LogFAQs > #972044535

chelle posted...

It always happens. Once the technology is established and ubiquitous, there isn't as much of a reason to need to know how to do what came before it.

It's like how car culture was a huge thing and most young people growing up knew how to work on a car. Now most people can't even change their own oil.

Even years ago the average person could use a computer, but most people didn't really know how to do anything with the hardware. That was limited more to people who started using computers when you needed to be able to build them yourself, or later the more hardcore gamers and tech-heads who wanted the extra degree of control. But every year that passes it becomes more and more of a lost skill except for specialists.

Of course, you can even go back farther than that. How many people today know how to hunt, gather, or farm to keep themselves alive without a grocery store? Skills that were literally basic-level and required to simply stay alive are now mostly obsolete and pointless for the average person. Most of us can't build houses, carve furniture, craft tools, or even start a fire. We're helpless little bags of meat, and we'd be fucked if we lost most of our existing infrastructure.



Dikitain posted...

According to AARP, I need to stop shoveling my driveway in 5 years and hire someone to do it

According to AARP I should have stopped shoveling my driveway a year ago.

As for hiring someone else to do it, the problem with "Id say youre probably better off to hire a neighborhood kid to do your driveway" is that it implies kids today actually want to do anything resembling work. Fuckers are lazy.

The era of the kid who grifts and mows lawns to make extra money died decades ago. Now you're mostly stuck just overpaying a professional service for maintenance, which is why so many people just say "screw it" and do it themselves regardless.



Dikitain posted...

Ignoring the fact that my grandfather didn't stop until he was in his 90's, and my 69 year old father who had quadruple bypass last year still does it.

Well it does say even in that article that age alone isn't the only consideration, and that it's more a case that older people tend to be more out of shape, and thus the bursts of occasional intense activity in a mostly sedentary life are what dramatically increase your odds of heart attack.

There's also the fact that "increased risk" doesn't mean "automatically going to happen". So even someone older could be completely fine shoveling their driveway for years, right up until they suddenly aren't.

But yeah, if you stay in relatively good shape or remain active or otherwise just minimize the basic risks of heart disease you'd probably be fine shoveling all you want. I mean, there are dudes in their 60s who go rock climbing and running marathons and stuff who are in better cardio shape than I was at 40 - they're probably good.