I definitely notice that wonder has died with a lot of people. Luckily I try to be a luddite and enjoy life without tech as well as with. Still have tons of books. Shut the internet off every so often.
All you needed to do was get up off your arse, travel to a library, (business hours only), and dig through a card catalog for outdated information on the subject you were interested in. Bonus difficulty: Needing to wait a week for your library to get the outdated book you needed because it was in a different town.
Today all information is available at any time-- 24/7365. Bonus difficulty: Sorting through all the AI bullshit to glean the correct information on a subject you know very little about.
Y’all heard of librarians right? They do a little more than stack books. Most are accredited professional researchers who can find what you’re looking for, or try to get it for you.
Talk to more humans and kindly please support your local libraries.
It blows my mind that people don’t know you need a master of library science to be a librarian. I still remember some reddit chucklefuck talking shit about librarians and literally stating that it’s not like they even need college degrees.
I mean I'm not gonna go ask a librarian how big of a laser I'd need to destroy the moon or why "1"+" 1" is "11" but "1"-" 1" is 0 in JavaScript
And you still have to go to a university library if you want any scientific papers and research knowledge, because most of it is behind a paywall and only universities can afford to subscribe to the journals.
I was watching an old movie last night and there were short references to odd things like one was a book from the 1890s.
When I saw the movie for the first time back in the 1980s I probably had no idea why the book was referenced and would have assumed it was made up as filler.
Now, armed with the internet, I can look it up and immediately understand that the script was still trash.
Libraries, man, don't let the concept die.
As someone who was definitely born with internet being a standard in my house and school as a child, this is sad. I loved going to the library every week with my dad and older sister, and we both loved encyclopedias and non-fiction books about animals and stuff. Recently I had to use my college library for a practice exercise for my Eng class and once we learned the system they use (it's not Dewey Decimal), my partner and I had a blast looking for books for our papers. It was fun, honestly. It really made me realize that sometimes the internet is less efficient for finding quality and trusted information rather than perusing the library catalogue (which I can do online too obvs).
You had... a dictionary at home, maybe an encyclopedia, but if you didn't you could call a librarian and ask them if they had any reference on any topic. It took minutes when they were opened rather than seconds any time but... no ads, no tracking, serendipity yet no distraction, was it actually worst then?
Call for minutes!? That was expensive and in my small town everyone would know what i was searching for in no time.
Assuming you lived in a place with access to a library like you mentioned, that is. For me, libraries were a once a month thing growing up.
Where I am, I don't think there are many towns without a library. I grew up laminate poor in the 90s, and even we had encyclopedias.
*I was going to say dirt poor, like dirt floor poor, and the basement was dirt and stone, but the kitchen had laminate. So it was more like post economic boom poor. Laminate poor, eh eh
I could imagine some more rural areas of the world not having access to libraries in their town, or being too broke to afford encyclopedias and other books, or having parents who don't put importance on it. I've met too many parents today in that last group.
Even so, I used my school's library more than the town one growing up. I'd hope your school had one
When I was introduced to Google, my relatives were using it to look up video game cheat codes. I think we even looked up walk through for Driver. That tutorial was absurdly fucking difficult. A group of like 10 people couldn’t complete it for hours.
Encyclopedia Britannica was the answer.
I had my own head to reach wrong, and life-destroying conclussions with. No AI to break me out at the time.
conclussion
/kən-klŭsh′ən/
noun
When the [probably wrong] answer, or its immediate consequence, hits you like a brick
I know too many people who do the same thing despite having smartphones.
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