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When the push button was new, people were freaked

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Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#131

Post by hotpotamus »

SilasX wrote: post #78
cercatrova wrote: post #60

From Plato's dialogue Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b: Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters. Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god…

Did you have a point with this? That couldn't be placed at the top? I don't know how hating on writing is related to people being disoriented by pushbuttons, and maybe if you stated what you thought the parallel was, you could have saved everyone some time and effort in reading hard-to-parse prose.

Here's an easy rule of thumb for when someone posts a passage from Socrates - they're probably saying that Socrates already made this point a couple millennia ago.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#132

Post by ordu »

SilasX wrote: post #106
yamtaddle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reference is cliché to the point that I usually hate to see it, but did understand the original post's intent in context (that is, the context provided by skimming the linked article to which the post is a reaction) without issue. It didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than plain.

It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment, in its thick prose, and the article in order to understand, and even then you have to guess which point its referring, but could be wrong because cercatrova didn't actually own one. Here is how I would have done the comment: --- >people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atro…

> It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment

Nah. It makes you think, I personally like to practice the art of thinking, of making connections between seemingly unconnected things, like Socrates and push buttons. Try to guess the point of a big comment by a first few sentences. And here I guessed right, that it would be about dangers of writing. But it was easy here, because letters are mentioned in a third sentence with emphasis: "and, most important of all, letters."

> its thick prose > Can you elaborate on what you think we gain from making everyone read 6x as much with no indication of what the actual point is?

I force myself to read thick prose sometimes, it is a way to practice attention and an ability to understand others. Maybe it was the reason why it was easy to me to guess the point of the comment?

But no one is forced to read it. For example, it seems to me you didn't read it through. I didn't read it. I read first few sentences, and skimmed to the end, to ensure that my guess is right.

> Advantages:

You are silently assume that a clarity and the ease of consumption is among of the top priorities. But it may not be so. Didn't you think that a comment about letters can be composed in a thick and hard to comprehend prose on a purpose to make some point about letters (that are supposed to be easy)? And about buttons too (that are supposed to be easy too)? I do not see what this point may be, but it could be because I'm too stupid to see it.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#133

Post by mpalmer »

SilasX wrote: post #106
yamtaddle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reference is cliché to the point that I usually hate to see it, but did understand the original post's intent in context (that is, the context provided by skimming the linked article to which the post is a reaction) without issue. It didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than plain.

It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment, in its thick prose, and the article in order to understand, and even then you have to guess which point its referring, but could be wrong because cercatrova didn't actually own one. Here is how I would have done the comment: --- >people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atro…

I guess you feel that you're speaking for some imagined group who demands digestible, workmanlike prose at all times. I guess I'll speak up for the others?

Frankly, fully rewriting someone's comment and including a 9-item list of what you think are advantages comes across as more than a little intense.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#134

Post by hilbert42 »

namrog84 wrote: post #108
hilbert42 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th—and the first electrical things I played with as a young kid were electric bells, buzzers, batteries, flashlight globes and reels of bell wire—lots and lots of it. (Experimenting with such items wasn't an unfashionable activity when I was a kid.) Bell wire, which usually came in the form of two single-stranded copper wires twisted loosely together and insulated in red and white PV…

I was born in 84. And in the 90s I knew this 1 kid who told me on his 11th birthday his dad would raise his bicycle seat. I was super confused as that an easy thing to do(loosen a bolt, adjust height and tighten the bolt). Turns out lots of parents don't allow their kids to touch their tools or tinker or do anything like that. I was very fortunate that my parents encouraged me to do such things. E.g. take apart thing…

"...take apart things to put them together but it doesn't surprise me why lots of people have all the creativity and curiosity purged from them from an early age."

You're right, encouraging kids to explore the world at an early age is all important for their development. As a kid I was a past master at pulling all sorts of things apart and somewhat less successful at putting them back together again. And from that I learned a great amount about how stuff worked ('hands-on' at a very young age I reckon is essential to get the feel and measure of stuff).

My parents never discouraged me from playing with all sorts of rather strange things—except perhaps in my preschool years when I started rummaging around amongst the inner workings of our large console radio set in the lounge room. At the age of about four or five my mother took exception after I discovered that touching the top cap [aka grid-1] of one of its valves (tubes) caused a very loud humming noise (she came bounding into the room somewhat alarmed to find No.-1 son arm-deep amongst the electrics).

By that age I'd already become an inveterate collector of junk—everything from screws, nuts and bolts to discarded power pole wire and insulators.

Once I found an old transformer out of a radio set that had green silk-like insulation on its windings (which I found fascinating) and in the evening when my parents told me to stop playing with it I disobeyed the order and hid it in my bed (I know, a very strange kid). Now, you can imagine the furore and trouble I was in when this large metal object came crashing to the floor in the early hours of the morning waking up the whole household.

