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Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies?
ProgramErgoSum writes "Horse carriages, vinyl records, telegraphy, black and white television are all great examples of technology that held tremendous sway decades ago and eventually faded away. Other systems such as railways and telephony are 'historical,' but have advanced into the current age, too. I think not being aware of the science behind such yesteryear technologies (or their histories) is not right. I feel it would be most beneficial to encourage kids to explore old technologies and perhaps even try simple simulations at home or school. So, what websites or videos or other sources of information would you reach out to that teaches the basics of say, telegraphy? Or, signalling in railways? Etc. etc." Do you (or do you plan to) educate your kids about any particular older technologies?
Actually, it's not a bad idea. Many of our modern technologies have roots in these old technologies.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
A lot of basic farming came from (or was first invented) in China too. There was a good documentary on all this on the History channel but be damned if I can find the title.
So what's with the focus on the 19th century and it's communication/travelling tech?
Just wondering.
People need both common ground and unique perspective. Some things everyone should know (what does that square icon for save really mean). Other things, we need each person to come at things uniquely (a system where all of the components react the same is a broken system, eg computer viruses on shared standard systems). It's easy to find inspiration in old technology which applies to technology today. EG, Tesla motors took an old forgotten engine design by Nick Tesla and implemented it in the modern age.
I will expose the kid to as much as they have the attention span for. Probably teach each kid different things. EG, one kid will learn basic even though it is outdated. Another will learn one will learn logo even though it is outdated. Both will learn HTML.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
i think your asking a more basic question then you may be aware...
i think if what your saying is "should we try to instill into our children a general interest in history so that they may come to understand the powerful forces and the geniuses that have lifted this world out of superstition, poverty, starvation, and disease?", i think most would agree.
if what your saying is that "son/daughter, i think you should really play Pong instead of xbone for this month so you can come to understand the roots of modern video game technology", well, not so much (at least for me).
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I guess it will gradually be replaced with a little cloud icon.
I feel it would be most beneficial to encourage kids to explore old technologies and perhaps even try simple simulations at home or school. So, what websites or videos or other sources of information would you reach out to that teaches the basics of say, telegraphy? Or, signalling in railways? Etc. etc."
Seriously? That's it? Just "I think" without even an attempt at justifying that statement? What difference would it make in a kid's life to learn about older technology?
It's already hard enough to get kids interested in education, and adults pushing their ideas of what's important onto young students with no regards as to the relevance the "education" bears to the kids' lives is why. If I ever have kids I'm leaving it up to them to decide what they find interesting, and will do whatever I can to educate them on it, even if it means I have to learn a bit about it myself. I certainly wouldn't force my kids to learn about something as arbitrary as older technology.
A big advantage of the "old" technologies is that you can get them running with household items. It's impossible to built an integrated circuit at home, but it's quite feasible to build a steam engine. I learned a lot about technology by servicing my bicycle. I had a very old typewriter which was build on a completely different principle than the usual querty keys, it had a pointer which mechanically connected to a cylinder with the letters and only one key which caused the cylinder to hammer down on the carbon ribbon and the paper. Just to see that there are many different solutions to a given problem greatly increases your understanding of technology. So yes, I think you missed out greatly. All you had was magical black boxes which somehow did what you wanted them to do.
Two buttons?!? You spoiled brat. My first gaming console had one button. And I was glad to have it!
I guess [the floppy disk icon for "commit changes"] will gradually be replaced with a little cloud icon.
Is the world ready for that sort of spiky hair?
*sigh*
Sometimes I almost hate kids. My youngest son taught himself how to solder, I guess he was about 11 at the time. Nice neat soldering work, unlike the clumps and globs that I do. "Mommy, Daddy, look what I can do!" Mommy says, "That's great son! Honey, why can't you do that?" Grrrrrr . . .
Another twelve years later, I've gotten over that. Now, when I need something soldered, I just give it to the kid. He likes showing off, so it's kinda win-win.
And, you should see my welding. I simply do NOT have a talent for making molten metal flow where it needs to go. Basically, I just stab the electrode where I want the filler to go, build it up as far as I can, then grind away all the ugly. Smack the finished product with a hammer, if it doesn't fall apart, I pretend that it's a good weld.
