Extinct?

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lizelleyesterdayPeakD3 min read

Have you ever found yourself on an unknown road without your navigator as your cell phone died or there is no network? Do you ever take a paper map when travelling?
Many will laugh and say that is archaic!
I used to love scouring large fold-out maps of places we would be travelling to by road; it was fun seeing them on paper and highlighting possible stops. That was until 2020, when COVID killed many tourist attractions that never opened up after the lockdown. I love Google Maps and Waze, and who needs those old fold-out travel maps and street map books? Well, here in South Africa, many road names and even names of towns and cities are changing, so the paper maps would need new editions numerous times! But it still felt like sacrilege when I threw out most of my collection in a big declutter before my move to a smaller home!
What if the unthinkable happens and one is lost on a dark, stormy night, not having a clue how to find their destination, and you discover you left your cellphone at home! A street map book could have come in handy, right?

As for writing, I know many children cannot write cursive, nor can they read it! Unthinkable before digital technology took that away. Talking about writing, don't you think hand-written letters mean way more than just a quick email or WhatsApp message? But hardly anyone writes a letter by hand.
Talking about this subject, there is a

on Hive, take a peek if you enjoy reading anything hand-written.

My biggest bug-bear is that many people do not bother about spelling; is it not taught in school anymore? I don't think that will become extinct with spell-checks and Grammarly, but many people also choose to ignore that! Add to that the confusion of some between to and too, as well as of and off? I'm sure there are many other examples, but those are the standouts that really get to me. I'm sure there are similar examples in other languages.

About telling time back before digital clocks, we all knew how to read the time on an analogue clock. I was shocked when I asked a young person the time; there was no digital clock, and he could not tell the time! What the heck, that was unthinkable!

You may be too young to remember doing mental calculations; can we still do that, or are our brains becoming too lazy? Does anyone reading this remember doing mental calcs?

Replace or repair: When I was growing up, my Mom and my Ouma would often be busy mending torn clothes or sewing on buttons - basic skills that come in very handy. But what happens today? Just go and buy a new one, most would say!

Many things are on the brink of extinction, and while these may seem archaic in today's society, I feel we should ignore the naysayers, and not allow skills like that ever to die!