Obsolete Technology

Jack Smith

In recent issues of this newspaper, we have printed stories about young people who are helpless when faced with obsolete technology such as the dial telephone, or when they are required to do simple addition. Now we've received a bunch of letters protesting that such negative stories are unfair to young people.

You may remember reading here about the fifth-grade pupil who wanted to call home from school but didn't know how to use a dial phone. He had never seen a telephone without push buttons. Or perhaps you noted the article about an ice cream shop that had to close for the day because the computerized cash register broke down. No one working there knew how to manage the business without the help of this sophisticated machine.

These stories suggested that young people are almost wholly dependent on new technology. They also implied that we older people are being made obsolete along with the machines of our era.

Perhaps it is the latter that really hurts.

A reader named John A. Junot wrote in to say that switching from old skills to new ones is a natural part of progress. Cultures do not lose arts and skills, Junot argues. They abandon them. Calculating by slide rule is in exactly the same class as sailing and hand weaving. To the extent that those things are done, they are done as hobbies, out of historical interest, not for practical purposes.

Junot points out that certain ancient skills, such as archery and sailing, are improved by modern technology. Robin Hood probably couldn't shoot one of today's bows, which are manufactured from sophisticated high-tech materials.

He adds: You implied that the fifth-grader who didn't know how to use a dial-type phone was somehow culturally deprived, and that it would be a good idea for him to learn. I fail to see how. Dial phones are uncommon now and soon will be extinct. This is no tragedy. They are vanishing because they don't satisfy the demands of modern consumers. For one thing, you can't use a dial phone to page someone.

Junot also notes that it would have been impractical for the ice cream clerks to go on doing business, making their calculations by hand, when their computerized cash register failed. Today's cash registers have all kinds of features that we have come to rely on. They compute sales tax and provide receipts for businesspeople who are charging their purchases to expense accounts. Are you suggesting that the kids who work in the shop should give the customers numbers scribbled on the backs of paper sacks? No one would accept them. The manager did the right thing when he closed the store.

Apparently, then, we have seen the end of mental calculations. The computers in today's fast-food restaurants note the amount of money paid and display the exact amount of change due. The clerk doesn't even have to figure out how much change is owed back from a $10 bill, nor does the customer, since both can assume that the computer never makes a mistake.

It's OK with me. I never was any good at arithmetic anyway, and I'm glad I've lived long enough to see it become obsolete.

Still, I was glad to get a letter from a member of the young generation, Barbara L. Sigman of Simi Valley, who wrote: I cannot let your article pass without at least a murmur of protest. The young are not all as mindless as you imply. Some of us read great authors like Shakespeare. Some of us know a tiny bit about history. And better yet, there are still a few of us who can dial telephones and make change for a dollar without using a computer.

Thank you, Ms. Sigman. I'm glad to know that all is not lost.