocks, and building names to give you directions where you needed to go. Just like every generation of under-30 year olds has before them.

Damn I think JAG hit ya in a sensitive spot.

My thoughts are he is correct. Apparently so are yours since you agreed with him right in this post.

However, It may be that having technology do the thinking for us frees up our minds in a way that makes it worthwhile, for some of us.

maybe its just taking humanity a while to adjust so the negative effects are what we notice the most.

But no matter how worthwhile it is, technology will always give And take and thats just the way it is.

When I used to play pool for the local pub, I used to to be the designated driver. I never used a sat nav or my phone. I always read the map before hand and worked from there. I'll admit I got lost a few times, much to everyone elses annoyance.
My car doesn't have anything built in like the modern cars do. I find having a huge screen in the middle of the dashboard as an unneeded distraction having driven my brothers car a few times.

a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

If they worked correctly, that might change...

Seemingly half the time, they either scan the wrong bar code...and, while I'm on the subject, who thought it a good idea to put two, or more, bar codes on items less than half the size of the proverbial loaf of bread, or scan it twice.

...when that happens, I have to wait for the employee to get his, or her, finger out, and come reset it, because I'm not allowed to...because whatever.

I find it much more convenient to go through a regular check stand, unless the store is super busy, and I only have a very few items, which doesn't happen very often.

Oddly enough, Home Depot has the best self checkout. I've actually never had an issue there, and the employee is usually right there to deal with it.

I was looking at a Google maps image with some young persons this past week, trying to figure out which route to a business meeting would be less trafficked.

I said, "This satellite image was taken about 10 in the morning, in the winter, and there's little traffic on this side road. We'll go that way."

Their kind of looked at me like I was high. "How do you know?"

"There are no leaves on the trees, anywhere, so it was taken in winter, And from the length of the shadows, it was before midmorning."

Little girl says, "How do you know it wasn't taken before sunset???"

I respond: "Because the shadows are pointing west. The sun comes up in the East, and the shadows move all day long, like on a sundial, til they point eastward at sunset. The sun moves south in the winter, so these shadows are actually pointing slightly north of west."

"North of west??? how can anything be north of west???"

"Cary Grant, running from the cropdusting airplane... NORTH BY NORTHWEST..."

"..."

Me: "never mind."

a reply to: Graysen

Cary Grant.

You are dating yourself, sir.

Great movie, though.

a reply to: Graysen

You would be amazed (or maybe not) how often things like that happen in college. I have talked to some of the older professors privately (I tend to not be intimidated of them because I'm almost as old as they are), and the stories they can tell!

We are reaching a point where simple navigation is simply too complex. Our dependence on computers and high tech is coming to a point where, not dissimilar to the Eloi and the Molocks in "The Time Machine," we will be divided into two classes... those who can comprehend the technology and those who rely on it.

I leave it to the reader to decide which one will be which.

In 1969, we sent a man to the moon using computers that were no more powerful (actually less powerful) than a modern calculator. Most of the calculations were done on slide rules. A supercomputer back then ran in the Kilohertz range and could handle 8 bits at a time. Today, with quantum computers all the rage and multi-core 64-bit microprocessors that operate in the Gigahertz range being common, we are still struggling with accomplishing that a second time. Instead, we use those amazing computers we hold in the palm of our hand to chat... we don't even talk much anymore! Language is 90% non-verbal, and the verbal part itself is 90% non-linguistic... yet we somehow prefer trying to communicate with the smallest fraction of communication information (and then wonder why we confuse what is said). Mars still seems so far away and so difficult, after a half-century of the fastest technological advances in recorded history.

And really, why shouldn't it be that way? We have people who drive off closed overpasses because the GPS said to.

TheRedneck