The sunset of skillsets

Hearing Voices

By Greg Adams, Auckland | Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Skills come and go. Something that may be vital one day, may not be so important another.

Just think about it. Twenty-five thousand years ago, being able to download an app, write HTML code or open a juice carton without spilling any of the contents down the front of your trousers, wouldn’t have been much use when hunting woolly mammoth. Making spears and tracking prey would likely have been more prized accomplishments.

As time moved on, we didn't need to know how to skin a possum, say, or to determine what mushrooms are safe to eat. For the majority of us, the knowledge of more modern day activities has taken precedence. Finding the paper blockage in the office photocopier and setting up a home wireless network would be more useful.

Many of these ‘old’ skills haven’t necessarily been forgotten. People still ride horses, make home-brew and put ships in bottles. My dad would always be polishing shoes — his shoes, my shoes, my brother’s shoes, probably half the street’s shoes. I don’t think I polished a pair of shoes from the age of about 11 — until my own son got his first pair of shoes for school. I must admit I became all nostalgic about the whole process. I ‘rediscovered’ the art and even polish my own now. Properly, with cloth, brushes and real polish, not the sticky crap that comes out of a plastic tube and you rub on with the spongy bit on the top. I am quite proud of myself for keeping up the tradition.

Nevertheless, there are dying arts and some abilities that are being lost forever. The Egyptians supposedly were able to harden copper and bronze, something we can’t do today. It has been said most of us have lost the ability to fix things. We probably could if we had to. It is just that we don’t. Everything is disposable or it is just easier to pay someone else to fix it. Of course, for teenage boys, knowing how to purchase and subsequently hide pornographic magazines has truly become a lost art with the arrival of the internet.

Ironically, many recently-learned skills seem most at risk. How many people can remember how to use a command line interface for a computer? Most of us would have no idea what to do with a plain screen with nothing more than a blinking cursor.

I used to spend hours mixing music tapes. I would record stuff off the radio and dub endless amounts of compilations. Try explaining that peculiar activity to a member of the iTunes nation.

My son recently turned seven. I hope that he can master all the skills he is going to need to survive and prosper in life.

The truth is, when it comes to today’s tech, he’s pretty switched on. If anything, he is waiting for the technology around the house to catch up with his skills and expectations. He wants touchscreens and Kinect-esque responsiveness wherever he looks. He expects his favourite television shows recorded on the hard-drive and to see a photo the instant it has been taken. That is great, but a little bit of me also hopes that he experiences some of the things I have learned and taken for granted over the years.

So, I had to smile when he was stumped the other day. His younger sister had been given a toy telephone — you know the ones with an old-fashioned dial — he didn’t know how it worked. I had to show him. He has only ever used a phone with push-buttons.