I was out recently with a guy that loved his GPS and watched it constantly, but couldn't read a topo map, and it got me thinking about how reliant we are on technology.

If your computer, PDA, Blackberry, iPhone, GPS, graphing calculator, internet, etc. went down, could you identify these items, much less USE them?
Lost Skills

What else would you "need" that doesn't use an external power source, or integrated circuit?

(Sorry, haven't figured out how to get the image in here)

One of these is all I would need.

Jeanette Isabelle

Tirec, that collection looks like what I find when I open the navigation desk of my boat.

The skills are not lost; they are being taught and learned every day. If you want to learn them, it is easier than ever to find a teacher - on the internet or "in real life."

New tools for navigation are great. And the old, old skills of reading nature: the wind, tide, stars, sun, clouds, shadows, land shapes, temperature changes, animal and plant movement, echo and sound changes, lining up reference points, etcetera, without instruments are still part of practical navigation.

People lose situational awareness using the old tools as well as the new. The experience of realizing you have "lost it" and overcoming that feeling to regain a solid sense of where you are remains a powerful teacher. Everybody goes through it, and just when they figure they are past it, they get another dose!

Only one I could not use is the slide rule - I never learned. 2 Years before I made high school, they were still teaching slide rules, and I can use a log table, but

Can people even do long division these days?

I used all those in school. They are very basic and easy skills to relearn -- except penmanship, my handwriting really sucks.

Found skills.
http://www.starpath.com/catalog/books/1830.htm

Depends on their age. Anyone under the age of 35 would struggle or look at you blankly and ask what's long division. They would even look at you more blankly if you asked them about fractional adddition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/maths/number/fractions2hirev1.shtml

I really cannot believe the standard of the level of arithmetic (which apparently is now a politically incorrect word), which is being taught at school today, the simple fractions in the above link are for 15 and 16 year olds. Apparently you can get a nationally recognised qualification pass at the age of 16 if the pupil can tell what the time is by knowing where the big hand and the little hand is on the clock.

Good heavens. Don't think that would have gotten me out of kindergarten.

I don't know - they taught my daughter to do all of those, and are teaching my son, (she's 12, so she's past that, he's 8, so he's learning that)