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
Libraries and encyclopedias. We had a set of encyclopedias, New World I think, and much later got Brittanica on CD-ROM.
I lived in Pittsburgh during my formative years. Pittsburgh has an awesome library system, with world class libraries like the Carnegie library, and each universitie’s libraries, plus all the local libraries. I spent quite a bit of time in these. The net adds convenience, and some niche things, but it’s not the information, it’s having it in your pocket.
Also, you have to sift through a lot of bullshit.
What did you think we had encyclopedias for?!
Weapons?
Nah, that’s what the yellow pages were for. And to be able to see over the steering wheel for our vertically challenged friends. And to start fires in the fireplace at Christmas, just tear the pages out.
“vertically challenged” hahahah
The library is how people learned things before a search engine came and ruined people’s ability to find things on their own. Dewey Decimal, bitch.
And now LLMs came and ruined people ability to think. Idiocracy was a prophecy CMV.
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).
This comic is stupid, and likely a made to farm comments and up votes, if there weren’t enough curious people willing to put in effort to learn we wouldn’t have advanced as much as we have today and no doubt Google makes looking things up easier, but look around you, how many people actually bother to even do that, plus it also makes it easier to find results that people can feed into their own misinformation, that they’ve predecided is the right answer
For context, this comic was made before Google changed their company motto away from, “Don’t be evil”. There was a sense that they might not turn evil back then and they were still giving reasonable search results based on your query.
I thought the comic was supposed to be funny. I found it amusing. Maybe I’m just dumb lol. But I mean, I used to read the dictionary and especially the encyclopedia, go to the library, all sorts of stuff before the internet. It was fun.
I’m actually thinking about getting a full set of encyclopedias for the house so my 12 year old can use them. He just asked me as I was typing, “are moles nocturnal?” Lol.
I think it helps with spelling/critical thinking to look things up in physical books, and more importantly, I don’t have to be standing over his shoulder as he looks for information, as my son just can’t get the hang of internet safety yet…
He’s absolutely spent time reading the dictionary, he was reading it often between ages 6-8. I thought it was super adorable the first time I saw him doing it. I consider myself pretty dumb too, but being able to seek information properly is so important; “I may not know the answer, but I can try and find it” is core critical thinking in practice.
Of course, this doesn’t apply in the same way when the child/young mind is just typing the question into a chat box for an easy answer, all the while autocorrect is fixing every spelling/grammar error for them. Books man, the easiest parental control there is for learning imo
Libraries, man, don’t let the concept die.
That’s dumb. Houses I recall from childhood in the '80s were filled with books. Encyclopedias for kids, books about animals, history, etc. Libraries were a walk away. Schools had libraries (and in my case, the librarian looked just like Janet from Three’s Company and built the same. I was at the library a lot.). TV had plenty of educational stuff.
And how’s the newfangled Google knowledge world panning out so far? Lots of people getting informed?
I grew up poor and we couldn’t afford a set of encyclopedias. We lived in the country so libraries were not a walk away. I never even thought to ask my friends if they had encyclopedias when visiting their houses and having this happen.
Encyclopedias were also somewhat limited. It could be useful if you were wondering what the main export of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was, but if you were wondering what strategy to use to beat the final boss in Ninja Gaiden you were likely out of luck (I know, I know, these are terrible examples It’s 3:30am, cut me some slack).
TV had plenty of educational stuff
Sure, but it’s not like you could be sitting there with your friend and be like “I wonder what the most common name in the world is?” and turn on the TV to the answer to your question.
Plus you weren’t always at somebodies house, you could be on a hike or at the lake and think of a question.
There were a lot of times back in the day where I would think of an interesting question and then by the time I got to a place where I could research it, I had forgotten all about it. I guess I could have and probably should have carried around a little notebook and wrote those questions down. Hindsight is 20/20
And how’s the newfangled Google knowledge world panning out so far? Lots of people getting informed?
Pretty great honestly. I can’t speak for other people but now when I have one of those “I wonder about X topic” moments I actually just look up the answer.
It even took me a while to catch up to the fact that it was now an option. I remember several times when I first got a smart phone and I would have the “I just thought of something I would like to know more about” experience and then forget that I had the ability to find out an embarrassing amount of times before it finally got to the point where it’s second nature to look it up now.
you mean houses you go to now aren’t filled with books? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least a small book shelf.
Nope. Far fewer. Houses are built to be showcases for expensive appliances these days.
ah, well, I’m also of a demographic that doesn’t know anybody with a new house either.
When I moved in 2016 I didn’t have a place to bring all my books so I got rid of my bookcase and most of my books. I filled a suitcase with what I kept and I think that suitcase with what I refused to get rid of at the time. After another couple moves that suitcase kept getting lighter. Eventually if I own a house I’ll start collecting again
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.
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.
I really wish this just said life before the internet.
Encyclopedia Britannica was the answer.
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
I’d appreciate those questions as a librarian. Problem is finding a publisher who was willing to print that information.
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.
Don’t you know the Dewey decimal system?
How to say you’re young without saying you’re young, lol. Some people, boomers even, remember a time before Google existed and people used other search engines.
I’d askjeeves all sorts of things. Or hotbot. Or yahoo. I think MSN even had one. I think the term Google is the same as Bandaid at this point, and synonymous with Internet search.
I appreciate the sentiment though. Did many research papers in school where it was go to library, get books, quote them, place citation in bibliography. I enter high school in 2001 and Wikipedia is a thing, and that was that. We had been “allowed” to cite websites at that point, and while Wikipedia was off limits, some of us would just jump down the wiki article to it’s citations and use those.
But yeah, I remember the days of writing papers in a library, that or using Encarta. Encyclopedia Brittanica or Encarta.
And before that we had tiny wikipedia’s written on paper.
Or you could ask that one friend
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.
