Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

[vt]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...professor.html

[don]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Or make change. My purchases came to $15.86 yesterday. I could use a $10 so I gave the checker a $20, a $5 and a $1. Without the digital register she was dead in the water. All too typical. (Another time at a chain restaurant the register wasn't making math transactions, leaving the checker in tears over a simple transaction.)

[GRG55]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Or make change. My purchases came to $15.86 yesterday. I could use a $10 so I gave the checker a $20, a $5 and a $1. Without the digital register she was dead in the water. All too typical. (Another time at a chain restaurant the register wasn't making math transactions, leaving the checker in tears over a simple transaction.)

Your first "mistake" was using cash instead of plastic (or bitcoin?) for the transaction. People like you (and me) are slowing down "progress".

It could be worse don. Not long ago I was shopping at a major chain grocery store and had to explain to the check-out clerk that "purple thing" was an eggplant before she could ring it in. Apparently anything that is not a common pizza topping is an unknown to this generation.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

I am forever grateful for the harsh discipline and rigid academic rigor I was on the receiving end of in catholic school as a kid.

Running basic math in my head is something I will always be grateful for, although it wasn't fun at the time.

My oldest is getting it, and my youngest is a work in progress...albeit in a kinder/gentler positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement way.

-----

As far as displays of ingenuity or being handy, I think it's not just Gen Y/Gen Z...but goes back to Gen X as well.

I wasn't allowed to drive a car/motorbike until I could change oils/filters, change brakepads, clean points on a distributor cap, adjust timing, etc.

Very few people do this anymore for a few reasons:

*cost of having your oil/filter changed can be cheaper than buying the raw materials yourself at some quick lube locations. So not just convenience, but cost as well.

*new autos/motorcycles today are far more likely to be built around closed systems where it's difficult to impossible to conduct appropriate servicing of your vehicle since new vehicle franchise systems derive 1/3+ of their bottom line profit from recurring service work.

-----

Consumer electronic prices are so cheap and skilled labour/parts prices are so high it seems largely uneconomic to repair most consumer electronics and appliances today.

Plus there's a growing trend of manufacturing consumer goods in such a way that it's literally impossible to repair many of them.

Although it does seem to be a growing trend of replacing broken smart phone screens.

-----

One of the most troubling personal examples I can offer is one of our neighbors.

My wife is friendly with a female neighbor(due to kids attending the same school).

One early morning we receive a phone call from her requesting if I could change the flat tire on her husband's car.

I shot around and offered to show him how to change the tire himself. He wasn't interested and made excuses why he couldn't(bad back and since he "works in IT" he can't risk injury to his hands). I was gobsmacked. I changed the tire for him, but suggested he at least watch closely since if it happens again his wife would need to call someone else to help him out and he said it was unlikely that he would ever get a flat tire again.

Welcome to the ultra efficient Brave New World of outsourced problem solving for everything where it doesn't make much financial/cultural sense to develop personal ingenuity/innovation in solving the problem yourself.

[EJ]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

I am forever grateful for the harsh discipline and rigid academic rigor I was on the receiving end of in catholic school as a kid.

Running basic math in my head is something I will always be grateful for, although it wasn't fun at the time.

My oldest is getting it, and my youngest is a work in progress...albeit in a kinder/gentler positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement way.

-----

As far as displays of ingenuity or being handy, I think it's not just Gen Y/Gen Z...but goes back to Gen X as well.

I wasn't allowed to drive a car/motorbike until I could change oils/filters, change brakepads, clean points on a distributor cap, adjust timing, etc.

Very few people do this anymore for a few reasons:

*cost of having your oil/filter changed can be cheaper than buying the raw materials yourself at some quick lube locations. So not just convenience, but cost as well.

*new autos/motorcycles today are far more likely to be built around closed systems where it's difficult to impossible to conduct appropriate servicing of your vehicle since new vehicle franchise systems derive 1/3+ of their bottom line profit from recurring service work.

-----

Consumer electronic prices are so cheap and skilled labour/parts prices are so high it seems largely uneconomic to repair most consumer electronics and appliances today.

Plus there's a growing trend of manufacturing consumer goods in such a way that it's literally impossible to repair many of them.

Although it does seem to be a growing trend of replacing broken smart phone screens.

-----

One of the most troubling personal examples I can offer is one of our neighbors.

