Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 102 posts

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#61

Post by bufordtwain »

tgarma1234 wrote: post #23
nul_byte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to information has been a double edged sword as well. I am one of the pre-internet oldies and recall how you had to go to the library, and find the book on the topic you wanted to research. It was a case of hoping it was there and not loaned out already, or too old an edition. Quite often, it would already be loaned out, and you had to wait a week or two and then go back, hoping it had been returned on time. E…

Yes indeed. Libraries. Walking around the stacks looking for books in college and not necessarily knowing what would be in the book other than what was briefly described by the card catalog. You couldn't wikipedia a topic, so you had to really know how to scan a books contents and decide if it was worth the time to read. It was such a huge time commitment to learn anything at all from books back then. I love learning…

Interestingly the internet (and computers in general) has made libraries better as well. I can search for pretty much any book using my local library's website, click a button and have it available within a few days for pickup at my local branch. The library will send me email reminders and will auto-renew books a number of times when they are about to come due.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#62

Post by caseysoftware »

dreeko_ wrote: post #42
DougWebb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now everyone see's themselves as an informed authority, after a few minutes googling and reading a wikipedia page. I think today's self-proclaimed informed authority compares pretty well to yesterday's hobbyists, at least. Access to information today is just so much better than it used to be. I've got a passing interest in ancient history, and I own a number of books, but I'm hardly an expert. This morning I watched…

Lindybeige is a fantastic explainer when it comes to that sort of thing - it also highlights how quickly a person can go from knowing nothing to practically hobbyist levels of knowledge in 20 minutes post internet

Scott Adams - creator of Dilbert - was recently ridiculed for suggesting that someone could become an expert on a topic after an hour of talking with the brightest minds in that field. While "expert" needs to be defined, I don't think it's far fetched.

How many times have we had that conversation with someone who knows their topic backwards and forwards and after minutes, we have a deeper understanding of it than almost anyone around. Expand that out to an hour with a few key/relevant questions to frame the conversation and it is totally believable.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#63

Post by HarryHirsch »

bufordtwain wrote: post #61
tgarma1234 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes indeed. Libraries. Walking around the stacks looking for books in college and not necessarily knowing what would be in the book other than what was briefly described by the card catalog. You couldn't wikipedia a topic, so you had to really know how to scan a books contents and decide if it was worth the time to read. It was such a huge time commitment to learn anything at all from books back then. I love learning…

Interestingly the internet (and computers in general) has made libraries better as well. I can search for pretty much any book using my local library's website, click a button and have it available within a few days for pickup at my local branch. The library will send me email reminders and will auto-renew books a number of times when they are about to come due.

We had bibliographies and reviews even before the internet. Back then you filled in your interlibrary loan request, the library would sent it out to its correspondence libraries, and only within a few days the postcard would come, telling you that your book was available for pickup.

That said, bibliographic databases have been around since computers. They were just restricted to librarians, mostly because of infrastructure issues.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#64

Post by [deleted] »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #63
bufordtwain wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the internet (and computers in general) has made libraries better as well. I can search for pretty much any book using my local library's website, click a button and have it available within a few days for pickup at my local branch. The library will send me email reminders and will auto-renew books a number of times when they are about to come due.

We had bibliographies and reviews even before the internet. Back then you filled in your interlibrary loan request, the library would sent it out to its correspondence libraries, and only within a few days the postcard would come, telling you that your book was available for pickup. That said, bibliographic databases have been around since computers. They were just restricted to librarians, mostly because of infrastr…

[deleted]

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#65

Post by HarryHirsch »

Mendenhall wrote: post #58
HarryHirsch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That issue already came up in Platon's Phaedrus . The issue that is brought up is that reading about a subject is not the same as immersion brought about by interaction with that subject. It brings about an illusion of learning. Says Platon. Sound familiar, no? http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/482...

