Anachronistic Activities.

[Conager]

I think technology in general and specifically the smartphone has rendered all sorts of real-world activities obsolete. Can you think of any?

Knd of a companion piece to the Can You Whistle thread. The idea that the smartphone has rendered whistling obsolete was going to be my premise but I don't actually know if that is true, so I need the whistling thread to find out. Iit's got to be true about other activities.

The small one was playing with two big rubber bands and sort of invented "Cat's Cradle" (the string game. Not the Vonnegut novel.) I remarked about it, and she had no idea what I was talking about.

I tried to teach her but could not remember.

So I YouTube'd it. . .with my smart phone.

She was distracted by the TV in the background playing a DVD.

I remember seeing the original iPhone that a friend had and recognizing in only a limited way how useful that could be. I had no idea how ubiquitous they would become, and how many simple, low tech activities it would kill off.

These days I've been collecting little devices that have been completely replaced by the iPhone. That might be another thread.

 

[oggbashan]

I have a wind-up gramophone and over 100 78s. It fascinates modern children.

 

[surdeep]

I have a wind-up gramophone and over 100 78s. It fascinates modern children.

Children?

 

[Conager]

I have a wind-up gramophone and over 100 78s. It fascinates modern children.

I'd kill your heirs for that.

The small one saw my rotary dial phone circa 1937 in storage and knew what it was from a YouTube video on things modern kids don't recognize. Playing with it she held the handset upside down, reasoning that the wire is bring the sound to your ear.

Nevermind that, the phone needs a wire to the phone! This one one is wored before modular Jack's were invented. Back then, the company rented you the phone, and the lineman had to cone in the house and install it.

This fomg makes no sense to your grandkids, I bet:


Meri Wilson - Telephone Man

 

[oggbashan]

Children?

Anyone twenty years younger than me - that's almost everyone.

My oldest disk is from 1897.

This is a much later pressing. It was originally issued as a cylinder:

https://youtu.be/cBEBYL1QXtw

It probably survived because it was so awful that it was rarely played.

 

[SpeareChucker]

I wonder about things like chasing fireflies...

 

[IceDemon]

The only reason people of the past didn't waste their spare time with smart phones is because of course smart phones were not around. We can't help the era we're born into and it's easy to slip into this falsism that the current generation somehow has lesser qualities than previous generations. To a large degree, circumstances makes us.

 

[Conager]

A Kamera-Phone:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wNwIq00i_nQ

 

[Conager]

Actual books are getting to be less common, but what about story-telling and oral histories?

Everything is s podcast. There is something that happens to stories that are told and retold. They become honed and polished in the telling. Samuel Clemmons used to give lectures sbdvtrll stories. Comedians do that now. They hone the jokes. If everything is recorded and just simply replayed on demand after a perfunctionary level of rehearsal, it's not quite the same as something that's been road tested.

 

[dolf]

My youngest went through a cats cradle phase in his early teens, which isn't so long ago. Sometimes kids rediscover these cool, retro pastimes and revive them temporarily.

I have a wind-up gramophone and over 100 78s. It fascinates modern children.

Don't know if it's still there, but one of the big museums/galleries in Liverpool used to have what looked like a grandfather clock, but the face was a brass disc with bumps for tuned pins. There was an old guy, in the uniform (blue, with a cap like a copper's) who would give children an old penny to put in so that it would play.
As a child, it was one of my favourite things. Your post reminded me for some reason.

The only reason people of the past didn't waste their spare time with smart phones is because of course smart phones were not around. We can't help the era we're born into and it's easy to slip into this falsism that the current generation somehow has lesser qualities than previous generations. Do a large degree, circumstances makes us.

I think you can lament the loss of the old ways without devaluing the new. This thread strikes me more as an observation, no belittling intended.

 

[dolf]

Actual books are getting to be less common, but what about story-telling and oral histories?

Everything is s podcast. There is something that happens to stories that are told and retold. They become honed and polished in the telling. Samuel Clemmons used to give lectures sbdvtrll stories. Comedians do that now. They hone the jokes. If everything is recorded and just simply replayed on demand after a perfunctionary level of rehearsal, it's not quite the same as something that's been road tested.

I think story telling, as far as life anecdotes, has increased with social media. And now it has pictures!
Less repetitive, but still a skill that's honed over time.
Tell me there aren't posters here whose threads you always open with a degree of anticipation!

 

[Conager]

I bought the small one a barrel of monkeys today. She used to like to sort through the bargain bins of worthless toys at tge thrift store back before Covid eliminated those. She's more interested in the treasure hunt aspect than shelves full of garishly packaged toys with plots already attached to them. I know she had a monkey or two from that set before, I'm just assumed she had these standard barrel of monkeys at some point but she had not. She was fascinated by then. I don't know if they've always been this way and I never noticed it but apparently each of the monkees has a different face and there's, in her mind, a sequence to it. She strung them in what she views as the correct sequence. She was all very ernest about it.

I didn't mean the thread specifically as a slam on screen time but I do think that we are missing something. Kids playing in sand is a useful tactile, developmental process. They're never going to get that from a screen.

I was disappointed to but not terribly surprised that she didn't have the patience to learn the cats cradle. If she knew it it's the kind of thing that would endlessly fascinate her. The kind of thing that she would fixate on.

