[Jaysun]

If this man is nostalgic let him scribble away. Many, including myself, still write letters. But it's a bit absurd to bemoan the faster and easier in favor of what he sees as romantic. People still know how to do arithmetic and write the letters of the alphabet. To spend 30 minutes doing what can be done in half the time with a small machine is ridiculous.

[Jaysun]

If this man is nostalgic let him scribble away. Many, including myself, still write letters. But it's a bit absurd to bemoan the faster and easier in favor of what he sees as romantic. People still know how to do arithmetic and write the letters of the alphabet. To spend 30 minutes doing what can be done in half the time with a small machine is ridiculous.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Every so often we should all put down the calculator and turn off the computer and do things with pen and paper and with our minds,

Is he going to make the pen out of reeds, mix the ink and skin the lamb to make parchment?

The illusion that things done an older way are more virtuous then things done the new way is romantic pap. I really doubt Brandon could knap a hand axe. What is he going to do when all the metal rusts?

If he wants to waste his time standing in banks filling out forms that is his choice but it is no more "preserving the ways of the Ancients" then having a coke rather then a cherry seven up is.

The Ancient would have been to busy knaping his axe to spend time standing around a bank.

[Captainpaintball]

That's the problem with modern techno-society. We have allowed ourselves to become dependent on technology to the extent that it has reduced our confidence and, indeed, our ability, to perform basic tasks without it.

Technology will make the nanny-state in this country (and its Socialist/Communist alter-ego) more efficient and more powerful. Look at what China can do with their internet. Look at the survielance measures (phone taps, street cameras, in-auto computers, injectable chips) that could be utilized to control a populace, especially one getting as dumb, ignorant, and lazy as ours.

[dolander2002]

They don't even teach how to count back change anymore. It gripes me to have someone hand me the change from a purchase and they dump it in my hand, then they look surprised when I count it.

I think the point is that it is important to teach how to think in solving problems. For example, students who learn how to make a tool by hand before learning how to do the computerized version are going to do better and go further than students who are never taught the hands-on method.

But hey, what do I know? I just donated my selectric (a lovely persimmon color on which I could type 80 WPM) and threw away my books on using a rotary calculator. Might as well pitch all the dozens of 50's and 60's LPs and let the old 45's and 78's go as frisbees as needles are hard to come by for the old phonograph and I know damn well that none of the younger folks would have a clue as to how to change one.

I appreciate technology. It lets me be sarcastic to so many more people in such a short time.

[Mamzelle]

I carry a fountain pen in my handbag. I'm amused when someone wants to 'borrow a pen" because they expect some throwaway thing, and then they get ink all over them and become annoyed with me.

A fountain pen does carry a nostalgia from my early elementary years, in that dinosaur age when one was expected to write in an attractive way. I had one teacher with a genuine Spencerian script--

[ThomasThomas]

I was talking with some folks a bit older than I and they seemed to have some affection for the old out house. I can add with out a calculator, but I will only go so far on some other things.