The kid? He has almost no experience, but makes nice pretty welds that need almost no grinding.
Did I mention that sometimes I almost hate kids?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No, you can't say you've missed out on anything, because you don't even know if you've missed out on anything. Also, "relevant" (which the OP doesn't mention), is about as easy to pin down as "intuitive." I think perspective is what history brings. Your comment has convinced me that it is necessary.
God, one thing really pisses me off about ALL (almost) historical dramas and documentaries, and this is how LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY is laughably shown to be 'candles' for ALL periods before the invention of electric lighting. And this actually includes most depictions of the period when gas lighting was state-of-the-art.
The modern candle isn't even an ancient invention, for heaven's sake. And the various solutions to the problem of illuminating dark Human living spaces represent some great forms of practical engineering. But as far as the mainstream media is concerned (INCLUDING so-called educational cable channels), the lamp never existed, only candles.
Or take documentaries about how non-Western people built anything. All of a sudden, you are told that people had no better skills than cavemen, and perfectly obvious techniques like scaffolding didn't exist back then.
Even our very recent history (the last two centuries) is shown in VERY inaccurate ways. The Great Victorian Engineers (all over the world) achieved miracles WITHOUT the use of electric power or the combustion engine. But their methods are almost never depicted, because the visual media is almost always a creation of 'ARTY' types, whose understanding of engineering history is around zero.
And how many here, for instance, are familiar with the MECHANICAL computing devices that were widespread before the spread of microprocessor based electronics onwards. I mean, TV has endless dramas set in the 40s, 50s and 60s, but you will almost NEVER see state-of-the-art equipment being used in those dramas. It gets worse. When a TV show is set in the late 1950s or early 1960s, any TV set watched by the actors will be of an early 1950s design, because of the WRONG cliche that TV before 1965 meant watching a tiny round picture.
How many people here know that the earliest telephone services offered DIRECT LIVE connections to the local theatres, so telephone owners could listen (by subscription) to theatrical performances as if they were in the actual audience? How many times have you seen such a thing depicted in a TV show? Try NEVER.
In truth, engineering is NOT about respecting history, unless the historical record of engineering actually still teaches something useful. Engineers are highly pragmatic. Engineering is of the NOW. There is a near infinite amount of engineering curiosities from the past, and the investigation of any part of this history tends to be more intriguing than useful. And good engineers lack false sentiment.
The best education for a child is informing him/her that engineers are largely 'timeless' and therefore in any period an engineer would not be so different than now. So, while depictions of past engineering methods are usually laughable, the actual truth would be people finding and using the most common sense solutions, with the skillsets being treasured, respected, and taught to like minded enthusiastic people. Just because the arty writer/painter types of the age ignored the engineer (meaning that we lack good historical depictions) , just as they do today, does not mean that the engineer was any less skilled, dedicated, or resourceful back then.
Show your kid the Antikythera mechanism, and teach him/her that according to the lousy historians/archaeologists, such a thing was utterly IMPOSSIBLE until a real-life example proved to be undeniable. No writer wrote, and no painter drew any depiction of any engineer working to the skillset of the Antikythera mechanism builder, across the multiple centuries when such engineers existed, and were solving problems of this level of sophistication. Therefore, historians and archaeologists stated definitively that no man had such engineering skills during that period- total bulls**t. A lack of so-called primary sources simply reflects the fact that engineers lack the ego to leave the same form of records that arty-type wasters do.
When Man was first building the complex structures of antiquity, long before we have decent written records, some men were fir
The thing about old technologies is that many of them are less interesting for what they did than they are for how they worked.
Typewriters, for example, are interesting chiefly for their mechanics and "human interface" characteristics.
Carriages are very interesting for their wheel and bearing technology, suspension, (often) lightweight construction, and so on. They may also be interesting for their relationship with horses. They are less interesting for their actual transportation use. (Brakes were invariably simple friction brakes... not interesting at all, really. Kids use the same technology in their backyard-built go-carts.)
Clarity: Education has to be about something that has already happened or was already discovered.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Somewhat related to what your asking.
A ten part series on how some present day tech got here.
The shows don't delve deeply in to how it all works, but interesting none the less.
It may spark an interest in older technology.
Many things that were once only available in a lab I can now recreate in my garage.
