I'm not sure if this thread is hot button topic, but anyway.
I asked my 12 year old daughter today if she could imagine life before the internet, and we had a good chat about it.
Q: "What if you want to know something?"
A: "well, you look up any related numbers in a giant phone book, then you go to a house or a filthy pay phone to call the person that knows the thing... or you go to the library and look it up. They had a sort of internet called "encyclopedias", 100's of super thick books on almost any topic..."
She thought life sounded "annoying" and "time-consuming"... so I should have explained that those things were only annoying and time consuming by our current standards.
What I did say was that before the internet, knowledge and information had value. You couldn't just type a question into google and bingo, there's the answer. So I kind of miss knowing things having value.
That's the heart of it for me, I miss not knowing or having the ability to know everything all at once. Its stressful. You find more and more things that suck up all of your time, and none of it has value. I miss writing down tips and tricks and codes for video games. I mean, it's great being able to google any answer, but it weakens and softens us, as we indulge in our own interests and entertainment as a reward for our increased obligations. I miss being able to call someone without first sending them a text asking if I can call them.
I'm just as hooked into all of this crap as most people my age. Spending way too much time on my phone, watching my fantasy boxscores update for hours through a night... I miss looking things up in a newspaper, cutting them out and saving them. I love some things, like I can access almost any music or movies or images, and that's great. But I think people used to have to deal with reality, and we're at a point where we choose and form our own reality.
Oh, I remember why this was hot button... I asked my daughter "if we're living in the age of information, how could people be so stupid to elect Donald Trump?" She was pretty stumped as to how people are getting dumber as information becomes more accessible. I think it's happening around the world, right wing populists taking over based on immigrant fear mongering. Currently happening in Canada's upcoming election.
Anyway, I think the world was much safer, more stable, generally a lot more functional society when we weren't shackled by the power and obligations of the current tech landscape. But it's hard to break down exact reasons, I'm just speculating based on my lived experience.
I asked my 12 year old daughter today if she could imagine life before the internet, and we had a good chat about it.
Q: "What if you want to know something?"
A: "well, you look up any related numbers in a giant phone book, then you go to a house or a filthy pay phone to call the person that knows the thing... or you go to the library and look it up. They had a sort of internet called "encyclopedias", 100's of super thick books on almost any topic..."
She thought life sounded "annoying" and "time-consuming"... so I should have explained that those things were only annoying and time consuming by our current standards.
What I did say was that before the internet, knowledge and information had value. You couldn't just type a question into google and bingo, there's the answer. So I kind of miss knowing things having value.
That's the heart of it for me, I miss not knowing or having the ability to know everything all at once. Its stressful. You find more and more things that suck up all of your time, and none of it has value. I miss writing down tips and tricks and codes for video games. I mean, it's great being able to google any answer, but it weakens and softens us, as we indulge in our own interests and entertainment as a reward for our increased obligations. I miss being able to call someone without first sending them a text asking if I can call them.
I'm just as hooked into all of this crap as most people my age. Spending way too much time on my phone, watching my fantasy boxscores update for hours through a night... I miss looking things up in a newspaper, cutting them out and saving them. I love some things, like I can access almost any music or movies or images, and that's great. But I think people used to have to deal with reality, and we're at a point where we choose and form our own reality.
Oh, I remember why this was hot button... I asked my daughter "if we're living in the age of information, how could people be so stupid to elect Donald Trump?" She was pretty stumped as to how people are getting dumber as information becomes more accessible. I think it's happening around the world, right wing populists taking over based on immigrant fear mongering. Currently happening in Canada's upcoming election.
Anyway, I think the world was much safer, more stable, generally a lot more functional society when we weren't shackled by the power and obligations of the current tech landscape. But it's hard to break down exact reasons, I'm just speculating based on my lived experience.
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