I cannot envisage how horrible my childhood would have been had my parents forbidden me from following my natural instincts (as strange and as odd as they may have seemed).

I'm sure many other parents would have been much less tolerant of my strange predilections. In hindsight, I reckon my only saving grace was that my father was an engineer.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#135

Post by lupire »

sarchertech wrote: post #109
rasz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT graduates cannot power a light bulb with a battery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhk9eKOLzQ

I'm always skeptical of those man on the street interviews. How many students did they interview to find the handful who couldn't do it? And how many of those were just flustered by the situation.

Well they found a MechE not an EE.

They also made them do it standing up with an awkwardly shaped bulb, and only a single wire, so the task was basically impossible, without a cutter and/or some tape.

Still, people should know why they are failing.

Of course, they are being caught out of context and are guessing the "rules" of the "game".

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#136

Post by lupire »

lisper wrote: post #56
whimsicalism wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect most people have never even heard of a thermal expansion tank. I suspect that if you did surveys every year going back to the 19th century, in every single one of them the majority of people would have never heard of a thermal expansion tank.

That's because they didn't exist back then. But I'll bet most people could tell you why they had separate hot and cold water taps. (These things are related BTW.)

I have a joint hot and cold water tap, so...

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#137

Post by KennyBlanken »

throwie_wayward wrote: post #23
charles_f wrote: post #12

> Today, you’d probably have to schedule an electrician to fix what some children back then knew how to make: electric bells, buttons, and buzzers. Where I live you are technically not allowed to install equipment on 120 or 240 if you are not a certified electrician. Insurance won't cover water damage if installation hasn't been done by a professional plumber. People still do it, but this is not going in the right di…

I completely disagree... on the trend you back up, I see a future where you cannot cook your own food unless you've become a professional specialist of cooking (for food safety). going to cartoon levels of ridiculousness, a society in which you cannot do anything other than consume unless you're doing a job (which would involve safety, insurance, and other various legal and bureaucratic requirements). what keeps thin…

> I see a future where you cannot cook your own food unless you've become a professional specialist of cooking (for food safety).

This has already happening to some degree in the US, in the sense that one has to follow a lot of food safety practices in order to keep from getting violently ill eating food sold in a grocery store. The best example being the poultry industry.

Instead of our government requiring chicken farms control salmonella (which is required of European farmers), the poultry industry has convinced both the government and the consumer that it's totally cool to shift things to "you didn't cook your chicken properly so it's your fault that you got salmonella." Processed chicken in the US is washed in chlorine because there's so much salmonella and it would spoil the chicken between the packing plant and consumer's fridge.

Similarly, eggs sold in the US can't be stored outside the refrigerator because they've been washed to attempt to control salmonella; the washing destroys the egg's natural protective barrier.

We can't eat vegetables bought in a grocery store without washing them; otherwise we might get e.coli, because corporate megafarms refuse to provide proper sanitation for field workers and use enormous field sizes in order to eek out as much profit as they possibly can. Yet again: it's your fault you got e.coli because you didn't wash your vegetables well enough, not the fault of the farms and distributors and grocery stores for selling you unsafe food.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#138

Post by lupire »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #90
veltas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class isn't all about money.

And being a clerk instead of a workman isn't a ticket to the aristocracy either ...

Getting a paid a lovit wage to stand around in air conditioning is pretty good if you can get it.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#139

Post by lisper »

lupire wrote: post #136
lisper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they didn't exist back then. But I'll bet most people could tell you why they had separate hot and cold water taps. (These things are related BTW.)

I have a joint hot and cold water tap, so...

I'm referring to a setup like this:

https://st.hzcdn.com/fimgs/b0f25dc10b76dbe4_6198-w500-h666-b...

where the hot and cold water come out in two different places.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#140

Post by lupire »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #137
throwie_wayward wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree... on the trend you back up, I see a future where you cannot cook your own food unless you've become a professional specialist of cooking (for food safety). going to cartoon levels of ridiculousness, a society in which you cannot do anything other than consume unless you're doing a job (which would involve safety, insurance, and other various legal and bureaucratic requirements). what keeps thin…

> I see a future where you cannot cook your own food unless you've become a professional specialist of cooking (for food safety). This has already happening to some degree in the US, in the sense that one has to follow a lot of food safety practices in order to keep from getting violently ill eating food sold in a grocery store. The best example being the poultry industry. Instead of our government requiring chicken…

Incorrect.

https://www.pritzkerlaw.com/ecoli-lawyer/e-coli-lawsuit-5-re... for one example of many.

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