Technology has treated us well over the years. It’s continually developing and for the most part is designed to make our lives early, whether that be making breakthroughs in curing disease or simply independently doing our vacuuming for us.
We’re now at the point where technology influences almost every aspect of our lives and it can’t be denied we’re losing many skills because of it.
Entire industries have changed due to tech, but it’s also affecting our basic skills too. Many of us no longer require certain skills generations before most certainly did. But what are they, and how have we changed?
Cooking
To get a well-balanced winter warmer once required hours sat by the stove. We’d have to make trips to the butchers, bakers and grocers and rely on recipe books or dishes that have been passed down through the years.
Of course supermarkets and television came along to make life easier, and now we can potentially get away without cooking at all, yet still eat in the right way.
We can now get food on every street corner, with a diverse range of restaurants in every city, while food can be delivered to our door in a whole host of ways.
The likes of Deliveroo can bring hot, restaurant quality food to your door, while other meal delivery services can provide you all the ingredients and a recipe tailored to your diet and personal tastes.
These services are a growing industry as they provide everything required without us needing to stop our busy lives to go out and buy ingredients and then spend hours by the oven.
Map Reading
Can you remember the last time you read a map? No, us either.
The days where drivers across the world were trying to drive and read a huge A to Z are long gone, with sat navs well and truly have taken over.
In school we were once taught how to read a map, now in some countries you’re required to follow a sat nav as a part of your driving test.
That’s developed further, to the point where the majority of us have Maps on our phone, able to give us directions via vehicle, walking and public transport.
It’s eliminated the need to stop and ask for directions and has taught us map reading in an entirely different way.
Telling The Time
Children these days are becoming less and less likely to be able to tell the time via an analog clock.
With technology taking over, digital timings have become the norm to the younger generation, to the point where they’d struggle with an analog method. So much so, schools are having to take analog clocks out of exam halls and replace them with digital timings.
It’s being muted that schools could ditch the analog way of telling the time in what’s being defined as the end of an era.
Dating
Dating has changed dramatically in the last decade. Seeing a potential partner from across a crowded bar, buying them a drink and getting to know one another is a rare occurrence these days.
Social media and dating apps have completely changed the game and it’s likely before you even go on a date with a person you’ll know who they are, what their friends look like, their hobbies, dating history and pretty much everything but their shoe size.
That’s not to say dating hasn’t become easier. The likes of Tinder and Match.com have made finding a partner easier than ever before and even if the first date turns into a horror story, there will be another potential match along very shortly.
Reading The News
It’s fair to say that technology has completely changed the newspaper industry. For better or worse, the industry has to prop up its physical format with rolling 24-hour news online.
Our mobile devices are the only news source many of us use these days, making the paper format almost redundant and the daily evening news on television quite simply old news.
Stories break quicker than ever before to us, with both professional and citizen journalists getting it to us almost instantly via social media.
We can even receive notifications directly to our devices on major stories, with apps continually keeping you up-to-date.
Writing!
It used to be only doctors that traditionally had bad handwriting, now it’s the entire planet.
A sweeping generalisation maybe, but the frequency in which we need to physically write has long gone.
Everything is typed or voice recorded, with programmes even designed to automatically transcribe what you’ve said.
Many of us are at the point where it feels uncomfortable to spend long periods with a pen in our hands writing and our children and children’s children may never even have the need to.