I think Platos/Socrates point holds still. You can read exactly how to build a house having never built one and "know" how to build a house. There is a vast difference between that and actually whats learned while building a house. I have learned a lot by reading but it always pales to what I learned from doing. I would trust the person more who built ten houses compared to a person who read every word written about…

You see the effect every year, with students attempting the transition from teaching labs to actual research. In research you have to step back and use your knowledge in unfamiliar context. It is a big jump.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#66

Post by Falkon1313 »

jpatokal wrote: post #15
tinco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might feel a little different, and surely is convenient and in some cases even essential. I feel the difference in penetration is just because it's easier to provide mobile phone access than it is to provide broadband/wired connection. Of the people that don't have internet, I bet they don't have landlines or broadband TV either. Mobile phones are just incomparable to the advances the internet has brought. The i…

I had access to the Internet long before I got a mobile phone, and it was fascinating, but it didn't rock my world in the same way. This was the Internet before HTTP, browsers and search engines: email was store-and-forward via UUCP (look it up), files were stored in FTP, indexing was via Gopher, and access to it all was via pay-per-minute long distance dial up to girlfriend's mom's account at a VAX box at a universi…

My experience was a bit different. The local university had open-access dial-in numbers, from which you could telenet anywhere, use FTP, Gopher, IRC, Usenet, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, MUDs, email lists, dialout to BBSes, etc. We had lots of informational (and opinion) content, search, newsfeeds with comments, games, chat, and socialization. The main things we didn't have much of were e-commerce, ads, and images/audio/video. My career, many of my hobbies, and lifelong relationships came from that early internet. So it was a life-changer for me.

Mobile phones, on the other hand, didn't change much. Before them, we used the ubiquitous payphones when needed. Beepers briefly became a fad, but that faded out even before mobile phones became common; most people just didn't need constant telephone availability.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#67

Post by jayvanguard »

I'd be interested to hear if he has also looked into any parallels with the pre- and post-telephone generation. I'd imagine that was a similar in many ways, particularly since public airplane transportation came of age in roughly the same era.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#68

Post by tzs »

codeulike wrote: post #8
nul_byte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to information has been a double edged sword as well. I am one of the pre-internet oldies and recall how you had to go to the library, and find the book on the topic you wanted to research. It was a case of hoping it was there and not loaned out already, or too old an edition. Quite often, it would already be loaned out, and you had to wait a week or two and then go back, hoping it had been returned on time. E…

If its a double edged sword, the positive edge is massive and sharp and very useful, and the negative edge of the sword is like a little needle, that perhaps provides a slight pain in the arse now and then. I remember before, and after is so much better.

The negative edge is what allows Donald Trump to be a viable candidate for President of the United States. It allows people with extreme views who before would have not had close contact with more than a handful of people with similar views (and then often only through inefficient means like a monthly newsletter and its letters column) to find each other and effectively organize in groups large enough to have an impact.

The same goes for the anti-vaccination folks, the "climate change is not real" folks, the anti-fluoridation folks, the anti-bike lane/trail and anti-public park people [1], and more.

[1] Yes, they are real. Bike lanes and public parks, they believe, are part of a UN agenda to make cities more attractive so that the population will concentrate in the cities, which will make it easier to impose martial law and confiscate guns. Before the internet this would have been a total joke. Now those people can organize, and show up in large groups at city council meetings considering parks and bike lanes, and get those projects killed.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#69

Post by jobigoud »

jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Mobile phones allow you to connect with your tribe. The Internet allows you to connect with the entire species.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#70

Post by jobigoud »

dghughes wrote: post #34

As a pre-1985 person I think the worst part of the Internet is the know-it-all culture it created. Especially with smartphones with Internet people seem to consider themselves experts in everything. If the topic isn't on the Internet or if the user can't find it then it must not exist or you get a terse request "Source!". The worst part is I get drawn into the culture we all do or most of us anyway. I used to be good…

I think this paradigm shift is extremely important. All that brain space that was allocated to trivia or knowledge is now going to be allocated to meta trivia/knowledge. Tidbits about how to discover more information/knowledge. This is fantastically powerful.
Post reply on HN