There are a number of other less generally used versions of such skills : four-triplet memorization is standard among network technicians under IPv4, but will likely degrade as (if) IPv6 becomes common in consumer environments.
Google measures global IPv6 usage at 3.5%, up from 1.5% a year ago and 0.65% a year before that. That's more than doubling as a percentage year-over-year.
Adoption is markedly stronger in the US and parts of Western Europe than the rest of the world. 7% of usage from the US, 8% from Germany, and 18% from Belgium is via IPv6; versus 0.39% from Canada and 0.18% from the UK.
IPv6 usage is stronger on weekends than weekdays, which indicates stronger adoption in consumer environments (including mobile) than in workplace environments. I suspect this is due to mobile providers, some of whom hand out v6 addresses to any phones that support the protocol well. (In the US, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile both push v6 as default on new phones; many end users may be using it without even realizing it.)
Google measures global IPv6 usage at 3.5%, up from 1.5% a year ago and 0.65% a year before that. That's more than doubling as a percentage year-over-year.
God I hope that continues. Death to IPv4 and the NAT insanity it makes necessary.
(hrm. I'm trying to replace the word "God" in that sentence with something less incoherent but containing the same sense of emphasis, and coming up blank. I blame Monday. Suggestions, anyone?)
At LW London last week, someone mentioned the possibility of a Google Glass app doing face recognition on people. If you've met someone before, it tells you their name, how you know them, etc. Someone else mentioned that this could reduce the social capital of people who are already good at this.
A third person said that something similar happened when Facebook started telling everyone when everyone else's birthday was. Previously he got points by making an effort to remember, but those points are no longer available.
Are there other social skills that technology has made obsolete? And the reverse question that it only just occured to me to ask, are there social skills that are only useful because of technology?
I'm not really sure what sorts of things I'm looking for here. "Ability to ask for directions" seems like one example, but it feels kind of noncentral to me, I don't know why. But I'm mostly just curious.