It goes beyond even tech. Home repair especially. The pragmatic knowledge had by my grandparents generation was just astounding to me. My grandpa was so damn smart. He was an engineer for Alcoa working with drafting tables and a slide rule. His brain was just rooted in mathmatics. One time we had a roll of some tar paper for a project and we needed to figure out how many feet we had left on the roll to see if we should buy another roll. He just put a ruler across the diameter, stared at it for a while, stared at the sky with his mouth open for a second, then he had the correct length. Blew my mind when I went home and looked up the formula he worked out correctly in his head in about 30 seconds: 𝐿=𝜋∗(𝑅2−𝑟2)/𝑇

I'd need to pull out a calculator to do anything with pi.

I've been wondering why that is, why this older generation was so much more focused so to speak. It makes sense when you consider the cultural influences surrounding that. My grandpa grew up in the great depression and rebuilt china after the japanese occupation during WWII. It was a matter of survival and pride to focus and improve yourself for your family. My fathers generation, it was popular to ditch class to smoke weed in the woods rather than pay attention in class. My generation, it was popular to be on your phone all day rather than pay attention in class. If all the generations since my grandfathers were as focused as his was on learning things, my word, maybe their now wild predictions on the glorious would be future in the atomic age would have actually materialized.