When I was young, society presented mostly people with intellectual achievements as role models which spurred a generation to strive. Hard work, humility, respect for others were actively inculcated into the growing generation. Children had few external influences other than their immediate circle of family, friends, neighbours and the school community.
Now we have reality TV stars parading their frankenstein bodies and the hype generated by social media as major influences for children growing up today.
Spelling a word correctly is harder than letting our apps auto-correct it for us. Playing a video game takes less physical effort than venturing out to a playground. Heating and eating a ready-meal takes less effort than cooking something.
I read somewhere that every augmentation is also an amputation. Progress in tech means we are constantly lobotomising a majority of the population. We in the tech community are partly responsible for this.
I don't know what the solution is - but I guess what the author suggests is a good start. Start caring.
Just thought about something:
There are a few sides to this. There is innovation that just makes things easier but doesn't amputate, like typing machines vs word (took me a while to come up with an example, essentially just evolution). Then there are things that are so old it's useless to know them. Like making butter, sure you can do it if you want to, might be fun, but in the grand scheme of things irrelevant. Then there's stuff that is in decline but needed anyway. Like being able to read a book.
Maybe you could express this as a 2D graph, where X is how much people know it and Y is how much people need to know it.