My wife is friendly with a female neighbor(due to kids attending the same school).

One early morning we receive a phone call from her requesting if I could change the flat tire on her husband's car.

I shot around and offered to show him how to change the tire himself. He wasn't interested and made excuses why he couldn't(bad back and since he "works in IT" he can't risk injury to his hands). I was gobsmacked. I changed the tire for him, but suggested he at least watch closely since if it happens again his wife would need to call someone else to help him out and he said it was unlikely that he would ever get a flat tire again.

Welcome to the ultra efficient Brave New World of outsourced problem solving for everything where it doesn't make much financial/cultural sense to develop personal ingenuity/innovation in solving the problem yourself.

Can't resist chiming on to this thread on this cloudy Sunday afternoon.

Story #1: The wife is driving me and friends into the city from the suburbs for an important daytime appointment at 80MPH+ cruising speed, standard in these parts.

Suddenly the low tire pressure warning light goes on.

"Pull over," I tell her.

"Why?" she asks.

"Shouldn't happen while your driving. You have a damaged tire that's suddenly lost pressure. Pull over quickly," I repeat.

"But the light goes on when I start the car sometimes..."

"Bad while you're driving. Please pull over NOW," I say, interrupting.

Then BANG! FWUPPA FWUPPA FWUPPA as the right passenger tire explodes and disintegrates.

"TOO LATE!" I yell over the FWUPPA sound. "DO NOT TOUCH THE BRAKES! COAST TO THE SHOULDER!"

She does.

Glum faces reveal the first thought on everyone's mind: We're screwed. How are we ever going to make the appointment?

Before a group discussion of options starts, I get out and see a beautifully engineered low profile tire now a giant smoking rubber band wrapped around a polished aluminum wheel, the air pressure sensor/transmitter now visible inside the rim and the rest of the tire glued to the inside of the rim.

As my wife and friends watch from the trunk I get out the jack that I've never seen before, find the reinforced front jack point, and crank the front of the car partly but not fully off the ground, explaining to my audience that this is so I can step on the tire iron to loosen the lugs and get a good turn without hitting the ground or causing the front wheel to turn -- an unnecessary step for front-wheel-drive cars, by the way.

I loosen the five lug nuts then jack the car up farther so I can get a full turn of the tire iron without touching the ground. After removing the lug nuts I pull off the wheel and set it into the rear trunk to see if there's enough room for it and the giant smoking rubber band. After determining otherwise I throw the band over the guard rail to join the other automobile detritus already there.

Sorry Mother Nature, I say to no one in particular. I'll make it up to you later.

I shove the small spare onto the wheel and put the lug nuts back on hand-tight, lower the jack until the wheel is touching the road and reverse the previous using the road friction to prevent the wheel from turning while I stand on the tire iron to tighten the lug nuts. Then I lower the car all the way, put the jack away in the trunk with the wheel and ruined tire unit.

We all get back into the car and drive away into the city.

After a few miles when it is clear that we're going to make the appointment, one of our friends says, "You did that in under five minutes?"

"We had to do all car repairs ourselves as teens," I explained. "That was the deal. Ever try tuning a rotary engine Mazda RX3 with three sets of points? That was rough. That motor ran so hot it turned WD40 into India ink in 3000 miles."

Se quedaron en silencio. Ellos no entendían. Pero algunos de ustedes entenderán.

[vt]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Entendido

[don]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

My first "good car" was a Volkswagen Bug. Have to brake hard, it was a given I'd be adjusting the shoes that weekend. Valve adjustment? Like walking the dog. It was accessible. Two guys could and did lift the engine out of its compartment when I installed a big bore kit for more HP. That didn't stop two big rigs from playing ping pong with me on a trip through the Rockies until I could make my get away.

[EJ]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Entendido

Excellent. For everyone else: It was my meeting. My role was as the money. Socially in certain societies the money doesn't know how to fix a tire. But this money can and quickly and as a result we made the meeting and the result was positive for all parties. Practically speaking if there was a quicker way to solve the problem I'd insist that that path be taken. But by virtue of the fact of my ability to fix the tire at that moment certain members of our party questioned my role as the money.

There are certain things you are not supposed to know how to do in a class structured society as ours has become.

