I read RJ's post about how kids today can't or won't count back change after a purchase, they have the ability just as we do. there is nothing significantly different about them as there is nothing different from our ancestors in the middle ages. machines make our lives easier and suppress part of our abilities. this has been going on for centuries.
back in medieval times illiteracy was the norm, it was even considered to be beneath a king to know how to read and write. that's why he had scribes. the only ones other then scribes (for the most part) that were literate were the monks and friars in the abbeys and they made books the old fashioned way, painstakingly copied onto parchment (animal skin).
along comes a guy named Gutenberg with an idea that changed the world, yeah the printing press. this was met with great resistance from the powers that be (the church) when one of his partners took 10 bibles to the next town with the idea to sell he was lucky he wasn't burned at the stake for witchcraft. it was considered 'magic' to have books that were exact copies of one another.
time marched on the idea caught, paper got cheaper to produce and literacy rates climbed. soon even average folks could afford a book or two. this killed the troubadour trade. troubadours would travel from town to town back then kind of like a medieval version of the nightly news anchor. they could remember a 1000 line ballad and recite it back word for word after only hearing it once. who needs to remember several thousand words and recall them perfectly when you can just write them down?
today kids don't need to count change back because the machine does it for them, this is NOT a rant against machines. this is a rant against laziness and a little bit of a rant against progress because it will end up suppressing abilities we all have, we are not much different then the troubadours of old.
NO comment, ya missed my point.
As Forrest Gump would say:
“That's all I have to say about that.”
