Is "digital entitlement" a thing?

[marshwiggle]

All through history, children growing up in wealthy homes never saw the need to learn how to do many tasks because there were always servants to do that. I think there is a growing segment of young people who have a similar sense of entitlement, assuming there will always be digital "servants" to do things for them.
Some things young people don't see the need to learn to do:

• Remember things
• Calculate things
• Schedule things, and plan for contingencies, (since instant communication allows constant adaptation in real time)

(Interesting note: Lots of stories in the news lately about how "self-driving" cars are being abandoned, because it's way harder than people thought. Digital servants won't be doing everything in the forseeable future.)


Agree or disagree?

[jerseyjay]

Isn't there a section in Plato's Republic decrying literacy since people will no longer have to remember anything if they can just write it down?

I have found that I remember phone numbers much less now than in the past. I can, for example, remember the phone number of my childhood home or the land lines of old friends, but I do know my parents' current cell phone numbers or my friends current cell phone numbers.

[clean]

In my early professional career, I taught at a for profit college that taught electronics.  One of the faculty was just as fast with a slide rule as I was with a calculator.  There are a lot of things that one can do with logarithms.  However, we are not really taught logarithms anymore, much less how to use a slide rule.
So some tools are replaced with other tools. 

As for phone numbers, I agree. I remember my childhood phone number and I remember the rotary dial phone that my parents stood me at to dial it over and again so that I could remember it!
I remember some of the often called numbers of my coworkers 30 years ago, not because of the number, but the pattern of the 10 key pad.

HOwever, I do not know My Bride's phone number!!  (I know the pattern of the last 4 but I never can seem to remember the 3 digit extension!).  Should I ever have a problem with my phone, I will be in big trouble!   

[Puget]

Assuming there will always be "tradespeople" to do things for them, some young people don't see the need to learn to:
Make their own soap
Tan their own leather
Thatch their own roof

--Someone in the Middle Ages, probably.

[marshwiggle]

Ever see someone pull out a phone to divide a number by 10? Or multiply a number by 10? Should that really be necessary?

ETA: I remember a few years ago hearing high school students who didn't think learning to drive was necessary, since self-driving cars would soon be here and make it unnecessary. (Hence my pointing out the news on that above.)

[apl68]

I'm not so much concerned with the way people are coming to lean on phones as tools, though I avoid relying on them so much myself.  My concern is with the way the tools seem to be turning into so many peoples' masters.

[poiuy]

Isn't there a section in Plato's Republic decrying literacy since people will no longer have to remember anything if they can just write it down?

I have found that I remember phone numbers much less now than in the past. I can, for example, remember the phone number of my childhood home or the land lines of old friends, but I do know my parents' current cell phone numbers or my friends current cell phone numbers.

Plato was ahead of his time. 

There is a report by Dalrymple https://www.scaruffi.com/phi/dalrymple.pdf (see page 7 of 9) on how a traditional bard community in Northwest India used to have to memorize thousands-of-lines-long historical poems to recite at events, but once they started learning to write them down so as to not lose the information, their capacity or drive to recall these from memory diminished.

And the study of London cabbies, whose brains actually altered in structure (increased hippocampus size) after their intensive route memorization called 'the knowledge' https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/
If the cabbies ever abandon this practice and turn to GPS, this brain structure may change back?

[ergative]

My concern is with the way the tools seem to be turning into so many peoples' masters.

Charles Stross has described one's phone as a centralized point of failure in modern life. That characterization really stuck with me. I've somehow managed to get along with a dumbphone hitherto, and all the various inconveniences associated with that have led me to I been consider getting a smartphone (i.e., a 'phone'). But I keep hesitating, because I don't want my life to have such a centralized point of failure. When I mislaid my old dumbphone, it was a really simple matter to cancel the plan on the old one and pay $10 or so to get a new hunk of metal with a new plan, but the website interface was built to be (in my case) so unnecessarily soothing and reassuring when I reported my phone missing, because they were expecting the average user to be facing a major catastrophe if they lost their phone.

[Puget]

My concern is with the way the tools seem to be turning into so many peoples' masters.

Charles Stross has described one's phone as a centralized point of failure in modern life. That characterization really stuck with me. I've somehow managed to get along with a dumbphone hitherto, and all the various inconveniences associated with that have led me to I been consider getting a smartphone (i.e., a 'phone'). But I keep hesitating, because I don't want my life to have such a centralized point of failure. When I mislaid my old dumbphone, it was a really simple matter to cancel the plan on the old one and pay $10 or so to get a new hunk of metal with a new plan, but the website interface was built to be (in my case) so unnecessarily soothing and reassuring when I reported my phone missing, because they were expecting the average user to be facing a major catastrophe if they lost their phone.

