Modern Technology and the Rebirth of Obsolete Crafts

As we enter the third millennium, we're suddenly up to our collective eyeballs in technology so advanced, we can barely keep up with it. Tech classes at universities are changed by the time a person completes a four year, or even two year course of study.

Eighty-year-olds who, when they were born, ate food kept cold on a block of ice, tippy-tap away at electronic keyboards and concern themselves with search engine optimization. My own son, who lives six hundred miles away, called to tell me about an incident in my own neighborhood, two blocks away. He had the information before I did, thanks to gossipy friends on Facebook.

Most of my life, I've been called a technophobiac. I can barely figure out how to change channels on the TV. And here we are in an age where today is already yesterday, and tomorrow is already here.

Yet:

Years ago, I wanted to learn how to make my own soap. I went to the library and found a book or two. But, I wasn't satisfied with the information. When I want to learn something new, I like to digest tons of information, especially if I want to do something that has an element of danger. When you make soap, you use lye, a potentially dangerous substance. You can burn yourself, blind yourself, or poison yourself and your family. So, I backed off.

But, thanks to the information explosion on the Internet, I was able to sift through tons of information I needed to feel comfortable making soap. Now, I make all my own soap. It's great stuff. Other people like it. So, here I am, performing the arcane task of making soap.

I've communicated with people who have learned how to really make soap from scratch, all on the Internet. The render their own hog fat into lard and use wood ash to do whatever they do with old ashes to make lye.

I know people who decided to move into a cabin in the actual middle of nowhere (along with their solar powered lap-tops). They learned how to go about living pretty much, except for the lap-tops, like people lived in the 1500's, by reading about it online.

More and more folks have taken up old fashioned skills like knitting, smocking, cross-stitch, felting, preserving foods, making their own clothing, socks, their own lotions, simple salves and medications (some kind of boiled willow bark tea instead of aspirin), herbal tea blends, wine, beer, and whiskey - by learning how to do it online.

And while 1964 seems so long ago, so basic, so quaint compared to 2010 - modern people have embraced arcane, obsolete skills with a passion. Technology has allowed us to return to traditional crafts in a way we'd never dreamed of in 1964.