When the push button was new, people were freaked

Is that true? I feel like the drumbeat I constantly have heard for the last 10 years is that the trades pay really well and are easier to get into. Most of the electricians I know are definitely not "lower class". That said, they're harder jobs physically. They're not particularly good for your body a lot of the time.

> Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th

This already is a massive difference. Large majority of children in the 19th century did not have any access to electricity, let alone knowing how to fashion an electric bell.

That's because they didn't exist back then.

But I'll bet most people could tell you why they had separate hot and cold water taps. (These things are related BTW.)

It’s worth noting that there are always the fears of losing touch with the details of stuff that some along with various advances. The same thing was the case when I was in junior high with calculators, “how will you add and multiply if your batteries run out?” but the fact of the matter is, not having to be able to make your own push button switch freed people to advance to other topics. Similarly, in mathematics education, when I was in high school, there were classes entitled College Algebra and College Trigonometry¹ which had the implicit message that these were materials traditionally taught in college² and not in the third year of high school. On the other hand, things like calculating square roots by hand are no longer part of the curriculum, although they may still be taught on occasion by the rare teacher who has those skills as an enrichment topic to fill some class time or as part of the math club’s after-school explorations.

We may be filled with nostalgia for our own learning and think that it’s the only way to learn, but as time goes on, some skills just become less important.

⸻

1. The backs of the textbooks included printed tables for log (both base 10 and ln), sin, cos, tan, cot, sec and csc, with the latter six tables to three thanks to the fact that sinθ=cos(θ-π/2).³

2. The disjunction between practice and theory has led to this sequence being renamed precalculus in most (if not all) high schools now.

3. The skills to make those tables in the first place are yet another thing that we no longer dedicate long classroom hours to, although Charles Babbage would have thought that being unable to verify the accuracy of your tables was a sign of intellectual weakness.

From Plato's dialogue Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b:

Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters.

Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved.

"The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, "This invention, O king," said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered." But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."