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I hear that line of reasoning frequently and Im not sure it has a leg to stand on. Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not

I hear that line of reasoning frequently and Im not sure it has a leg to stand on. Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? My personal hypothesis (although Im not as familiar with more rigorous investigation into the subject) is reactionary culture in the "first world" is less to do with content accessibility and more to do with availability of time as compared to the signal to noise ratio of our information sources. It's not that people are becoming less informed than the past, just that we have many more tools at our disposal to find conflicting information. It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past.

coldtea 10y ago
>Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. Which is beside the point, since the parent talks of a pre-telegraph terse text culture, not a telegraph one. >And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? No, the idea is that there was deeper involvement into the available information -- instead of always skimming it, which ends up not delving enough into anything. >It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past. It's even more dangerous to think of history as a kind of monotonic progress across all sectors (as opposed to just the technological one).

coldtea 10y ago

>Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. Which is beside the point, since the parent talks of a pre-telegraph terse text culture, not a telegraph one. >And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? No, the idea is that there was deeper involvement into the available information -- instead of always skimming it, which ends up not delving enough into anything. >It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past. It's even more dangerous to think of history as a kind of monotonic progress across all sectors (as opposed to just the technological one).