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It's amazing how much information is contained in pre-Internet, unscanned maps. In college, I built a military model of the French Weygand Line in June 1940. T

by ethbr0 5y ago

It's amazing how much information is contained in pre-Internet, unscanned maps. In college, I built a military model of the French Weygand Line in June 1940. There was very little digital map data as of that date. A trip to the library, and I was able to find a high-resolution map, including larger buildings and vegetation in towns. Which makes sense, because maps were more or less the pre-Internet Internet of synthesized data.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago
I have been reading some books by Peter Hopkirk, an amateur historian covering The Great Game[0], and what's amazing to me from reading his books is how much effort it took to get even basic knowledge of the geography of Central Asia (I'm sure it was similar in other parts of the world). Things that we now would find trivial due to airplanes and satellite imagery required years of exploration and time-consuming, detailed surveying took years of effort by men who're basically unknown today. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game
- ethbr0 5y ago
  It's mind boggling. Even in the age of text, Gibbon spent 10 years writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (~1776-1787). I think that's the fundamental shift that the writing, and then the printing press and then global information networks, produced. Suddenly the ratio of time_to_share : time_to_discover was permanently decreased, to the benefit of all of humanity. Contrast with an oral tradition, transmitted via apprenticeship.
moshmosh 5y ago
You don't have to get too far off the beaten path to hit material that's only even mentioned in books, and you'd never even know exists if you only used the Web. The Web is pretty damn shallow for, especially, history and social science, in my experience. It's great if you want to look up math stuff, I guess. For social science it seems fastest way to get into a topic is just use the Web to find one decent, recent book on the topic, get it, then write down all the books & sources that book name-drops in its introduction as important or notable, and go get them. College course syllabi can also be useful if you're really starting from scratch (especially for finding that first book). If you try to stick with the Web you'll just spin your wheels.

by ethbr0 5y ago

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

I have been reading some books by Peter Hopkirk, an amateur historian covering The Great Game[0], and what's amazing to me from reading his books is how much effort it took to get even basic knowledge of the geography of Central Asia (I'm sure it was similar in other parts of the world). Things that we now would find trivial due to airplanes and satellite imagery required years of exploration and time-consuming, detailed surveying took years of effort by men who're basically unknown today. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

ethbr0 5y ago
It's mind boggling. Even in the age of text, Gibbon spent 10 years writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (~1776-1787). I think that's the fundamental shift that the writing, and then the printing press and then global information networks, produced. Suddenly the ratio of time_to_share : time_to_discover was permanently decreased, to the benefit of all of humanity. Contrast with an oral tradition, transmitted via apprenticeship.

moshmosh 5y ago

You don't have to get too far off the beaten path to hit material that's only even mentioned in books, and you'd never even know exists if you only used the Web. The Web is pretty damn shallow for, especially, history and social science, in my experience. It's great if you want to look up math stuff, I guess. For social science it seems fastest way to get into a topic is just use the Web to find one decent, recent book on the topic, get it, then write down all the books & sources that book name-drops in its introduction as important or notable, and go get them. College course syllabi can also be useful if you're really starting from scratch (especially for finding that first book). If you try to stick with the Web you'll just spin your wheels.