14 ms·

30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally mov

30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. One way to tell whether you're in an 80s house would be to look around for reference books, encyclopedias, rolodexes, filing cabinets. If you wanted to know more about something, you probably had to go to a library, which might not even have a book on the topic (maybe if you were particularly determined to know the answer you'd wait a few weeks for an ILL). Its a bit sad to me that you look at this enormous sea change in how we interact with the world and see Angry Birds.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tunesmith 4y ago
I think your last sentence is unnecessary. What purpose does it serve?
- burnished 4y ago
  It relates the audience and the author on an emotional level.
- majewsky 4y ago
  Once an argument has been laid out in detail, providing a poignant summary in one sentence leaves a more lasting impression on the reader.
  - fieldcny 4y ago
    So your argument is that all technical advancement in the last 50/60 years is just marketing? That’s a pretty bold statement supported by literally nothing, just because you don’t feel like certain tech has added anything doesn’t mean it hasn’t. Productivity is an incredibly hard thing to capture, especially with the move to away from manufacturing and physical production. One could easily argue that the productivity numbers are failing to increase because technology has lowered the barriers to entry all over the world so now there’s more competition for every good and service creating pricing pressure on the “value of goods and services produced”
    - troon-lover 4y ago
    - burnished 4y ago
      I think you may have replied to the wrong person? Your comment is on topic for the tree, but doesn't appear to apply at all to the person you directly replied to.
tablespoon 4y ago
> 30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. Honestly, it seems like you're just picking some incremental or marginal technological changes that happened, then promoting them to something more fundamental than they really are. Electric cars? Come on. They're barely even a change from a consumer perspective. Someone from 1950 wouldn't even notice the difference, unless you told them exactly what they were looking at. And some of those other things are debatable. For instance: I deliberately stopped using GPS for several years, because I realized it was preventing me from building up geographic/navigational knowledge, and instead was just training me to follow instructions blindly and never learn anything (e.g. by picking weird routes that were marginally faster but very difficult to systematize). [Edit: The following is about non-map online information.] The computerized "knowledge at your fingertips" is a common slogan of computer-age propaganda, but it's probably true that a greater fraction of that "knowledge" is in fact garbage and overall may just be a marginal improvement. Sufficiently advanced marketing is indistinguishable from technological progress.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  Personally I try to turn GPS off as much as possible but I also frequently consult it even for routes that I know well. And come on, maps are excellent, there's no garbage there. Last weekend I was frustrated that Google was unaware of a road reroute but that is leaps and bounds ahead of the days of paper maps. Yeah, there's a lot of garbage on the Internet but it's also remarkably easy to find high-quality information. The change over even 10 years ago is also really dramatic for how I use public transit, since I not only know where I am but where the vehicles I'm planning on getting into are so I can reroute that way. It's only in the past 5 years or so that the data has gotten reliable enough that I trust it to use in that way.
  - fieldcny 4y ago
    I agree that GPS and maps/directions are a magnificent improvement. I remember what it was like to get lost, and be lost for hours, late at night nothing open, no one but unsavory characters out. I remember how hard long trips could be even with maps or trip-tiks from AAA (which were awesome) GPS enables all sort logistics, it allows transport companies to ensure trucks are driven safely, to know when and where goods in transit are there is an entire world of productivity improvement right there.
chrisco255 4y ago
GPS is nice and all, but I would not say we move vastly differently compared to 30 years ago or even 70 years ago (basically, since interstate highways were developed). And electric motors are just a horizontal change in technology. They may have better acceleration than ICEs, but we're still going to be fundamentally traveling the same way. Only if and when self-driving becomes a thing, or personal drone transport vehicles become widespread, or cheap tunnels enabled by electric vehicles, would you be able to argue that a fundamental shift in how we move has occurred. That may be all just around the corner, or those dreams could go the way of the dream of the flying car in the 50s. We definitely communicate vastly different than 30 years ago and prior.
- nwienert 4y ago
  I upgraded from a 95 4Runner to a 22 Outlander and it’s like a spaceship on wheels in comparison. Literally every piece of the car is in a different class and the tech is insane that just didn’t exist then, I mean it basically drives itself. It’s dramatically safer, more efficient, comfier, faster, quieter. I no longer hate long drives, they’re quite nice. The speakers are amazing and the road noise is basically gone. I can stream anything, talk to friends anywhere in the world while driving, massage and heat my back, and do it all with half the gas at a cost that’s equivalent to the 4Runner when it was new back then. It also goes 110 as comfortably as the 4Runner would do about 60, and breezes up hills that the latter would break a sweat on. I press a button for roadside assistance, I lock and start/stop it from my phone, I don’t have to bother with the key, the list just never ends. Meanwhile a car from 1965 honestly is a lot more similar to a 95 than a 95 to today.