[EJ]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

My first "good car" was a Volkswagen Bug. Have to brake hard, it was a given I'd be adjusting the shoes that weekend. Valve adjustment? Like walking the dog. It was accessible. Two guys could and did lift the engine out of its compartment when I installed a big bore kit for more HP. That didn't stop two big rigs from playing ping pong with me on a trip through the Rockies until I could make my get away.

What a bag of bolts and screws that thing was. I tried to help my friend Jesse with his VW bug valve work in our dirt driveway in Amherst. I still have the spacers, memorabilia from those days. To adjust the fan belt you put spacers in the pulley, as I recall.

Ed crashed my Datsun 510 with the new battery while I was away in California. After establishing that Ed was ok it was the loss of the battery that I lamented as it was worth more than the car. The stock carburetor never worked and if you removed it and carelessly turned it upside down so that the float flopped over the thing was done for.

I kept a Weber in the trunk as a spare just in case.

The experience of changing a dead carburetor in 15 degrees cold with the gasoline evaporating off my bare hands in the middle of nowhere on the way to Ware, MA as I delivered the paper to the printer on deadline at 2AM is hard to forget.

Kids these days.

[jpatter666]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

There are certain things you are not supposed to know how to do in a class structured society as ours has become.

Very insightful -- having grown up on a farm I learned to do all sorts of different things. Sometimes commenting on those times (or in cases actually applying the knowledge) got me looks where I wondered if I'd sprouted horns and a tail.

You're absolutely right, in some quarters knowledge of how to actually do things [i.e. requiring manual labor] is considered déclassé [showing off my high-falutin education here :-)]
.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Excellent. For everyone else: It was my meeting. My role was as the money. Socially in certain societies the money doesn't know how to fix a tire. But this money can and quickly and as a result we made the meeting and the result was positive for all parties. Practically speaking if there was a quicker way to solve the problem I'd insist that that path be taken. But by virtue of the fact of my ability to fix the tire at that moment certain members of our party questioned my role as the money.

There are certain things you are not supposed to know how to do in a class structured society as ours has become.

There's a TV commercial floating around Asia, I think it's HSBC perhaps?

It's a banking/finance type commercial I've only ever seen when traveling through Asia the last couple of years on Emirates flights and in hotel room news channels.

It shows a fit, middle aged Asian changing a tire on a car himself on the side of the road.

He places the blown tire and jack in the trunk and his driver hands him his jacket as he climbs into the back seat, obviously a very successful/wealthy/powerful individual as he smiles while being driven down the road.

The voice over alludes to real success comes only after having spent plenty of time in the trenches getting your hands dirty, and that real leaders are quick to roll their sleeves up and revisit the trenches so they don't forget where they came from, leading from the front, etc.

At least that's my take on it.

It's a fantastic commercial, especially one that is targeting fairly rigid cultural class hierarchies, although it seems to focus on entrepreneurs who probably have the greatest class mobility.

About the only banking commercial I could ever relate to.

Unfortunately, my Google-fu is weak today.

[Adeptus]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

There are certain things you are not supposed to know how to do in a class structured society as ours has become.

Here in the Wet Coast of Canada (pun implied), it seems every guy (and even some women) knows how to either fix cars or repair anything in a house, and in many cases even make major modifications to houses. Having grown up in Western Europe, labour jobs were for those without education and thus such labour (electricians, plumber, construction types, mechanics etc) were plentiful and cheaply available - though mostly not certified. Then I moved to Canada. Here, in my mid twenties, I learned how to change a car tire for the first time in my life at 2AM on the highway thanks to a kind young teen girl that stopped to see if everything was ok, as I had no idea what I was doing (I was reading car manual instructions with a flashlight on how to use a jack). Today I can change a car tire, car battery and that's about it. Next week I have to figure out how to change my windshield wiper blades. I have new ones sitting in the trunk for 2 weeks. When I bought them, I figured it was just "plug and play" , but turns out I have to read instructions and possibly use a screw driver. Don't worry I'm not a complete idiot. I managed to assemble my first BBQ this summer (though I have to fix the grease leak), and learned how to do basic BBQ'ing from a few online videos. My expertise is fixing computers, servers, designing multi-million user networks and troubleshooting plenty of complex software issues. Around the house though, my IQ is definitely below 100. If it were not for HOW-TO youtube videos, I'd be lost.

