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I think a lot of the things that we take for granted today exist because people in the past were bored out of their minds and the only way to alleviate that bor

by 300bps 5y ago

I think a lot of the things that we take for granted today exist because people in the past were bored out of their minds and the only way to alleviate that boredom was to discover or create things. When I turned on my Commodore 64 when I was 10 years old it did nothing. As a consequence I would spend all day manually typing in BASIC and Assembler source code from magazines. I quickly became an expert at BASIC and Assembler programming. 10 year-olds today flip a computer on and in a matter of minutes can play Minecraft, have access to unlimited videos on YouTube and an almost infinite array of boredom-busting games and other entertainment. Everyone in our society is impacted by this to varying degrees steering us from the role of creators to consumers.

honkycat 5y ago
I also think turning our schools into jails for young people doesn't help. It was dystopic during my time in school and it has somehow gotten even worse. Most schools at this point are also running on fumes. It is constant triage and really exists as day-care more than actual education for many students. My experience growing up: You sit in a room full of other young people while listening to a burned-out teacher drone on for 8 hours a day. 9 hours if you want to do extracurricular. Add on organized sports, homework, volunteering, standardized test prep, and all the other things you need to do to get into a good college these days, and what time are young people actually supposed to create things? Personally, I am tired after 8 hours of a pretty great job every day. Imagine how exhausting SCHOOL is.
GordonS 5y ago
> When I turned on my Commodore 64 when I was 10 years old it did nothing. As a consequence I would spend all day manually typing in BASIC and Assembler source code from magazines. I quickly became an expert at BASIC and Assembler programming. Heh, I remember doing exactly the same thing when I was something like 6 years old, typing in reams of code from a magazine, the name of which has been lost to time. I was absolutely fascinated that I could get this new and exciting piece of technology to do my bidding - even if what I was doing was laughable simple compared to what is possible now. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if my dad hadn't bought that C64...

by 300bps 5y ago

honkycat 5y ago

I also think turning our schools into jails for young people doesn't help. It was dystopic during my time in school and it has somehow gotten even worse. Most schools at this point are also running on fumes. It is constant triage and really exists as day-care more than actual education for many students. My experience growing up: You sit in a room full of other young people while listening to a burned-out teacher drone on for 8 hours a day. 9 hours if you want to do extracurricular. Add on organized sports, homework, volunteering, standardized test prep, and all the other things you need to do to get into a good college these days, and what time are young people actually supposed to create things? Personally, I am tired after 8 hours of a pretty great job every day. Imagine how exhausting SCHOOL is.

GordonS 5y ago

> When I turned on my Commodore 64 when I was 10 years old it did nothing. As a consequence I would spend all day manually typing in BASIC and Assembler source code from magazines. I quickly became an expert at BASIC and Assembler programming. Heh, I remember doing exactly the same thing when I was something like 6 years old, typing in reams of code from a magazine, the name of which has been lost to time. I was absolutely fascinated that I could get this new and exciting piece of technology to do my bidding - even if what I was doing was laughable simple compared to what is possible now. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if my dad hadn't bought that C64...