Lost arts

Last weekend I had the pleasure of being driven from Buffalo Airport to Toronto. It was night time, and neither driver nor navigator had completed the route before, but they did have the benefit of two GPS machines. Supposedly one worked better in Canada, the other better in the USA. I was tired, and vowed to keep my mouth shut.




Maybe predictably, the two GPS’s proved a dubious blessing. They took time to calculate routes, they didn’t seem to know landmarks, they were for ever blaring out “cancel” like a couple of Daleks, and even when they gave out routes they contradicted each other.



Somehow, we made it to Toronto, thanks to a calm and careful driver. But we took a couple of wrong turns, went over a different border crossing than the one we wished, and had some pauses at the side of the road for the GPS’s to get their breath back.



From my vantage point in the back seat, I think I could have avoided all the missteps, despite also never having completed the route (except once in reverse). Often there were helpful road signs. When there were not, simply knowing roughly where North was would have done the trick, or heading for somewhere which seemed sure to be in the right direction.



The reason the driver and navigator missed all the clues were the GPS’s. They were so focused on the machines that they weren’t really tuned into to other available data. Later, I wondered if it was even more fundamental. Having become used to driving with GPS, perhaps they had lost the art of being able to navigate any other way.



I am a bit of a navigation nerd, being a mathematician, having had to learn to get around strange cities on foot and by car, and with a bit of network planning experience for Shell. This has also helped me in New York, with its scale and its variety of transport options. One thing I have really enjoyed is discovering the city on foot and bus and subway.



I sense these arts are disappearing, and the GPS experience offers a clue as to why. Even mobile phones are partly responsible, with their ability to google up support and call friends. I am not saying these are bad things – indeed how did we ever manage to complete appointments at unfamiliar private residences before the days of mobile phones? But I am saying it is a shame if a valuable life skill is lost. Technology does not always work and is not always available, especially in emergencies. And people looking lost are more vulnerable to pickpockets.



For me, geography at school would have been more useful if map reading had replaced learning capitals. Rote learning has become increasingly redundant anyway, due to the internet. We need a new skill now to know the capital of Honduras, rather than the memory of old. This made me think about other skills that had been lost, and which ones should be mourned.



IT itself has seen the biggest changes. I actually came from a very narrow generation who learned to program computers, and was taught all sorts of technical stuff about how computers worked (which I then forgot again). Computers were just come in, but they were large machines rather than personal ones, and it was believed that we would all need to be able to give them instructions in strange codes. Then IBM, Microsoft and Apple changed all that. The nerds in shops and marketing departments haven’t completely dropped the bit and byte speak yet (why not?), but the idea of anyone but a specialist writing programs now seems very quaint. I wonder how IT education has responded? What I hope is that time is spent on stuff like how to navigate a web menu to buy things, how to research information quickly and reliably, and perhaps on creating websites. The former two have become critical life skills now.



Language and writing has changed too. Is accurate spelling a lost art, with spellchecker everywhere? And does it matter? Perhaps we should not mourn the need for mastering spelling too much, especially us English speakers with all our exceptions. The other day I had to write a hand-written letter, and a proper one, not just a one-pager instructing some financial institution of an address change. I found the actual physical act of writing difficult, and the letter construction was not simple either. For me, it is sad that these arts are being lost, as letters are powerful ways to communicate. With text, even alphabets are curtailed. It is efficient, and perhaps it is only sentiment that makes me mourn the traditional methods.



My Mum used to knit a lot. Who does now? It is so cheap to buy finished products, that the only benefit of knitting now is as a creative pastime. Darning does not even have that merit. I think Mum also used to use a mangle, though I am not all that sure what for. This sort of lost art probably doesn’t require us to do anything but celebrate.



What other arts have been lost? Dancing is one that was almost lost in some societies, but is gradually being found again, thanks partly to Strictly (Dancing with the Stars here). A regret of mine is that my generation were the ones who lost the joy of dancing, instead just jumping up and down. I have gained a lot of pleasure from ballroom and Latin lessons these last two years, and recommend them wholeheartedly.



Last month I taught our twelve-year-old how to tie a tie. I enjoyed that. Then I wondered how old I was when I learned, and how many times in the last ten years I had actually worn a tie. Probably more often than he will in how whole lifetime. We need not mourn that sort of lost art, I think, and there are probably many more female equivalents we can be grateful to see the back of. The tie was actually needed for a wedding, but this month I also attended a funeral, indeed had to help to organise one. My sister and I needed help with everything. I wonder if this sort of skill was handed down more effectively in the past?



While on the subject of kids, this month we were delayed four hours waiting for a flight, and neither child had any electronics with them. That made me think two distinct arts might be in the process of being lost. The kids were less resourceful than those of a generation ago in this situation, having been brought up with electronics available almost everywhere. And the parents were also less resourceful. I remember Mum having all sorts of games and gadgets up her sleeve for that sort of eventuality. We struggled but managed, while some of the other parents in the lounge seemed even more lost than we were.



Finally, an art that is still relevant, but I don’t understand why, is driving a stick shift car. Why do we still have these things? Automatic gearboxes make better decisions than humans nowadays and are more economical. Yet many people insist on carrying on making driving more cumbersome than it needs to be by using a gear stick. Well done USA, that is something you have got right, I think.



There must be many similar lost arts, and newly required arts to replace them. Some of the lost ones will be preserved, and hopefully the most creative and satisfying might make a comeback, like dancing. I hope our educators get the balance right between responding to change and retaining skills that, though less critical than before, can still make a difference.



Next time I am in the back seat with a GPS as competition, I wonder if I’ll still be able to keep my mouth shut? Maybe the next generation would find it even harder, as keeping ones mouth shut might itself be a vanishing art, not that I am generally effective at that one myself.