I caught myself doing this recently when I was lecturing my kids about how lucky they were to not have to get off their duffs every time they wanted to change the channel on TV. I had to explain to them how, back in those Non-Digital Dark Ages of the 1970s, their Grandpa used me as his remote control. I also lamented to my kids that we only had 4 or 5 channels “on the dial” from which to choose in the Chicagoland area. It was at that point my daughter asked me what “on the dial” meant.

Kids these days!

But that got me thinking about some of the other things that today’s digital generation will never experience or have to worry about thanks to the modern information revolution. Here are ten things I came up with.

1) Taking a typing class.

It used to be hard to learn how to type. Many people (especially men) never bothered. These days, kids teach themselves and many are experts before they’ve reached middle school. They don’t need classes to master the task. They’ll laugh that we did.

2) Paying bills by writing countless checks.

I am down to paying just one or two bills per month with paper checks. Our kids won’t understand why we ever spent so much time writing and mailing checks to pay bills when everything can be paid electronically.

3) Buying an expensive set of encyclopedias.

Today’s youth can’t remember a time when their moms and dads shelled out over $1,500 for a set of Encyclopedia Britannicaor, for that matter, a time when Microsoft sold its Encarta encyclopedia on compact disks for $50.