Kids can't use computers... and this is why it should worry you

[johnb]

I have mixed feelings about all of this, because:

1. Yes, every generation thinks some new thing is going to make us all dumber.
2. However, because we don't need certain skills any more, we ARE getting dumber... in certain areas...
   

And by "we" I mean "myself." Case in point...

My dad passed away when I was 2 years old, so I don't really remember him, but I know him through the stories of others, and from the stuff he left behind. He was an electrical engineer for GE; he graduated high school in 1942, went off to WWII, then finished his EE degree in 1949.
Just a couple of years ago, I ran across some notes of his, where he needed an approximation of some continuous process. He'd characterized it as a system of (actually fairly simple) equations and applied the proper calculus and gotten an answer to 3 or 4 significant digits.

I had to pull out my math books and look things up and think really hard to fully understand how he'd solved it.

To solve it myself, I would have just banged out an iterative solution in one of my trusty HP's... or slung together some C code or javascript or whatever platform I had handy. Worst case, an iterative solution in Excel. The point being, I would brute-force it by numerical methods because I'm so used to "having the machine do it," whereas he finessed it, and I bet he didn't have to crack open a single math book to do it.