  - nosianu 4y ago
    The main point though is that you don't accomplish more. You get from A to B in about the same time. How much you like the experience does not change that there is not really a difference in the outcomes. I find it regrettable that sooo many comments focusing on "like" rather than actual hard results. The original topic is about the latter, not about the subjective experiences. And for results, a 1960s care got you from A to B pretty much the same as a 2022 one. That does not make the subjective aspect invalid, but I would at least like to see some self-awareness in comments that we are talking about at least two separate things, and arguments for one are not useful for the other. . Recently I also found myself thinking about another aspect. It was when I looked at the tram station not far form my house, which for a year or so has been upgraded to have a display with the expected arrival times of the next three trams. It sure is very convenient! However, compared to a similar transport system of fifty years ago, which achieved the same thing, we now have a lot of additional effort to maintain such infrastructure. It got waayyyy more complex, all the electronics, and software has to be written and maintained, screens installed and maintained, computer infrastructure - all just for some slight improvement in convenience. Is it worth it? I have no conclusion, I just have to think about that when I hear yet another "we need more 'Fachkräfte'" (skilled workers). How many people do we need for mostly just minor convenience upgrades? Sure, the transport system also can get more efficient with things like those displays. But here again, A LOT of additional effort, planning and thinking has to go into it for such gains to not just be theoretical. If we can afford it - sure, why not. It's just that I have to think about the challenges ahead: The more stuff we produce and have to use energy on the worse for climate change and resource use. I think it is good when new stuff is tried, but I have doubts that all those many minor "upgrades" are worth spreading so far. The effort for minor gains is gigantic, and we don't have free power, overabundance of skilled workers and free (material) resources (yet?). How much worse would for example said city tram system really be with less sophistication and IT? I've become a bit skeptical about my own line of work. IT is nice and all and I love it, but it also takes a lot of effort to prepare and also to maintain. Here took, too many only look at the gains, which of course do exist. But there is a bias "newer and more complex is better" IMO. Very much related: "Humans solve problems by adding complexity, even when it’s against our best interests" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/bias-problem-solving-nature/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/bias-prob... Nature (paywall, try Sci-Hub): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00592-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00592-0 > Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving > A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient. I think our economic and financial system is an additional driver. Not doing something is "being lazy" and is punished (unless you are wealthy already). If you manage to sell stuff that is useless or even detrimental, you are fine, and there still is a wide gap between this and doing something criminal. It looks to me like our own biases and our society and systems push us towards increasing complexity just for complexity's sake. Then come the biases that let us find the justifications but not see the downsides nearly as clearly. We also have a huge bias for measurable/quantifiable outcomes, and what things with an attachment to money. All this complexity relies on huge supply chains also for maintenance. Given the possible issues ahead, both political and climate, maybe less complexity and more locality and less international-network requirement might be a good idea.
malloryerik 4y ago
> If you missed a turn, god help you. People had lots and lots of paper maps. Every gas station had a rack of them. You'd probably have had a good spiral-bound one of your entire region in your car. Wrong turn? Just check the map and save God's help for later.
- lazide 4y ago
  Eh, everyone I knew got lost and then tried to figure out where on the paper map they were while trying to not get into an accident. GPS, you just wait a second for it to update and you barely miss a beat.
  - malloryerik 4y ago
    Yeah, sounds true enough.
  - kqr 4y ago
    This sounds like poor navigation skills to me. You should be able to find out roughly where on the map you are purely by dead reckoning. So maybe if we by "productivity" mean "can get away without acquiring useful skills" then sure, "productivity" has definitely gone up.
    - philosopher1234 4y ago
