Obsolescence of tools & skills

Before the advent of digitisation, one of the first skills taught to a child was reading a circular clock with moving hands to denote the hours & minutes. Digital watches & clocks read out the time in numerals, making the above skill redundant.

Like the stethoscope of a doctor, the engineer's insignia of his profession used to be the "slide rule", which can be considered a mechanical analog computer. Created by William Oughtred, it used the principle of logarithms to multiply, divide & obtain trigonometric functions. With the advent of the pocket calculator, the slide rule followed the dodo in the path of extinction.

Fine handwriting, long considered a talent, is also on the way out with the coming of keyboards even in smartphones. But as Steve Jobs famously remarked, if he had not taken a course in Calligraphy, the beautiful typefaces on his Apple products would not exist.

Reading skills are also going south, as evinced by extreme reluctance to read. Though Graphic novels are an art form in their own right, they destroy the reader's right to imagination & prevent the formation of an individual mental theatre of one's own.

Except for a dedicated use for exercise, walking as a part of daily life to fetch & carry daily necessities or visit people within walking distance, has disappeared. The moment a person comes out of his/her house, it has become mandatory for the vehicle also to be taken out.

If this trend continues, the human race may end up fully depending on technology to carry out its daily life like Stephen Hawking, who suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was compelled to do.