Notice how the wheels roll down the track. On each axle, the wheels are rigidly attached, and the wheels are slightly tapered. If an axle gets a tiny bit off center, the wheels roll on different circumferences, which steers that pair of wheels back to the center. In a turn, the axle steers itself off-center by the same mechanism. Ideally, the wheels don't slip in a turn any more than they do on straight track. The flanges are a backup system.
If you watch a train, tidbits of science and engineering are in view. You can smell the cars marked Molten Sulfur. When locomotives pull a heavy train uphill, watch for the nozzles squirting small amounts of sand for traction. Listen to the horns and hear the Doppler effect.
The following series are great for both children and adults. Fantastic production quality, packed with factual information, but lacking the terrible sensationalism typical of American documentaries. I challenge you to watch even a single episode and not learn something awesome!
I used to teach a technology related course at a local college, and I liked to show an episode of the 6-part BBC documentary Victorian Farm to show students how advances in technology during the industrial revolution had a massive impact on day-to-day life. Off the top of my head, I can remember seeing demonstrations of technologies like basket-making, clamps, black-smithing, steam trains, horse-powered machinery, straw-plaiting, etc.
The same group of academics who did Victorian Farm were part of the 12-part BBC series Edwardian Farm. There are cool technologies like early fish farms, brick kilns, tractors, automobiles, vacuums, bicycles, leather-making, stoves, mining, fertilizer, pesticide, wool mills, etc.
There's also the 8-part BBC documentary Wartime Farm which is a recreation of the English farmer's life during World War II. Technologies like canning, paraffin range cooker, electric clothes iron, and linoleum flooring are just a few of the things covered in this series.
There is also a 12-part documentary with the same people called Tales from the Green Valley but I haven't seen it and can't comment though it's probably also really good.
Kids should get some basics on where things come from. How steel is made. How farming works. How electricity is generated and distributed. How cars are made. Where tap water comes from, and where sewerage goes. How houses are built and what's inside the walls.
At the micro level, they should learn basic electrical circuits, basic gears and mechanical linkages, basic hand tools up to an electric drill, and basic woodworking up to building a box or birdhouse.
Not Z80 programming.
Infrastructure is mandatory. Nostalgia is optional.
Being an Old Fuck I recall when I became interested in even older tech. Folks who dig that are a self-selected group and always were.
Most people are drones who do the minimum, resist learning more than the minimum, and that's never been different.
What has changed in a wonderful way is the AVAILABILITY of information on technology old and new on the internet.Want to teach the interested about a particular technology? Make an engaging, informative Youtube video. There are many such covering old tech such as blacksmithing.
Leave out music (no one else want to hear distracting shit) and leave out the narrators face which conveys no useful information and is only ever included out of vanity. Add links to online sources interested viewers can use if their interest is piqued.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Do you know how:
A substantial portion of our increased standard of living is due to productivity gains from specialization. Instead of everyone having to waste time learning and become experts at making fire, hunting, farming, weaving clothes, etc., we specialized and traded the resulting goods amongst ourselves. The extra time saved allowed us to become even more expert in our specialization, advancing the state of the art for even more productivity gains. And freed us to have more free time for leisure and entertainment activities.
Reversing this and forcing kids to waste time learning stuff they don't need to know will decrease productivity and lower the standard of living. If the kid wants to go into the transportation industry, then he should learn about horse carriages and how the parts worked. If the kid wants to become a network/communications engineer, then he should learn about telephony. If the kid wants to learn about electron beams and phospor displays, then he should learn how old TV sets worked. Forcing all kids to learn this stuff just wastes time they could be spending learning what they will eventually do for a job.
A big advantage of the "old" technologies is that you can get them running with household items. It's impossible to built an integrated circuit at home, but it's quite feasible to build a steam engine. I learned a lot about technology by servicing my bicycle. I had a very old typewriter which was build on a completely different principle than the usual querty keys, it had a pointer which mechanically connected to a cylinder with the letters and only one key which caused the cylinder to hammer down on the carbon ribbon and the paper. Just to see that there are many different solutions to a given problem greatly increases your understanding of technology. So yes, I think you missed out greatly. All you had was magical black boxes which somehow did what you wanted them to do.
Don't be so sure about that
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.