      How would that skill be useful to me? I’ve never needed it in my entire life. You sound like a Luddite.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        I think this is a risky side to take. Consider that your argument isn't all that far from a kid wondering why they should learn math. After all if they ever needed to use it, they could just use a calculator, like the one they bought from the clerk who whipped our her trusty calculator to determine how much change to give for the 120 coin calculator that was paid for with 200 coins. Navigational skills are likely not only improving our mind in ways we might not otherwise appreciate, but also serves a countless practical scenarios. Something as simple as getting around at a large market or mall often comes down to the exact same skills as reading a map. In fact that is what you're often literally doing as you find a floor map to locate the location you'd like to go to. There are also examples on the other side. Read this [1] warning from the national parks service about GPS and Death Valley. Multiple people blindly following GPS there have lost their lives because of it, and countless other similar locations that are quite remote and where what your GPS tells you, and what reality tells you may often contradict. Finally, if we ever enter into a war against another major power - on day one of the war, all GPS is going to cease to exist for the foreseeable future (with the internet not far behind). Those satellites are sitting ducks and are going to be high priority targets. This shouldn't even be an argument, but this scenario is looking increasingly likely with every passing day. [1] - https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm
mymythisisthis 4y ago
"...reference books, encyclopedias, rolodexes, filing cabinets..." were all nicely curated. Today the signal to noise ratio is extremely bad. It's more productive having somebody show you how to do something, than trying to learn it yourself. Perhaps in the 1980s when the economy was going better, it was easier to connect with people willing to share, teach, mentor. Perhaps people have been forced to be more competitive now. Also, cut back in education meant many programs have been cut. We would not feel so stagnant if manufacturing was more of a thing in N. America. Lots more factories with lots more 3d printers, laser cutters, drone, robots would exist. If you needed to get your hands on some such tool, you'd only have to ask around. 3D printers didn't penetrate the home like desktop publishing did in the 1980s and 90s.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  What is the point you're trying to make here? That somehow people were better off for having to spend hours thumbing through books instead of searching things on the Web?
  - mymythisisthis 4y ago
    The fastest way of learning something is to have a professional teach you. Not even the Internet can beat that. Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors. Because of loss in manufacturing in N. America there are fewer skilled professionals to pass on their knowledge.
    - denimnerd42 4y ago
      Plenty of professionals are out there teaching on youtube. I can fix my car, my plumbing, my electrical, I can frame an addition to my house, I can setup an irrigation system. Rebuild a chainsaw, build my own furniture, refinish my floor, fix my drywall, concrete flatwork. These are all things I've done in the past year. The proliferation of digital video, high quality cameras, microphones and editing software has made it easier than ever to learn from professionals. Books just aren't the same thing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
torginus 4y ago
With regards to books, this is such a weird take - high quality, well curated books had (and have) such a density of good information, that a stack of paper had all the information you could possibly look on a given for in a concise, reliable manner. For example, when I tried picking up electronics as a curious high-schooler, I managed to pick up a clearance sale copy of The Art of Electronics - it had all the information I could possibly look for (and I'm pretty sure once could make a career in Electrical Engineering using nothing but that book as a source even today). I'm pretty sure I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet.
- nfbyte 4y ago
  > I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet You can find The Art of Electronics on the internet... And you can put it on an old tablet with dozens of other reference books.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    However, you can’t read it without electricity to charge the battery and an internet connection. The device you read it on distracts you with notifications, emails, and other communications. You cannot easily scribe notes in the margins or easily flip between two pages that have related information. The device you read it on costs $1000 and must be replaced by every few years due to operating system obsolescence. You cannot read the book in bright outside sunlight on the device. The site that you purchased the book from goes out of business or the link to the book is broken or the site is down preventing access to the book. You drop the device and it breaks, while dropping the book is typically not an issue.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      $1000? Try $100 for an Android e-ink device. No notifications, WiFi is only on for 10 minutes from enabling to preserve battery life. Furthermore, plenty of stores sell you files to consume however you want. Oh and e-ink works fine in sunlight and lasts weeks without charging. And FYI, there's plenty of notetaking systems. My partner and I have been using these e-ink devices for almost five years. Works fine. No replacement required thus far. It is a specialized version of Android.
blenderdt 4y ago
For me the navigation example is a bad one because I still navigate like 30 years ago. I also don't have internet on my phone other than Wi-Fi. I don't want to be connected all the time. What I see is that people have no clue anymore about where they are. They rely on GPS. Is this an improvement? As long as GPS is working, yes.
flohofwoe 4y ago
Oh come on, maps had been a thing 30 years ago, just not digital. General availability of the internet on the other hand was a real revolution, GPS too, but such revolutionary events are still pretty rare (e.g. I don't count the mobile phone as such a revolutionary jump because it "just" combined things into the same device that were separate before).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tunesmith 4y ago

