Ask Lemmy

Social skills. Everyone, especially the young, seem more inward focused than ever.

Reading card files in libraries.

Servicing and repairing many things in the house, but devices were far more easily diagnosed and repairable due to not being computerized. Really the “it’s broke and I gotta fix it” ability across age groups has really dried up. Doesn’t matter if it’s changing a tire on a car, or a kid having to fix a punctured tube on a bike tire to get to their friend’s house. They don’t ride anywhere for that matter. Changing brake pads. Changing the air filter in the home HVAC. People don’t do this stuff anymore.

Being bored.

Reading newspapers, books, magazines, etc. I don’t think people read as much anymore.

Hobbies. I think they’ve kinda died off, at least the physical ones. Model planes, trains, building stuff in your garage, cars, etc. Some of it’s been priced out of range or has gotten too technological for some, like cars, but manually creating something as a pastime has really disappeared.

Remembering a lot of phone numbers in your head.

I’m sure I’ll think of more, but it’s been a while since I was a kid and thought about pre-modern tech society.

Meeting up with people, no phone. You arrange a place and a time, and you show up, if the other person isn't there... You wait.

It was super important not to leave people hanging

There were a lot of older ladies sewing when I was growing up. I think nowadays we just throw clothing away and buy new stuff. At least until lately when there was a large middle-class. Typewriter repair was a thing in my town as well.

Chopping wood, managing a fire.

In the 80s we had to light a wood-fire hot water system. Chopping wood and managing the fire was one of our chores as kids. We had a wood stove in the kitchen too but never cooked with that because we had a gas oven as well.

Critical thinking.

Definitely more than 50 years ago, but this little piece of Americana is interesting

Families often had small nail-manufacturing setups in their homes; during bad weather and at night, the entire family might work at making nails for their own use and for barter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: "In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail maker."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(fastener)#History/

Idling away the time, being bored.

Photo retouching as a physical trade. Colour photography and instant development killed the art of retouching black and white photos almost from one day to the next, because nobody could retouch colour photos and nobody wanted to pay for retouching black and white photos anymore, when Polaroids were easy to reshoot. My grandparents did it, but had to close the shop in the 1980s. I still have a few of their pens, but most of it ended up in a museum.

50 years ago was in the 1970s. I actually think more skills were lost just in the 20 years prior to that than after. This is due to mass production and plastic, which created the consumer products since the 1960s. Prior to that, you'd actually consider all products (except food) to be a purchase for life.

Writing thank you cards and letters.

Cursive writing

Navigating a paper map.

You want to drive to a suburb of a big city. You have an address. The internet doesn't exist.

How do you get there? Well. You use a map. Almost every glove box would have a local and state map, if not a full map book like a Thomas brothers.