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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#41

Post by CooCooCaCha »

brigadier132 wrote: post #29
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

It really is amazing, that's why we really need to appreciate and protect what we have. The incredible abundance we currently have is not the norm. It was not even 100 years ago that people were starving in the US during the great depression. Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric.

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#42

Post by scarby2 »

nicbou wrote: post #24
tetris11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this with music, and measure how good a song is by what fraction f of the words I would need to change for me to send it n years back in time to be understood by an older audience. I have a small community (n=1 or 4?) where I write this up: https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless

Which one would require the most explaining, according to you?

Not OP but it's likely some modern rap. A lot of the language used deviates significantly from what we would consider to be standard English and derives from cants that are not very old (80s/90s maybe).

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#43

Post by naasking »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #17
naasking wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask certain people, everybody is still racist right now.

Well, racism and discrimination still exists among genpop today, even if on paper it's outlawed. These kind of biases are impossible to remove just with laws.

Right, but I'm not saying that these people believe racism still exists somewhere out there, I'm saying they believe that racism is in every person's heart. That would seem to make it ineliminable, which seemingly deflates the purpose to care about racism. Ironically, such people claim to care the most about racism.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#44

Post by marcosdumay »

ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away?

Well, aluminum was supposed to be luxurious and everything... But I think before that they'd pick a piece of plastic packaging and be without words to explain their marvel.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#45

Post by boxed »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #41
brigadier132 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is amazing, that's why we really need to appreciate and protect what we have. The incredible abundance we currently have is not the norm. It was not even 100 years ago that people were starving in the US during the great depression. Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric.

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

What is the cost we are paying that you imply is too high?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#46

Post by gmuslera »

There are emergent processes that would make people from some centuries ago wonder how they ever become to be. And it goes beyond technology. Pervasive internet, information and social networks, are technologies, but how that has changed us, how we relate to others, wherever they are, and how we see the world should be something to marvel about, for good and bad.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#47

Post by b3ing »

marcosdumay wrote: post #44
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? Well, aluminum was supposed to be luxurious and everything... But I think before that they'd pick a piece of plastic packaging and be without words to explain their marvel.

They didn't have plastic back then, it would of been paper or cloth

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#49

Post by dotnet00 »

It's refreshing to see a rare openly optimistic article about the world here first thing in the morning.

I also like to occasionally appreciate how someone from even just the recent past would see our current world as one full of manmade wonders.

Another one of these would be microwaves, although conceptually simple as a box that heats stuff, it'd be pretty mind bending that it does it essentially wirelessly.

Adding on to the point about going to the Moon being universally mind blowing, I think it would be (and still is) even more mind blowing that we stopped doing that and didn't bother trying for 50 years, in large part because the people of the time lost interest...

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#50

Post by perlgeek »

petesergeant wrote: post #36
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> would blow the minds I think there are two aspects to this. I think anyone who's ever been to a food market in the history of time would conceptually understand it's possible to have a bigger market, and perhaps even a faster horse or mechanical bird to bring the items there. Commerce bringing you items from the other side of the world is millennia old. So I think it would be more of a case of "how did u mad lads a…

The real progress with the supermarket is the availability and ubiquity.

Maybe 80% of US Americans now have access to a larger variety of fresh fruits than even most nobles had 200 years ago, and it's not even a big deal to us.

Project that kind of progress another 200 years in the future... it's hard to imagine how that would even look like.

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