I think your last sentence is unnecessary. What purpose does it serve?

burnished 4y ago
It relates the audience and the author on an emotional level.
majewsky 4y ago
Once an argument has been laid out in detail, providing a poignant summary in one sentence leaves a more lasting impression on the reader.
- fieldcny 4y ago
  So your argument is that all technical advancement in the last 50/60 years is just marketing? That’s a pretty bold statement supported by literally nothing, just because you don’t feel like certain tech has added anything doesn’t mean it hasn’t. Productivity is an incredibly hard thing to capture, especially with the move to away from manufacturing and physical production. One could easily argue that the productivity numbers are failing to increase because technology has lowered the barriers to entry all over the world so now there’s more competition for every good and service creating pricing pressure on the “value of goods and services produced”
  - troon-lover 4y ago
  - burnished 4y ago
    I think you may have replied to the wrong person? Your comment is on topic for the tree, but doesn't appear to apply at all to the person you directly replied to.

tablespoon 4y ago

> 30 years ago in order to navigate somewhere you had to ask someone for directions and write down notes. If you missed a turn, god help you. We fundamentally move through the world vastly differently thanks to digital maps. Many people (and in a few years, the majority) are doing so in cars that use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. Honestly, it seems like you're just picking some incremental or marginal technological changes that happened, then promoting them to something more fundamental than they really are. Electric cars? Come on. They're barely even a change from a consumer perspective. Someone from 1950 wouldn't even notice the difference, unless you told them exactly what they were looking at. And some of those other things are debatable. For instance: I deliberately stopped using GPS for several years, because I realized it was preventing me from building up geographic/navigational knowledge, and instead was just training me to follow instructions blindly and never learn anything (e.g. by picking weird routes that were marginally faster but very difficult to systematize). [Edit: The following is about non-map online information.] The computerized "knowledge at your fingertips" is a common slogan of computer-age propaganda, but it's probably true that a greater fraction of that "knowledge" is in fact garbage and overall may just be a marginal improvement. Sufficiently advanced marketing is indistinguishable from technological progress.

lukeschlather 4y ago
Personally I try to turn GPS off as much as possible but I also frequently consult it even for routes that I know well. And come on, maps are excellent, there's no garbage there. Last weekend I was frustrated that Google was unaware of a road reroute but that is leaps and bounds ahead of the days of paper maps. Yeah, there's a lot of garbage on the Internet but it's also remarkably easy to find high-quality information. The change over even 10 years ago is also really dramatic for how I use public transit, since I not only know where I am but where the vehicles I'm planning on getting into are so I can reroute that way. It's only in the past 5 years or so that the data has gotten reliable enough that I trust it to use in that way.
- fieldcny 4y ago
  I agree that GPS and maps/directions are a magnificent improvement. I remember what it was like to get lost, and be lost for hours, late at night nothing open, no one but unsavory characters out. I remember how hard long trips could be even with maps or trip-tiks from AAA (which were awesome) GPS enables all sort logistics, it allows transport companies to ensure trucks are driven safely, to know when and where goods in transit are there is an entire world of productivity improvement right there.

chrisco255 4y ago

GPS is nice and all, but I would not say we move vastly differently compared to 30 years ago or even 70 years ago (basically, since interstate highways were developed). And electric motors are just a horizontal change in technology. They may have better acceleration than ICEs, but we're still going to be fundamentally traveling the same way. Only if and when self-driving becomes a thing, or personal drone transport vehicles become widespread, or cheap tunnels enabled by electric vehicles, would you be able to argue that a fundamental shift in how we move has occurred. That may be all just around the corner, or those dreams could go the way of the dream of the flying car in the 50s. We definitely communicate vastly different than 30 years ago and prior.

