Are We Losing Our Human Skills?

Farmhouse sketch - 1974

As I am still enjoying my time off in the Dordogne I came across an old sketch of mine that I did of a part of my farmhouse now 50 years ago in 1974! It is a bit faded, but it still shows in great detail the architecture and daytime light and shadows. 

I have always enjoyed sketching and those who know me, know that I always have my pen ready in any sort of meeting, whether it is a project coordination meeting or a site review inspection, I am always making notes and sketching away solutions or observations that can be used later to easily communicate with the rest of the team. An image is worth a 1000 words they say and over the years I probably have made more then 1000 sketches to express my thoughts and views on lighting and lighting design.

Today not many still practice the skill of sketching, today’s generation seems so engrossed in using a computer with sketching software, that very few are actually able to produce a decent hand drawn sketch to express their ideas or thoughts. Seems like being a dying art. A bit reminiscent of calculations, we were thought at school to calculate by using our “brains”. But today a cashier at a store is helpless if the computerised cash register does not work! 

We become way to dependent on computer technology and now with the arrival of AI what will be left of our human skills to express ourselves or produce something “human”? I am great supporter of moving with the times and adapting to our changing environment. I wish however that we keep teaching our new generation to use our human skills to create and produce things rather than teaching how to master and use a computer and its software. 

There might be times that we suddenly are deprived from the “internet” and computer technology, what then? It would be great if we would keep treasuring (and teaching) these human skills as part of the overall education of the new generation.