Soon, with multi-gigabit 5G wireless networks, my son will one day be able to youtube a tire changing 3D video at 2AM through the holographic projection from his iwatch. The average 1st world'er today has way more gadgets than 30 years ago and just wait until the IoT (Internet of Things) becomes mainstream. With 50 Billion devices about to be interconnected globally, this is only the beginning. I'm ready for the Internet of Things - I understand the underlying foundation of how all that stuff will work, do you? Who you gonna call when your Smart Fridge isn't properly negotiating energy savings with your hydro company or auto-purchasing the right types and quantities of groceries from the most cost efficient local grocery store that is aware of your food allergies, guest entertainment menus and calendar (and your vacation calendar too), or properly configured to deduct the funds auto-magically from the right bank acct... er I mean bitcoin wallet? Some old skills will continue to be useful for decades, others not so much. The best skill to have is how to teach yourself to do new things, else you will be a useless dinosaur in a mere 10-20 years.

[GRG55]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

Excellent. For everyone else: It was my meeting. My role was as the money. Socially in certain societies the money doesn't know how to fix a tire. But this money can and quickly and as a result we made the meeting and the result was positive for all parties. Practically speaking if there was a quicker way to solve the problem I'd insist that that path be taken. But by virtue of the fact of my ability to fix the tire at that moment certain members of our party questioned my role as the money.

There are certain things you are not supposed to know how to do in a class structured society as ours has become.

Despite the introduction of "The 1%", fortunately we Americans and Canadians are still in the adolescent stage of creating a stratified class society.

Try out the First Class section of one of the Arab Gulf air carriers such as Etihad. Those airplanes are flying microcosms of their sponsoring nation-state societies. Imported Asian labor nannies in the back, expat oil industry workers in Business, sheikhs (and sometime's their hunting falcons) up front. The Qatar Air first class lounge at its home airport in Doha is worthy of a visit, even if just once for the over-the-top experience and stories to tell about it back home. So is the so called "7-Star" Burj Al Arab hotel at Jumeirah Beach, Dubai. Too much fun!

Two of my favourite class-based stories from that region:
The first Saturday after I took delivery of my new Land Cruiser I backed it out on the driveway, filled a bucket with soap & water and used the gardener's hose to carefully wash off a few days of accumulated Middle East dust. A bit later that day two of my more worldly and experienced British expat neighbours came to visit to gently explain to me it was absolutely socially unacceptable for someone in my position to be seen washing my own car (or doing any other similar menial tasks). I was informed such unseemly displays of physical labour would be interpreted in that region as an indication I didn't carry sufficient status to afford to pay someone to do such things for me. Unfortunately I earned the everlasting enmity of my two neighbours when I deliberately offered my gardener double the pitiful going monthly rate to have him wash my Cruiser every morning. Can you imagine the uproar if I had dared to change a flat tire


Another faux pas shortly after arriving there was to wedge open the door to my temporary office at the headquarter building of the national gas company that was our joint-venture partner. That elicited an almost immediate visit from the manager of administration who carefully tried to explain to me that although the company had an official, written "open-door" policy it was not at all in any way appropriate for any executive to actually have their office door deliberately open. Ever.

History, ritual, appearance and symbolism. Important to them in ways the majority of Americans and Canadians, with our egalitarian upbringing, cannot comprehend. As I said at the beginning of this post, we North Americans have barely started on this class thing.

[santafe2]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...professor.html

While it may be a bit uncomfortable to admit, this thread should be called "Today's young men can no longer fix gadgets". Women have never been gadget fixers. As we become a less guy centered culture, the things guys do well become less important. I suspect we 'fixers' are a dying breed. I love motor vehicle gadgets and I love to fix them. I don't have to own these fixable gadgets, I can own new ones that other people fix but I use my hard earned money to buy these gadgets so I can fix them myself. We are flailing against Gutenberg. Fixing things is a luxury of the rich and a burden of the poor.

[don]

Re: Today's Young Can No Longer Fix Gadgets

What a bag of bolts and screws that thing was.

The experience of changing a dead carburetor in 15 degrees cold with the gasoline evaporating off my bare hands in the middle of nowhere on the way to Ware, MA as I delivered the paper to the printer on deadline at 2AM is hard to forget.

A friend of mine, in his early Bug, drove over the Sierras. When the defroster quit he had to drive with the window down and the ice scraper in his left hand, providing tunnel vision through the windshield. He alternated scraping and 'warming', a relative term in early Bugs, his arm inside the car.