Shit, that 17-year-old with the beard looks older than me. 
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Just like Grandpa complaining how these whippersnappers didnāt know how to take a tube from the TV down to the drugstore for testing. Or his grandpa complaining these kids couldnāt crank an engine over by hand. Or his grandpa complaining they couldnāt drive four horses or shoe one.
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OMG, the tube tester. I completely forgot about that.
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Actually, I thought about that I kind of found a hole in your argument.
I bet I can give you a stack of Punch cards in a room with various apparatuses and I bet you in
than an hour or two you can get those Punch cards reading data. Same with paper tape. Provided I gave you functioning devices.
I bet I can give you one of the ancient failed recording devices use record sound that you havenāt seen before and you can probably get it working to play something without any help from anyone.
Now Iāve seen these kids in those videos try to use a rotary phone and they couldnāt even figure out first to lift the receiver from the stand.
If they sat there and played with it they would realize thereās a switch and a switch with the click and turn on something.
Iām not the most coordinated but if you give me any ancient piece of technology or something Iāve not seen before that is new both you and I can probably figure out how to get it going before these kids do.
Maybe Iām assuming wrong, but when I see them look at new unfamiliar things I donāt see them going through a logical testing process. Maybe itās the pressure of the video.
Iāve actually been exposed all the technology you mentioned from horse shoes to glass blowing (donāt inhale). From cranking up old Betsy to banging on a vacuum tube apparatus to get it working.
My grandpa and father showed me the these things.
I for one show my kids and cram school students that there actual sound ways etched into a record and I show them what sounds are on an oscilloscope.
Bottom line, you need knowledge of the past to acquire knowledge of the future.
When you give a kid an mp3 player take some time to explain analog sound itās physics and give them the black box explanation on how digital data works.
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I must admit Iāve never hitched up a horse and plowed a straight furrow in my life, nor chipped a flint axehead.
Iām hopeless on a computer; anything goes wrong I call my son. I have no idea what happens in my computer and I donāt want to waste time and effort learning- if it works, thatās all I ask; otherwise Iāll just get somebody to fix it (I canāt grind my own ink time or turn a feather into a quill pen either).
Yeah, I grew up with people sending morse code and using ham radios. I can still do semaphore, though pretty rusty. But I would never expect my son to burden himself with those things.
A hobby? Sure. Obsolete knowledge? Throw it out.
I suspect those kids will do fine, and theyāll bitchingly tell their grandkids about when they had to punch out on smartphones by hand- āNone of this mind to mind transfer then, let me tell youā¦ā
I still have a nice collection of ancient vacuum tubes (and one of those 50s sci-fi CRTs with a circular face). They all still work, despite being made 65 years ago. Thatās about 63 years longer than the average modern cellphone lasts.
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Funny, nice ad. Dang, though, a lot of white paint and red lipstick back in those days.
Very well āplyedā indeed
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That was always the best reason to stand on top of the barn.
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Almost fell off the roof a couple timesā¦ 
yeah, well. no stitches, no fun.
Iām kind of amazed I didnāt manage to break a bone till I was in my 30sā¦and I skied a lot too.
Bike ramps taught me to roll through the landing.
I think I first learned this lesson skateboarding, but it definitely translated into other activities. I once ran into a car at a good clip on skates, did a roll over the hood, and landed without a scratch on the grass divider. Did get a bruise on my shoulder though.