I suspect the rot started in the early 1990's when the Garmin Pronav GPS 100 started populating cockpit dashboards. Student pilots put away their WAC charts and started blindly following an LCD screen. The most basic piloting skill of map reading and compass/speed/time navigation went out the window, and along with it a lot of the other fundamentals that make a solid well-rounded pilot. I mean seriously, when you see an ATP pilot get lost in the traffic pattern during a training sortie, as I've seen happen, and then once realizing he's lost has no idea how to get un-lost, makes me wonder how it's all come to this.