I always write my post in longhand on a small chalkboard prior to typing them. This, I believe, makes me superior to most others.And I bet your chalkboard has a spell/grammar checker, doesn't it?
But is it flameproof? J
Posted on 06/20/2006 6:59:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When I am at my bank, filling out deposit slips in the management of my vast financial empire, I often think that by adding up my check totals by hand rather than using the calculator stationed by the deposit slips, that I am preserving the ways of the Ancients. This feeling was reinforced when, not long ago, I was in the office of a recent hire who asked me to take a look at some problems that his sister-in-law was having difficulty with in an undergraduate business class. One question pertained to discounting cash flows (the mathematical expression of the notion that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar to be received next year). Now I'm no math wiz, but the mathematical formula for discounting cash flows is not complicated and pretty intuitive, but when I started writing it down (thinking that it would throw some light on the point of the question) my colleague (an accounting major of fairly recent vintage) looked at me as if I were writing Chinese characters. He handed me a trusty HP12C calculator and said, "Why don't you just use this?" I have it on good authority from an elementary school principal that children are still taught how to do math without a calculator. But sometimes I wonder.
Though we may still be teaching math, I recently heard on the radio that some school districts are discontinuing the teaching of cursive writing because there is "no demand" for it in "the real world." I prefer a real world, however, in which personal correspondence is not so impersonal that the only contact the writer makes with the paper is to feed it in to a printer and sign (or print) a name at the bottom. Granted, most people would no doubt prefer that I type out or e-mail my letters to them, since my scrawl is barely legible. But it is always nice to receive something written in a neat cursive hand (usually written by a female, for such skill is one of the many differences between the sexes). Will this be a pleasure unknown in the future? Will people need to take their laptops and their Blackberry's everywhere, or be forced to print their thoughts (if they write at all)?
A couple years ago I experienced one of the greatest tragedies that can befall modern man: Hard Drive Failure. Or at least that's what I initially thought. It turned out to be a bad memory chip, and my life was back in order in a few days. Though I have managed to complicate my life to the extent that I can no longer do my own taxes, I know enough about tax law to be dangerous and volunteer to prepare the taxes of my siblings every year. And here I was, less than a month before April 15 with my computer, loaded with my tax software, inoperable. I was in a panic before I realized that only a few years before, I was doing these tax returns by hand, no sweat (or not much). So why the panic?
That's the problem with modern techno-society. We have allowed ourselves to become dependent on technology to the extent that it has reduced our confidence and, indeed, our ability, to perform basic tasks without it. Just as the Welfare State has nefariously bred dependency and atrophied pride, self-reliance, and the work ethic in many, the marvels of modern technology are a lure to mental and physical sloth.
I am one of the "bridge" group that grew up in a world without personal computers and managed to get through four years of an undergraduate education using a device known as a typewriter. But from graduate school on, I've ridden the wave of technology, moving from 5 ¼" floppies to CDs. My career, to a large degree, has depended on my mastering a number of computer programs. But I have also been slow to adopt the techno-lifestyle. I've never planned my life on a Palm Pilot, or used a TIVO, or touched an iPod. I refused the offer of my company to provide me with a "Blackberry" -- a horrible device that makes you reachable by e-mail almost everywhere you are -- and it was only a few years ago, bowing to the needs of business travel, that I got a cell phone. But I only turn it on when I'm out of pager range or when I want to call somebody, and I still haven't set up its voice mailbox.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not writing this in a cabin in Montana with a copy of Al Gore's Earth in the Balance beside me. I love e-mail, scanners, $59 color ink-jet printers, and all that stuff for what they can allow me to do that I couldn't do before. What I rue about all these neat inventions is the basic things they are causing people to stop doing -- like simple arithmetic by hand or in their head, or writing letters by hand. What will we do if the power goes out -- or if a hostile power uses an electro-magnetic bomb that military planners are now fretting about that could render all our computerized gadgets useless? How will we entertain ourselves, how will we correspond with each other, how will we balance our checkbooks?