 

[oggbashan]

My youngest went through a cats cradle phase in his early teens, which isn't so long ago. Sometimes kids rediscover these cool, retro pastimes and revive them temporarily.

Don't know if it's still there, but one of the big museums/galleries in Liverpool used to have what looked like a grandfather clock, but the face was a brass disc with bumps for tuned pins. There was an old guy, in the uniform (blue, with a cap like a copper's) who would give children an old penny to put in so that it would play.
As a child, it was one of my favourite things. Your post reminded me for some reason.

I think you can lament the loss of the old ways without devaluing the new. This thread strikes me more as an observation, no belittling intended.

That would be a polyphone.

https://youtu.be/hSdx7pwaOPs

The Musical Museum near Brentford has a large collection of musical automata. It is a fascinating place to visit. A couple of years ago I gave them 100 piano rolls for their collection.

https://youtu.be/vLMcADyena4


I few years ago I visited the St Albans Organ Club:

https://youtu.be/4DuXDxjMM-E

 

[Conager]

Piano rolls I have. A player piano I don't.

I learned to play (a little) on a converted player piano that dad bought somewhere. We left that in the house in Maine because it just wasn't worth moving. We bought a baby grand here in grim shape and I spent a summer restoring it when I was probably 12. Somehow or another one of my younger brothers ended up with a piano that I restoredt is a child.

It's a beautiful piece of furniture with several decades of patina after my restoration. It's a horrible piano though.

 

[Conager]

Music.

I think technology has changed that a lot. It used to be there was no way you were going to come up with a finished musical product that anyone would buy unless you yourself had worked and practiced and became an accomplished musician.

Then you had sampling and auto tuning and all the kinds of other recording send even performance techniques and I don't think that all performers even understand basic music theory.

I don't know who said that all art is derivative but that would certainly be more true amongst people who are classicly trained. Maybe there's something to be said for people that don't really know anything about music making things that they enjoy hearing.

 

[SpeareChucker]

I remember all of the monkeys being identical,
but, wow, that was a long time ago
and memory plays tricks...

 

[oggbashan]

More from Brentford:

https://youtu.be/-rTFvh90O5c

https://youtu.be/rEZ9AXuKSuY

https://youtu.be/3p2DFGp2Byg

https://youtu.be/y-Dk1kSy2Zs

 

[Conager]

I don't remember for sure what color the monkees were, or whether her they had faces it all much less discernible expressions.

I bought a wooden game today circa 1961. It's kind of like foosball with little wooden bowling pins and spinning tops that you use to try to knock over the pins through these various rooms in this table. It doesn't actually look that interesting to play but it's worth I think more than the $18 I paid for it so I bought it. I've been going to open a stall at an antique mall, and I think it's the kind of thing that might draw people in because it's one of those what the heck is that sort of pieces.

 

[Conager]

More from Brentford:

https://youtu.be/-rTFvh90O5c

https://youtu.be/rEZ9AXuKSuY

https://youtu.be/3p2DFGp2Byg

https://youtu.be/y-Dk1kSy2Zs

Player pianos are interesting because of the robotic nature of the playing. It's a unique sound that shows you what a pianist brings to the instrument in the way of phrasing and sustain and that sort of thing. The player piano simply strikes the appropriate string at the appropriate time and really doesn't do anything other than keep the meter and sound off the required notes.

 

[dolf]

Music.

I think technology has changed that a lot. It used to be there was no way you were going to come up with a finished musical product that anyone would buy unless you yourself had worked and practiced and became an accomplished musician.

Then you had sampling and auto tuning and all the kinds of other recording send even performance techniques and I don't think that all performers even understand basic music theory.

I don't know who said that all art is derivative but that would certainly be more true amongst people who are classicly trained. Maybe there's something to be said for people that don't really know anything about music making things that they enjoy hearing.

Pop hasn't been high art, traditionally. But I don't agree that music theory and serious playing are dying out. Lots of teen & 20s musicians study musical theory, or learn classical to improve their game. Lots passed several grades as they went through school.

But, yeah, for the masses music was always what someone could bash out, with little or no formal training. Classical concerts weren't everywhere, everyday music.

 

[Conager]

I don't have enough education on it myself to really know much about that one way or the other. I just know really good accomplished musicians and how hard they worked and have seen some slackers as well.

I'm ready to be quite wrong and wowed by someone with no training. I was quite wrong about genres that I really didnt listen to. Then you hear a track that's really what that genre should be, whatever the genre.

 

[BrokenBarbie]

Even Sting sampled Prokofiev...

 

[oggbashan]

Player pianos are interesting because of the robotic nature of the playing. It's a unique sound that shows you what a pianist brings to the instrument in the way of phrasing and sustain and that sort of thing. The player piano simply strikes the appropriate string at the appropriate time and really doesn't do anything other than keep the meter and sound off the required notes.

That is only true of the most basic ones. More sophisticated ones can reproduce exactly as the original player pressed the leys with intonation, sustain and pressure. A good player piano can show you how Chopin or Rachmaninov played their own works.

This is Scott Joplin playing:

https://youtu.be/pGIZAuVt5nI

And Listz:

https://youtu.be/UEDcZWxdSak

 

[IceDemon]

Children?

Small humans that should be seen and not heard.

 

[Liar]

My sister and 7 year old nephew visited last week. The kid is absolutely fascinated by an old fm radio I have.

And by old I mean from the 90's.