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> I heartily recommend doing the Carousel of Progress ride at Disney World. It’s a quite eye-opening look at how little life has changed in the last 150 years.

> I heartily recommend doing the Carousel of Progress ride at Disney World. It’s a quite eye-opening look at how little life has changed in the last 150 years. I just say: "Internet".

rayiner 8y ago
For the most part, people use the internet to do things they were doing anyway. Netflix is better than cable, but not fundamentally different. (You can tell, because people don’t even use a lot of the advances enabled by the internet. Business people still use phone calls more than video conferencing for example.) Refrigerators or industrial farming had a bigger impact on fundamentally restructuring peoples’ lives than the internet. You could still run most of the modern world without the internet, replacing it with fax and telephone (century old technology at this point). It would be painful but doable. Without refrigerators society as currently structured would collapse.
- arkh 8y ago
  > For the most part, people use the internet to do things they were doing anyway. More than Internet the combination of internet and smartphones. Someone in Africa could get the advice of a doctor in the USA just with the push of a button. People have access to the biggest encyclopedia thanks to a less than a pound item. The fact we can easily have a calculator, GPS system, access to most information in the world, have an audio and video conference with people from all around the world thanks to some small item we carry in our pockets is now taken for granted but it was missed by most scifi writers until the 90s.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >More than Internet the combination of internet and smartphones. Someone in Africa could get the advice of a doctor in the USA just with the push of a button Not like they can afford that advice. Or that it would do them much without treatment. Outside of special upper class cases this just doesn't happen. >People have access to the biggest encyclopedia thanks to a less than a pound item Which they mainly use to settle BS quarrels about who did what, and to serve as a replacement from actually studying something...
- tomjen3 8y ago
  You mentioned industrial farming and fridges, yet the combine harvester is just a better scythe, right? I mean both are used to harvest fields. The fridge is an icebox that can make its own ice. Business people may use phone calls over video conferencing, but I am willing to bet that they schedule those calls with computers, with telephone numbers they get through a computer system, which also keeps track of their notes, documents, needs and other information. Video calls are probably simply not a good idea, but I have been in many online many-to-many meetings. Not only is it far more flexible, but it is plain easier to see shared documents and presentations when you can see it on your own screen than on some projector partly obscured by some coworkers head. As for Netflix, it is fundamentally different compared to TV in that it puts you in control of what you want to see and when. I realize there are cable boxes now that allow you to do the same in a limited fashion, but those wouldn't have been developed without netflix, and most of them require the internet to deliver those features.
- gaius 8y ago
  Netflix is better than cable, but not fundamentally different I was thinking about this the other day. I take streaming 4K video completely for granted, but I marvel at the system of pipes that delivers natural gas and fresh drinking water to my house.
coldtea 8y ago
Which compared to having running water, electricity, and phones is an irrelevant incremental change. Consider that in the 80s people didn't have internet and yet the life was not that different from today.

> I heartily recommend doing the Carousel of Progress ride at Disney World. It’s a quite eye-opening look at how little life has changed in the last 150 years. I just say: "Internet".

rayiner 8y ago

For the most part, people use the internet to do things they were doing anyway. Netflix is better than cable, but not fundamentally different. (You can tell, because people don’t even use a lot of the advances enabled by the internet. Business people still use phone calls more than video conferencing for example.) Refrigerators or industrial farming had a bigger impact on fundamentally restructuring peoples’ lives than the internet. You could still run most of the modern world without the internet, replacing it with fax and telephone (century old technology at this point). It would be painful but doable. Without refrigerators society as currently structured would collapse.

arkh 8y ago
> For the most part, people use the internet to do things they were doing anyway. More than Internet the combination of internet and smartphones. Someone in Africa could get the advice of a doctor in the USA just with the push of a button. People have access to the biggest encyclopedia thanks to a less than a pound item. The fact we can easily have a calculator, GPS system, access to most information in the world, have an audio and video conference with people from all around the world thanks to some small item we carry in our pockets is now taken for granted but it was missed by most scifi writers until the 90s.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >More than Internet the combination of internet and smartphones. Someone in Africa could get the advice of a doctor in the USA just with the push of a button Not like they can afford that advice. Or that it would do them much without treatment. Outside of special upper class cases this just doesn't happen. >People have access to the biggest encyclopedia thanks to a less than a pound item Which they mainly use to settle BS quarrels about who did what, and to serve as a replacement from actually studying something...
tomjen3 8y ago
You mentioned industrial farming and fridges, yet the combine harvester is just a better scythe, right? I mean both are used to harvest fields. The fridge is an icebox that can make its own ice. Business people may use phone calls over video conferencing, but I am willing to bet that they schedule those calls with computers, with telephone numbers they get through a computer system, which also keeps track of their notes, documents, needs and other information. Video calls are probably simply not a good idea, but I have been in many online many-to-many meetings. Not only is it far more flexible, but it is plain easier to see shared documents and presentations when you can see it on your own screen than on some projector partly obscured by some coworkers head. As for Netflix, it is fundamentally different compared to TV in that it puts you in control of what you want to see and when. I realize there are cable boxes now that allow you to do the same in a limited fashion, but those wouldn't have been developed without netflix, and most of them require the internet to deliver those features.
gaius 8y ago
Netflix is better than cable, but not fundamentally different I was thinking about this the other day. I take streaming 4K video completely for granted, but I marvel at the system of pipes that delivers natural gas and fresh drinking water to my house.

coldtea 8y ago

Which compared to having running water, electricity, and phones is an irrelevant incremental change. Consider that in the 80s people didn't have internet and yet the life was not that different from today.