Thread | Brutkey

One TikTok that amused me this weekend: a guy was making some point about how AI deskills people, and compares it to calculators. He makes a statement like "are kids today worse at math [arithmetic] compared to kids from 20, 30, 40 years ago? Yes, because they have calculators now".

There were cheap consumer calculators 40 years ago my young dude. Presumably even earlier than that; I still have my Little Professor toy calculator (1976) though it quizzes you in arithmetic rather than solve anything.

My grandparents had a TV in 1953. My first school had a computer lab in 1983. Comsumer electronics didn't jump into existence in the 2000s, they just got blander.

(I don't even remember if this guy's argument about AI even held up, I got distracted by his being wrong on this one point.)

(Also I have always been terrible at arithmetic even though I did 2 years of calculus and various algebras and whatever in uni.)

That Old Guy with the Beard
@IanAMartin@mstdn.ca

@giflian@techhub.social Calculator watches were A Real Thing in like the very early 1980s. Electronic Adding Machines in the very early 1970s.

That Old Guy with the Beard
@IanAMartin@mstdn.ca

@giflian@techhub.social Kraftwerk released the album Computer World (aka «Computerwelt») in 1981, which included the track ‘Pocket Calculator” (aka ‘Taschenrechner’), and they’d been around for a fair few years by that point, with all sorts of multiplication and square root and other functions.

Giflian
@giflian@techhub.social

@IanAMartin@mstdn.ca Since I only came to enjoy Kraftwerk decades later, I sort of see them as living outside of time.

Crap, it’s too late to listen to Kraftwerk if I want to sleep.

That Old Guy with the Beard
@IanAMartin@mstdn.ca

@giflian@techhub.social However, you knew all that.

I am simply providing the information your card might have, if they were gifted with the voice of angels such as myself.

You’re welcome.