My daughter went bowling at a friend’s birthday party, and the machine at the lane kept score. I can keep score in bowling; I learned when I bowled in a league when I was 9. A spare (/) counts 10 plus the next ball, a strike (X) 10 plus the next two balls, which is why one likes to string marks (X and /) together. (A Dutch 200 is a game with alternating strikes and spares.) And sometimes the machine is wrong. It counts pins that are down and vice versa, but I can’t override it, and I hate that.
When I started my current job in 1992, one of my jobs was to operate the electronic bulletin board system. Though I had never heard of such a thing, I eventually became proficient at it, just as it became mostly defunct.
I can still figure out square root with pencil and paper; my calculator can do it in a second or two.
What skills do you have that, because of change in technology, have become obsolete?
I taught handwriting, indeed I am always complemented on my own but must admit I do not do a great deal nowadays, preferring to use “word” instead. When I do mundane writing tasks however, be it a note or shopping list I use my best handwriting! Strange!
Well, I started working as a secretary back in the mid 1970s (now in early retirement since 2004), so I have seen some changes in technology. In my first jobs I used stenography in three languages (Swedish, English, German). I have not kept it up. In later jobs dictation tapes were used. I think I could still remember and use stenography in Swedish but since I now have problems holding a pen for long, I don’t. (I also don’t quite trust that I’ll be able to interpret my own stenography scribbles when some time has passed.) In one of my first workplaces we still used stencil machines to produce multiple copies (no Xerox machine), so typed on special kinds of sheets for that, and could handle that machine (rather messy with the ink…) We also used telex machines to communicate with “the world”. And I learned to operate a manual telephone switchboard.
I worked on computers when an IBM computer was the size of the first floor of my house, it gave off a lot of heat, so it had to have its own AC. I also worked a punch card reader!
Can’t think of any skills! Maybe I don’t have any;o)
Thanks for your visit and nice comment in my blog,Roger;o)
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Have a beautiful weekend****
Seems to me those skills you mentioned would be perfect in a post-apocalyptic world where the now longer have computers or calculators—but still go bowling (it could happen…). I approached your question from a slightly different angle on my blog (but, sadly, without post-apocalyptic bowling).
I can: read a map, use a card catalog, hand write a thank you note, change the channel ON the TV, cook without a microwave, rotary dial a phone, add/subtract/multiply/divide without a calculator, play solitaire with a deck of cards…OMG I’m old! 😀