Americans play video golf, video football, video car-jacking, and even video solitaire. No wonder more Americans are obese than ever before. But it's more than just our bodies that are getting flabby. Every so often we should all put down the calculator and turn off the computer and do things with pen and paper and with our minds, if only to prove to ourselves that we still can do the things that our primordial ancestors who lived prior to 1985 did every day.
Brandon Crocker is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator on-line living in San Diego.
If this man is nostalgic let him scribble away. Many, including myself, still write letters. But it's a bit absurd to bemoan the faster and easier in favor of what he sees as romantic. People still know how to do arithmetic and write the letters of the alphabet. To spend 30 minutes doing what can be done in half the time with a small machine is ridiculous.
If this man is nostalgic let him scribble away. Many, including myself, still write letters. But it's a bit absurd to bemoan the faster and easier in favor of what he sees as romantic. People still know how to do arithmetic and write the letters of the alphabet. To spend 30 minutes doing what can be done in half the time with a small machine is ridiculous.
Is he going to make the pen out of reeds, mix the ink and skin the lamb to make parchment?
The illusion that things done an older way are more virtuous then things done the new way is romantic pap. I really doubt Brandon could knap a hand axe. What is he going to do when all the metal rusts?
If he wants to waste his time standing in banks filling out forms that is his choice but it is no more "preserving the ways of the Ancients" then having a coke rather then a cherry seven up is.
The Ancient would have been to busy knaping his axe to spend time standing around a bank.
I can do that...(and I have oak gall available) but I can also type > 55 wpm. Lets see. Get more work done more quickly? Or die at 30, a worn out old man...
2006 is a great year. 2106 will be better. I hate being a primitive, with only a manual interface to the internet.
/johnny
It is amazing what people will use to give props to their ego. "Oh I fill out my bank statements by hand. Hurray for me. See my shining halo?"
What kind of failure do you have to be in your own eyes that you have to waste a hour doing make work to feel good about yourself?
/johnny
Absolutely. Modern technology just allowed you to double-post in seconds what would havd taken much longer had you had to write it twice longhand. (kidding, of course)
ROTFLMAO! I have the receptionist type them on her Selectric and proofread them before I hit "post".
So when can I get wet-wired?
Technology will make the nanny-state in this country (and its Socialist/Communist alter-ego) more efficient and more powerful. Look at what China can do with their internet. Look at the survielance measures (phone taps, street cameras, in-auto computers, injectable chips) that could be utilized to control a populace, especially one getting as dumb, ignorant, and lazy as ours.
When I'm done I yell "Fetch me a concubine, my chattle, I need pleasuring"! I then beat them mercilessly with the same unabridged dictionary I just used to look up the spelling of "chattle".
I always write my post in longhand on a small chalkboard prior to typing them. This, I believe, makes me superior to most others.And I bet your chalkboard has a spell/grammar checker, doesn't it?
But is it flameproof? J
I have found carving my thoughts in stone tables with a chisel and mallet give me sufficient time to muse about what I'm writing. And the effort involved in error correction has greatly enhanced my spelling and grammer skills.
DAMN! Time to break out the cement and trowel.
They don't even teach how to count back change anymore. It gripes me to have someone hand me the change from a purchase and they dump it in my hand, then they look surprised when I count it.
I think the point is that it is important to teach how to think in solving problems. For example, students who learn how to make a tool by hand before learning how to do the computerized version are going to do better and go further than students who are never taught the hands-on method.
But hey, what do I know? I just donated my selectric (a lovely persimmon color on which I could type 80 WPM) and threw away my books on using a rotary calculator. Might as well pitch all the dozens of 50's and 60's LPs and let the old 45's and 78's go as frisbees as needles are hard to come by for the old phonograph and I know damn well that none of the younger folks would have a clue as to how to change one.
I appreciate technology. It lets me be sarcastic to so many more people in such a short time.
And it took you milliseconds to have fun with a complete stranger 100's (if not 1,000's) of miles away! The past was not all that it was cracked up to be.
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