• Mixairian@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    94
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m just going to steal the response I read years ago.

    “I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.”

    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’ve started l to realize that actual information worth reading is not available. Like I cant access in depth medical course or text book in engineering. Lots of beginner tutorials marketed as 7 minute abs.

      Information is valuable and nobody gives it away for free. We have access to a worlds worth of crappy, unvetted trash information. But the vast majority of the good stuff is still locked away as it always was.

      • irkli@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        Wow not my experience at all. Fkn amazing access to nearly anything I want and I’ve been a programmer electronics tech, car hacker whatever and the resources available to me is AWESOME! And I’ve posted 5000 pages onycown website.

      • paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        Does MIT not have open courses anymore? Besides that I wonder what you are looking for? I can find free scientific papers to improve my hobbies, watch along as professionals explain and do their jobs, graduate level math and computer science videos from the comfort of my home. As a student around 2000 (Google existed, barely) it was not so easy, even with access to university library you still had to find what you were looking for with worse tools and there was less of it. And who on earth was going to take the time to show you exactly how it worked their lab a thousand miles away? Once a week you could go to a seminar and a visiting scientist gives a slideshow. It’s better now.

        • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Opencourseware is great. But what they’re a rarity instead of the norm. I think Stanford posted lectures for a bit too. Good sources of information exist. Just like there is research we all can access but there’s not as much as it appears without having to resort to piracy.

          It became clearer to me when writing and researching topics. I still had to go to the university library and pour through books. Because that quality of information in their library is not there online. The internet didn’t replicate that knowledge. It gave us a surface level blog about topics. Don’t get me wrong. I know there’s lots of blogs and people giving in depth research for free on their speciality. But its still not a good source of knowledge like exists in academic libraries.

        • thegreatgarbo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          As an oncology researcher, to do my job I have to pay approximately $30-60 per article for about half the articles in my 1500 article library for my CAR cell therapy research.

          The scientific field is slowly improving over the last 10 years, but it still sucks, and I can only read the abstract for free, which doesn’t provide enough details for my layperson research on topics like behavior or autophagy.

          I’m one of the lucky few that has an institutional subscription, and most companies don’t pay for institutional subscriptions. Also, I can’t, as someone suggested, hack into the University wifi which is a half hour away and still do my job onsite.

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Most of the courses at MIT are free. Most information is free these days in fact. The world has never had access to more free knowledge.

      • Methylman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Like I cant access in depth medical course or text book in engineering

        Why not? The common ‘hack’ is to join the wifi at your local uni if you don’t have the necessary subscriptions for the platform but lots of stuff is open-access

        • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          That’s true but what I meant was that when I went to school it opened my eyes to how there is internet information and then there’s this other academic information. My own opinion is that I see a distinction between what I can learn online vs what I can learn with a text book. The internet is good at making me think I’m getting this massive access to knowledge when its really more superficial factoids rather than actually knowledge. And that’s because knowledge is sold like anything else

              • Methylman@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Since you mentioned you went to a school already (and assuming you meant some kind of post-secondary school); I do think it’s outrageous that some schools limit full library access to only the time one is completing their studies. Lots of former students would benefit and since anyone with access through their employers is likely using the employer’s library access, I can’t imagine former students would significantly increase the cost of maintaining database access…

                I got lucky and still have access through the alumni association at my uni, but I don’t believe that’s true at all schools.

              • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                depends a bit on the text book and library, but yes. that’s kind of the point of university libraries (which you normally can also visit, as far as I am aware)

                In fact, I just checked: my local uni library will give you a membership card for only a handful of bucks a year

      • Ogmios@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not hard to access information that is either relevant to popular culture or economically significant. Everything else is hit or miss.

    • plain_and_simply@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      This does make me think. I remember the days where I would turn up at the library to read books. With my phone, I can read and learn but instead I doom scroll.

      • Mixairian@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I don’t know if the Internet has made folks dumber per se. What we may be experiencing is the visibility of semi anonymous unfiltered thought. I’ve had conversations with individuals online who have made claims that are egregiously incorrect and will defend those claims to the death but when discussed in person, they are amenable to discourse and can change their opinions.

        I’m not saying this is true for all cases but I think the is a lot more going on here in our digital age.

        Edit: removed an embarrassing typo.

        • yiliu@informis.land
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Nah, I’m sure it hasn’t. It just seems like it has.

          Part of it is the fact that it’s easier for people speak freely to an audience, and…maybe some of them shouldn’t…

          There’s also the fact that it’s a lot easier to consider oneself an expert. For better or worse, respect for authority has plummeted, and there’s so much information that anybody can find citations for just about any claim.

          If you don’t believe me, I can link you to some articles about it…

  • EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    89
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    “Yes, they are allowed to be on the same bus as us. No, we don’t call them that anymore”

  • struds@sopuli.xyzB
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    86
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Things they considered morally fine (smoking, dropping litter, 40 year olds dating 16 year olds) is morally reprehensible, while things they thought were morally wrong or even outlawed are totally acceptable (homosexually, porn, divorce).

    • gk99@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This is the 50s, I think it’d be pretty easy to draw a line from casual racism to white supremacists. A key difference this time is that it’s not just Germans led by one insane man, it’s instead a bunch of redneck prices and conspiracy theorists.

    • w00tabaga@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s easy, people still wave the Confederate flag and that happened 90 years before the 1950’s.

      • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ironically, the confederate worship started in the 50’s and 60’s during the civil rights era. It was basically a rebellion against the civil rights movement, and an attempt to intimidate black people back into silence. Like “oh you want to use the same bathroom as us now? Well you can’t stop us from erecting this statue of a confederate general, to constantly remind you where you came from.” So depending on when exactly they came from in the 50’s, the confederate stuff may also be a surprise.

    • whatsarefoogee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I presume you’re not talking about Russia? You’re going to have a hard time showing them those Nazis.

      A person from 1950s will just be super confused when you say it because they’re going to ask you what country is Nazi. If you say the US they’ll just be confused further.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 year ago

      “You’re telling me there was a black president and he wasn’t assassinated? Sure, buddy! Now let me get back to my sharecropping.”

  • Hypersapien@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    We walk around with a little rectangle in our pocket that gives us access to the sum total of human knowledge, but we mostly use it for looking at funny captioned pictures, the same pictures over and over just with different captions.

    It’s called a phone but no one ever uses it as one.

    • irinotecan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      Also, the “video telephone” that everyone always so desperately awaited from the future? Yeah, we have that; no, nobody uses it, because we can’t be bothered to dress up for a phone call.

      • PassingDuchy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        I also thought no one used facetime until I worked retail recently… The amount of people I saw come in on a facetime calls where they both just had their cameras pointed at the ceiling was bizarre and boggling.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Tell that to the tonnes of people that facetious in public but neither them nor the person they are calling are actually in frame

    • FReddit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      That pretty much sums it up.

      The phone never leaves my side, but I dread getting an actual phone call.

  • Blastoid5000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    39
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    #3 Why we still haven’t got colonies on the moon

    #2 Climate change

    #1 That fascism is back

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      they knew about climate change in the 50’s- actually, greenhouse gases were first proposed in the 1820s.

    • PsychedSy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      You’d think most of them are more fascist than the people you consider fascist now. Remember what England did to Alan Turing. They’d be amazed we let women and minorities work with us and we don’t persecute gays. They’d think the commies won.

  • AlataOrange@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I’m going to go on a different angle on this one and say that we are much tougher on sexual harassment. I feel like a lot of people from the 1950s who have grown up on pulp sci-fi like Flash Gordon could accept a lot of modern technology and the internet as basically just magic. To be fair is how a lot of modern people also accept it. But I don’t think they would be able to process the move towards egalitarianism that we have taken.

    That is not to say that modern society is egalitarian only that we have made good strides in achieving that aim.

    Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.

    • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.

      Live action Flash Gordon was from the 50s

  • eudoxus@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Most difficult imho would be to explain why we haven’t advanced any further. If the person is 50 in 1950 he started with horse carriages and saw development to intercontinental bombers, rockets etc. The landing on moon would astonish him, advances in medical sciences and computing too but he probably would ask: “And what are you using that neat little gadgets for?”

    • Burninator05@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m using this little gadget for all my banking needs, a significant amount of my shopping, to stay instantly connected with friends/family and strangers with common interests all around the world, to almost instantly find information on almost any topic, to watch any of a hundred thousand movies or TV shows instantly on demand, and it’s also a telephone.

    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think you’re severely underestimating how our daily lives have advanced. We’ve advanced so far that we don’t even regularly use the thing that would blow the mind of someone from the 50s, like calling someone on the phone. Calling someone with your phone would already blow their mind, because the first handheld phone didn’t happen until the 70s. But we don’t really call people anymore. We send instant messages or if we want “a call” we do video calls, which is guaranteed to blow their mind because a) most people in the 50s had a black and white television, so being able to see colored picture in real time is just next level shit, b) you can see someone else in real time on the other side of the planet and c) it’s going to feel like you’re there because the image quality from the 50s is like a cave painting compared to what we have today. And that’s just calling someone. Imagine what else would blow their mind, modern cars probably.

      • eudoxus@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Maybe I’m underestimating individual benefits of digitalisation. But I tried to remember talks with my grandfather. He was born in 1912 and lived to the age of 87. He could remember the coronation of the last austrian-hungarian emperor Karl. People then were not as individualistic as we are today. Technological, social or cultural advancements were seen more on a collective scale. The mere possibility of calling or texting someone didn’t impress or astonish him much. Especially in the 50’s and 60’s promises of a bright and shiny future were made. Just think of the exploration of space or the deep sea with proposed bases on moon, mars or the seabed. It wasn’t called the atomic age for nothing. What I experienced was that those now long dead relatives appreciated the individual improvements of their lives but they felt a certain slow down in regard to an overall progress of society.

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Also, remember that the previous generations versions of a “phone call” was the mail, or sailing across on ocean, or being carried by a horse, or even walking for years or decades to get to the person you want to make contact with.

      • saltybrownsfan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        This I disagree with. Porn has always been widely available throughout human history, it just wasn’t as widely openly available and distributed as today. Case in point, my grandfather died in Vietnam back in '63, all of his barracks stuff went into a box that was sent home. My grandmother never opened it, to the extent it was still sealed with navy tape from the 60’s. When she died, my father didn’t even know it was in the attic.

        When he passed back in '15, I was cleaning out this attic and found the box. Ontop some actually really cool shit- you guessed it, I found a literal shitload of vintage porn. Grampy was dropping loads left and right with these bitches. A LOT of hair back in the day I might add.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    That shitty actor from Bedtime for Bonzo becomes president.