Posted on 09/13/2008 2:31:09 PM PDT by bowman11
We watch movies on the internet. Weather, sports, news, Freerepublic, email, etc. The internet knows everything. I’m so much better informed today than I ever was watching CNN.
We were going through a particularly $hort time and had to choose cable or internet. Duh. I do miss Baseball Tonight, and I didn’t watch a single inning of my Cardinals winning the World Series!
Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/876066/posts?page=12;q=1
“CLICK HERE to upload your soul”
Computer World ^ | Personal Computer World magazine, November 1996
Nowadays if we have a slight doubt, we Google it, there is almost no need to use brains.
In all likelihood, in the years before the internet I would have either not worried about not knowing something or had to trudge to the library to get a reference book, most likely and encyclopedia if I was just looking for general knowledge. (And I remember a lot of griping in school about the students using encyclopedias for everything instead of going to original sources on a topic).
Internet has become so much a part of our lives that it is hard to be away from it in any capacity, business deals, money transfers, porn, socializing, property buying & even marriages having started taking place through internet.
Read some of the stuff about the early telegraph. Some of the same complaints (well, except the porn) were around. Even the current complaints about text messaging changing the language had parallel complaints about the brusk, contracted language of the telegraph.
Many of those complaining about the internet are middlemen who are being found to be not as necessary when the internet is around. Do you relish the days of having to deal with a realtor to see a copy of the MLS instead of just entering a price range, region and list of required features to get a list of houses?
While what you suggest is true, it seems to me that to better understand the relationship we have with information processing it should be noted that the personal computer arrived only when there was literally too much information to otherwise efficiently process- in the sense of sort/file/retrieve. Having been born in 1960, by the time I was in third grade the promise of better information handling was already a foregone conclusion - yet it took another decade or so to see it actualized. The personal computer has allowed us to continue a prismatic conversation with each other which is at times quite a bit more verifiable than for instance gossip gleaned around a boardinghouse bathroom in a large city of the twenties. At other times it does a poorer job since you aren’t looking that other person in the eyes anymore. So I do agree with your point. I do think we struggle to put whole human relationships first as a result so it is a double-edged sword. In business it is very important to get out and deal in person with clients and our wives certainly prefer a candlelit dinner or a walk in the park, so as that Greek once taught “Moderation in everything.”
There is no new thing under the sun.
Ha!
Yes, having knowledge at your fingertips is a bad thing.
Yes, now freepers are the smartist people in America.
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