WAIT! So you're saying that there weren't smartphones OR internet when you were a kid????

Busch wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Sure, there are plenty of reliable sources of useless, false information online. The true information is a needle in a haystack, so finding it means figuring things out for yourself which can be done without the internet.

Consider this: before the public internet, NASA sent people to the moon and built space shuttles. Now it can't even launch a human into space. Problem-solvers and creative thinkers are in short supply.

Thanks to the internet we learned that there is no real benefit to sending people to the moon or send a human into space.

Internet wins again.

Actually, thanks to the Internet we learned that no human ever went to the moon, nor are they likely to ever get there (ummm . . . ever heard of the Van Allen Belts?).

Bad Wigins wrote:

Sure, there are plenty of reliable sources of useless, false information online. The true information is a needle in a haystack, so finding it means figuring things out for yourself which can be done without the internet.

No, there are many sources that you know are reliable without figuring anything out. What you are saying is about as dumb as saying that you can't find a library because gossip magazines are sold in many stores. Internet is just an environment, just like the real world.

Consider this: before the public internet, NASA sent people to the moon and built space shuttles. Now it can't even launch a human into space. Problem-solvers and creative thinkers are in short supply.

That was motivated by cold war arms race and struggle for power. There was no real benefit of sending a man in the moon. The space shuttle was really a flop: expensive, unpractical and an unsafe peace of junk.

That cold war technology was all about concentration of power, mass destruction and the domination of the state over individuals. It was 100% state funded madness. The new information technology is very superior development compared to that.

Bad Wigins wrote:

ghgjgj wrote:

Only stupid people can't search reliable sources of information from the internet.

Sure, there are plenty of reliable sources of useless, false information online. The true information is a needle in a haystack, so finding it means figuring things out for yourself which can be done without the internet.

Consider this: before the public internet, NASA sent people to the moon and built space shuttles. Now it can't even launch a human into space. Problem-solvers and creative thinkers are in short supply.

We put a few robots on Mars

ghgjgj wrote:

No, there are many sources that you know are reliable without figuring anything out. What you are saying is about as dumb as saying that you can't find a library because gossip magazines are sold in many stores. Internet is just an environment, just like the real world.

Name your "reliable" sources, and how you determined they were reliable without figuring anything out.

There was no real benefit of sending a man in the moon. The space shuttle was really a flop: expensive, unpractical and an unsafe peace of junk.

That cold war technology was all about concentration of power, mass destruction and the domination of the state over individuals. It was 100% state funded madness. The new information technology is very superior development compared to that.

A reliable source might have helped you figure out that:

1) just because moon shots and space planes are stupid is no reason to give up manned launch capability entirely.

2) Concentration of power, mass destruction and the domination of the state over individuals has only gotten worse. Your "superior" information technology means the government can now access most of your private communications without a warrant and watch you through your own Samsung TV. Who do you suppose arranged for all this information tech to happen anyhow?

_Mars_Rover wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

[quote]ghgjgj wrote:

[quote]Bad Wigins wrote:

Consider this: before the public internet, NASA sent people to the moon and built space shuttles. Now it can't even launch a human into space. Problem-solvers and creative thinkers are in short supply.

We put a few robots on Mars

We have astronauts living on a space station in outer space!

I remember the fall of my senior year in college, when my girlfriend, who had graduated the year before, flew off to Paris on a Fullbright. I wrote her two or three actual letters a week on that light blue foolscap (look it up if you don't know the word) and mailed them to her "par avion." Airmail. She wrote letters in return. We were madly in love, but she was also....experimenting. The amount of passion conveyed by our words, pen on paper, was extraordinary.

That's how we lived. We moved in together when she got back. Five passionate years. Those letters made that happen.

Are things better now? Let me put it another way: When was the last time you sat down and wrote the woman you love an eight-paragraph letter? I wrote three of those a week, minimum, for three and a half months. Same during the spring term. When was the last time you looked in your mailbox--not your in-box, your mailbox--and felt your heart surge when you saw there was a letter from your lover?

We managed.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Name your "reliable" sources, and how you determined they were reliable without figuring anything out.

Ask about almost any reasonable topic, and I can probably find such a source. The way I determine that is by looking who has put the information online.

1) just because moon shots and space planes are stupid is no reason to give up manned launch capability entirely.

2) Concentration of power, mass destruction and the domination of the state over individuals has only gotten worse. Your "superior" information technology means the government can now access most of your private communications without a warrant and watch you through your own Samsung TV. Who do you suppose arranged for all this information tech to happen anyhow?

1)

2) I think information tech has also empowered the individual. why do you think they have the great firewall in China for example? Developing space technology and nuclear weapons is no problem for a dictartorship. Actually one reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union was the emergence of information technology. They could not let their people have home computers or any kind of computer networks for example which would have been crucial for the development of IT. They always lacked behind especially in IT.