Not really, at least with an iPhone. Everything is backed up to the cloud-- it is pretty simple and quick to restore everything to a new phone, no different from when you upgrade your phone. So provided you are in an area with outlets of your phone carrier around, it is a very temporary problem. And in the meantime you can access everything on your phone from your laptop, or any other device you can sign into your iCloud account from.

[dismalist]

Isn't there a section in Plato's Republic decrying literacy since people will no longer have to remember anything if they can just write it down?

I have found that I remember phone numbers much less now than in the past. I can, for example, remember the phone number of my childhood home or the land lines of old friends, but I do know my parents' current cell phone numbers or my friends current cell phone numbers.

Plato was ahead of his time. 

There is a report by Dalrymple https://www.scaruffi.com/phi/dalrymple.pdf (see page 7 of 9) on how a traditional bard community in Northwest India used to have to memorize thousands-of-lines-long historical poems to recite at events, but once they started learning to write them down so as to not lose the information, their capacity or drive to recall these from memory diminished.

And the study of London cabbies, whose brains actually altered in structure (increased hippocampus size) after their intensive route memorization called 'the knowledge' https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/
If the cabbies ever abandon this practice and turn to GPS, this brain structure may change back?

London cabbies may well use GPS, but "the knowledge" is statutory. It works as an exclusion device which restricts the number of cabbies, raising prices and cabbies' incomes. [The difference to the medallion method of restriction, as in NYC, is that the artificial scarcity rents accrue to the cabbie, not the owner of the medallion.]

I'm pleased to hear that at least some efforts to form cartels lead to brain changes! Maybe we can now find and perhaps prosecute people who wish to engage in conspiracies in restraint of trade by checking out their brain structure! :-)

[Juvenal]

I can still use my slide rule (students have no idea what it is), but the belt holster strap (remember the slide rule banging on your hip on the way to chem/physics?) has decayed.  Well, I can still remember the obvious scales and sliding the cursor, but no one ever asked me to join the Apollo program.

In my early professional career, I taught at a for profit college that taught electronics.  One of the faculty was just as fast with a slide rule as I was with a calculator.  There are a lot of things that one can do with logarithms.  However, we are not really taught logarithms anymore, much less how to use a slide rule.
So some tools are replaced with other tools. 

As for phone numbers, I agree. I remember my childhood phone number and I remember the rotary dial phone that my parents stood me at to dial it over and again so that I could remember it!
I remember some of the often called numbers of my coworkers 30 years ago, not because of the number, but the pattern of the 10 key pad.

HOwever, I do not know My Bride's phone number!!  (I know the pattern of the last 4 but I never can seem to remember the 3 digit extension!).  Should I ever have a problem with my phone, I will be in big trouble!

[marshwiggle]

I can still use my slide rule (students have no idea what it is), but the belt holster strap (remember the slide rule banging on your hip on the way to chem/physics?) has decayed.  Well, I can still remember the obvious scales and sliding the cursor, but no one ever asked me to join the Apollo program.

But do you have a circular slide rule like me? Super cool.

[Juvenal]

I can still use my slide rule (students have no idea what it is), but the belt holster strap (remember the slide rule banging on your hip on the way to chem/physics?) has decayed.  Well, I can still remember the obvious scales and sliding the cursor, but no one ever asked me to join the Apollo program.

But do you have a circular slide rule like me? Super cool.

Yes, and I lost it, to my regret.  Cool, it was!

[dismalist]

Assuming there will always be "tradespeople" to do things for them, some young people don't see the need to learn to:
Make their own soap
Tan their own leather
Thatch their own roof

--Someone in the Middle Ages, probably.

Absolutely! Modcons make us more efficient. That's why we use them and are willing to pay for them.

It makes me sad that the new technologies make using old skills, such as using a slide rule, knowing how to divide by 10, or writing in complete sentences, obsolete. Those of us who mastered these technologies will share the fate of knowing how to drive a horse-and-buggy, still used by aficionados, but no one else.

So, I have a cell phone, but hardly use it. A cell phone is like a toilet: You want to have one for its convenience, but not sit on all day.

[apl68]

So, I have a cell phone, but hardly use it. A cell phone is like a toilet: You want to have one for its convenience, but not sit on all day.

That's a...pungent observation.  It pretty much sums up how I think of cell use as well.