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Was everyone stupid back then?

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Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#31

Post by jfengel »

what_the_h321 wrote: post #25
jfengel wrote: post #16

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” Douglas Adams thought he was joking.

Do you have an example of a bloodier war than the World War 1 and 2?

In terms of body count, those still win, because Mutually Assured Destruction keeps giving people pause. But the Internet has turned into a machine for goading people into making a mistake, and it will only take one.

Meantime, thus far it's used just for local genocides, like Myanmar.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#32

Post by JamisonM »

lotu wrote: post #18

The unsaid implication of this comic is that getting rid of the internet would make society better. It would NOT. The ability to have rapid peer to peer communication with anyone on the planet is a good thing. BLM, LGBT rights, disability rights are causes that have thrived thanks to the Internet. The Internet did not cause fascism and any suggestion that it does ignored all of the 20th century.

I didn't take that as the unsaid implication of the comic at all.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#33

Post by SapporoChris »

what_the_h321 wrote: post #25
jfengel wrote: post #16

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” Douglas Adams thought he was joking.

Do you have an example of a bloodier war than the World War 1 and 2?

No, but Second Sino-Japanese War, Taiping Rebellion and Transition from Ming to Qing are comparable.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#34

Post by [deleted] »

what_the_h321 wrote: post #25
jfengel wrote: post #16

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” Douglas Adams thought he was joking.

Do you have an example of a bloodier war than the World War 1 and 2?

[deleted]

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#35

Post by trudler »

Just because that there ARE anonymous people posting stupid shit, doesn't mean all people do that when anonymous. In fact, show me a nice invention that wasn't made by a freedom loving person. No bigger freedom than anonymity! We need it. How can you express yourself without being silenced right from the start without it? How can you spread disruptive ideas when people instanly have a name to point fingers to?

An idea should be separate from a person, to really be neutral. If there is a person behind it, people start investigating the person, rather than checking the idea in depth.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#36

Post by williamcotton »

teddyh wrote: post #22
throw0101c wrote: post #5

See also Penny Arcade 's take from 2004: * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa... Previous observations on the CB radio band: > Similar behavioral patterns have been observed in the anonymous usage of Citizens’ Band radio, a short-distance radio communications device widely used by truck drivers to find well-stocked fuel stations and share traffic information. On February 20th, 1978, a New Yo…

And then Facebook (and Google+), with their Real Names policies, proved that it wasn’t anonymity which was the cause.

What about the clearly false information spread on Facebook? Do we know the names of the people who are writing as QAnon? There’s a clear lack of accountability for anyone other than the messenger.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#37

Post by YazIAm »

jfengel wrote: post #16

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” Douglas Adams thought he was joking.

Funny quote and all (no sarcasm intended) but I don't think it's fair to imply that, if future wars are bloodier than the past, it would be because we lowered barriers to communication.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#38

Post by fullshark »

shubhamjain wrote: post #6

Did people really think that Internet was going to solve all problems or is that revisionist history by back-in-our-day millenials? Even for a techno-optimist, it would've been hard to forsee the sheer penetration. Yes, the euphoria was there from the beginning. But, there's a difference between saying "it's going to be huge" and imagining an instantly accessible network available in the hands of 60% of the world fro…

There was extreme optimism, and (pretty much) everyone thought the internet was going to solve the particular problems they cared/obsessed over. Most commonly: now everyone is going to agree with me and governments will do what I want them to do. But also generally there was a belief that everyone was going to be smarter, more capable and productive and society would accelerate advancement dramatically.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#39

Post by lob_it »

YazIAm wrote: post #17

"You thought that an information transfer protocol would solve social problems?" I recognize that this is just a comic strip, but this is a pretty reductionist point. The idea that giving people access to more knowledge about the world and about other perspectives would be a big help in addressing social problems isn't crazy. A major problem, IMO, is that the feeds we use to navigate this sea of information became op…

Social problems == culture divide

It makes it funny when illiterates try to culture clump :)

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#40

Post by 999900000999 »

The internet pre 2010 was pretty great. Facebook showed who got married, no body was political yet. I did well connecting with friends of friends and went out with a few folks.

While I hate online dating now, I respect it worked for tons of couples when it first started.

Something about having to head home to do your online stuff slowed it down. Now, it's constantly in your face.

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