Comment on Lemmy is a tech literate echo chamber
Rawrosaurus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day agoI’m not entirely sure that is “normal” though. We don’t have to go back very far to reach a point where people would be making their own tools for their craft. I think this modern day is pretty abnormal in the grand scheme about not knowing how the things used actually work or is put together.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
do you know the proportion of people making those tools? Like how many people could make tools, and work a technically skilled trade, compared to those who didn’t. Also, if you have a very narrow set of things you need to make, it doesn’t really do a whole lot more inherently. To see this before computers computers, just look at cars. Once they became mainstream you started to see that most people had no clue how they worked, and no interest in knowing.
My grandmother’s generation of my family were largely farmers. Like mostly born between 1910 and 1923. They knew how to make, and fix, tools, fences, etc. However, once they got away from this specific knowledge, that they grew up with, they were completely disinterested, and were suspicious of people who had broader knowledge sets. They also thought learning from reading was pointless, as they never were interested in reading, so they developed their reading skills to be just enough to get by, and became intensely frustrated when they ran into an issue, on the farm, they hadn’t before, and needed to read the manual for whatever piece of equipment it was. They also did this thing, where they would be doing something, like repairing/installing/expanding their irrigation system, but they didn’t have a fundamental understanding of why it worked. Just that you did these things, in this way, and it would work. They also didn’t care why it worked, just that it did.