And when your loins filled with lust? Must be hard to rub one out with just a letter in front of you..

Bad Wigins wrote:

Who do you suppose arranged for all this information tech to happen anyhow?

It wasn't completely arranged by the government. A lot of private companies are involved.

We put a few robots on Mars

Or did we? One of those rovers apparently took a picture of an Arctic lemming. Either that or it's the best example of pareidolia in history. The Arctic lemming is native to Devon Island, home to NASA's Haughton Mars Project. Coincidence?

It's on the Internet. And the Internet can't lie, can it?

Well, somebody's not telling the truth. So what are we to believe? The Internet? News outlets? Science textbooks? The government??? Ha!

Now those sources aren't always wrong, outdated or deliberately deceitful, but it certainly pays to question the intentions behind any source of information and ask yourself if someone is trying to appeal to your emotions or trying to teach you what to think rather than how to think.

The Information Age - proceed with caution.

We recently had a trip to Europe with the family. We didn't get phone service there because of the cost. Well the first city we stopped in, we split up to do separate things with out setting up a future meeting point or time. Uh-oh. Big mistake.

Life without cell phones requires a discipline that's easy to forget when you have it.

DiscoGary wrote:

We recently had a trip to Europe with the family. We didn't get phone service there because of the cost.

Are you serious? SIMs in Europe are dirt cheap -- like $10 US for 300 minutes of calls, 300 texts, and 4 GB of data. You can get one at any convenience store in any country. It's amazing how much sh*t we put up with from US providers given how ubiquitous and commoditized service is there.

"Maps" was me looking in the back of the phone book for a map, then writing down directions to the place I was going.

L - This street

R - This street

Then do the opposite to get home. No idea there might be a better way or whatever, or other stuff I'd stop at, because that info wasn't around. We managed, though.

Magazines, also, for info that was newer than books, and stores with Euro magazines to really get out there. If going to a new city I'd not been to before, I would try and get a newspaper from there to get up to speed.

Facebook-like stuff or networking was knocking on doors, talking to people, talking to other people. Chatting was a phone. We took pictures with film cameras, and they're still in boxes here and there, though some are scanned now and online.

Events I would find at record stores, for example, just like now, flyers and posters. That would let me meet more people, and learn more stuff. The world really isn't that different.

Games were in arcades, or in kid-focusing restaurants with game areas. Those old-school pizza places in your town are probably still set up that way.

On exactly October 29, 1969, a few months after USC's Neil Armstrong became the 1st Man on the Moon, UCLA responded by giving birth to the Internet.

the internet has improved social skills and communication immensely. Today, instead of writing three letters a week, people actually call each other several times a day at any time since we all have a phone in our pockets. Also, there are ways to send texts, emails, pictures, videos, and sound back and forth to people immediately.

It's amazing how little and infrequent people communicated prior to the internet.

Honestly, the best thing about today's inter-connectivity is that it's simple to look up anyone from your past and see what's up.

Those girls you regret for whatever reason? Most are 500 pound meth heads in an Alabama trailer somewhere. The ones you never saw coming catch your eye now, but you and everyone else had no way of knowing that.

That loser who punched you in fourth grade is in prison for molestation. The idiot with the Nova died in a drunken driving crash. The guy who beat you in the state 800 your junior year is a chain-smoking 300 pound lump of flesh.

No mysteries.

GetReal863 wrote:

Honestly, the best thing about today's inter-connectivity is that it's simple to look up anyone from your past and see what's up.

Those girls you regret for whatever reason? Most are 500 pound meth heads in an Alabama trailer somewhere. The ones you never saw coming catch your eye now, but you and everyone else had no way of knowing that.

That loser who punched you in fourth grade is in prison for molestation. The idiot with the Nova died in a drunken driving crash. The guy who beat you in the state 800 your junior year is a chain-smoking 300 pound lump of flesh.

No mysteries.

And you ended up on letsrun.

Rasga wrote:

It's amazing how little and infrequent [sic] people communicated prior to the internet.

What's amazing is that we've traded depth for frequency. Now instead of having one or two meaningful interactions in a day you can write 500 little bullsh*t quips that will be read, maybe, and then instantly forgotten. Not a positive change.

As kids we were outside in the neighborhood. That is where I learned how to play sports and compete. You never saw an empty park or ball field.

As for TV, everyone watched the same programming so we had a natural common viewing experience which created community...and it was FREE!

We all bought our encyclopedia sets from door to door salesman. That was our internet. If you can believe it hitch hiking was a normal way to get around.

If someone broke down on the road people would stop and help. We were more together. Our technology screwed all that up. Before cell phones you would get more booty shots too.