nwienert 4y ago
I upgraded from a 95 4Runner to a 22 Outlander and it’s like a spaceship on wheels in comparison. Literally every piece of the car is in a different class and the tech is insane that just didn’t exist then, I mean it basically drives itself. It’s dramatically safer, more efficient, comfier, faster, quieter. I no longer hate long drives, they’re quite nice. The speakers are amazing and the road noise is basically gone. I can stream anything, talk to friends anywhere in the world while driving, massage and heat my back, and do it all with half the gas at a cost that’s equivalent to the 4Runner when it was new back then. It also goes 110 as comfortably as the 4Runner would do about 60, and breezes up hills that the latter would break a sweat on. I press a button for roadside assistance, I lock and start/stop it from my phone, I don’t have to bother with the key, the list just never ends. Meanwhile a car from 1965 honestly is a lot more similar to a 95 than a 95 to today.
- nosianu 4y ago
  The main point though is that you don't accomplish more. You get from A to B in about the same time. How much you like the experience does not change that there is not really a difference in the outcomes. I find it regrettable that sooo many comments focusing on "like" rather than actual hard results. The original topic is about the latter, not about the subjective experiences. And for results, a 1960s care got you from A to B pretty much the same as a 2022 one. That does not make the subjective aspect invalid, but I would at least like to see some self-awareness in comments that we are talking about at least two separate things, and arguments for one are not useful for the other. . Recently I also found myself thinking about another aspect. It was when I looked at the tram station not far form my house, which for a year or so has been upgraded to have a display with the expected arrival times of the next three trams. It sure is very convenient! However, compared to a similar transport system of fifty years ago, which achieved the same thing, we now have a lot of additional effort to maintain such infrastructure. It got waayyyy more complex, all the electronics, and software has to be written and maintained, screens installed and maintained, computer infrastructure - all just for some slight improvement in convenience. Is it worth it? I have no conclusion, I just have to think about that when I hear yet another "we need more 'Fachkräfte'" (skilled workers). How many people do we need for mostly just minor convenience upgrades? Sure, the transport system also can get more efficient with things like those displays. But here again, A LOT of additional effort, planning and thinking has to go into it for such gains to not just be theoretical. If we can afford it - sure, why not. It's just that I have to think about the challenges ahead: The more stuff we produce and have to use energy on the worse for climate change and resource use. I think it is good when new stuff is tried, but I have doubts that all those many minor "upgrades" are worth spreading so far. The effort for minor gains is gigantic, and we don't have free power, overabundance of skilled workers and free (material) resources (yet?). How much worse would for example said city tram system really be with less sophistication and IT? I've become a bit skeptical about my own line of work. IT is nice and all and I love it, but it also takes a lot of effort to prepare and also to maintain. Here took, too many only look at the gains, which of course do exist. But there is a bias "newer and more complex is better" IMO. Very much related: "Humans solve problems by adding complexity, even when it’s against our best interests" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/bias-problem-solving-nature/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/bias-prob... Nature (paywall, try Sci-Hub): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00592-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00592-0 > Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving > A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient. I think our economic and financial system is an additional driver. Not doing something is "being lazy" and is punished (unless you are wealthy already). If you manage to sell stuff that is useless or even detrimental, you are fine, and there still is a wide gap between this and doing something criminal. It looks to me like our own biases and our society and systems push us towards increasing complexity just for complexity's sake. Then come the biases that let us find the justifications but not see the downsides nearly as clearly. We also have a huge bias for measurable/quantifiable outcomes, and what things with an attachment to money. All this complexity relies on huge supply chains also for maintenance. Given the possible issues ahead, both political and climate, maybe less complexity and more locality and less international-network requirement might be a good idea.

malloryerik 4y ago

> If you missed a turn, god help you. People had lots and lots of paper maps. Every gas station had a rack of them. You'd probably have had a good spiral-bound one of your entire region in your car. Wrong turn? Just check the map and save God's help for later.

lazide 4y ago
Eh, everyone I knew got lost and then tried to figure out where on the paper map they were while trying to not get into an accident. GPS, you just wait a second for it to update and you barely miss a beat.
- malloryerik 4y ago
  Yeah, sounds true enough.
- kqr 4y ago
  This sounds like poor navigation skills to me. You should be able to find out roughly where on the map you are purely by dead reckoning. So maybe if we by "productivity" mean "can get away without acquiring useful skills" then sure, "productivity" has definitely gone up.
  - philosopher1234 4y ago
    How would that skill be useful to me? I’ve never needed it in my entire life. You sound like a Luddite.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      I think this is a risky side to take. Consider that your argument isn't all that far from a kid wondering why they should learn math. After all if they ever needed to use it, they could just use a calculator, like the one they bought from the clerk who whipped our her trusty calculator to determine how much change to give for the 120 coin calculator that was paid for with 200 coins. Navigational skills are likely not only improving our mind in ways we might not otherwise appreciate, but also serves a countless practical scenarios. Something as simple as getting around at a large market or mall often comes down to the exact same skills as reading a map. In fact that is what you're often literally doing as you find a floor map to locate the location you'd like to go to. There are also examples on the other side. Read this [1] warning from the national parks service about GPS and Death Valley. Multiple people blindly following GPS there have lost their lives because of it, and countless other similar locations that are quite remote and where what your GPS tells you, and what reality tells you may often contradict. Finally, if we ever enter into a war against another major power - on day one of the war, all GPS is going to cease to exist for the foreseeable future (with the internet not far behind). Those satellites are sitting ducks and are going to be high priority targets. This shouldn't even be an argument, but this scenario is looking increasingly likely with every passing day. [1] - https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm

mymythisisthis 4y ago

"...reference books, encyclopedias, rolodexes, filing cabinets..." were all nicely curated. Today the signal to noise ratio is extremely bad. It's more productive having somebody show you how to do something, than trying to learn it yourself. Perhaps in the 1980s when the economy was going better, it was easier to connect with people willing to share, teach, mentor. Perhaps people have been forced to be more competitive now. Also, cut back in education meant many programs have been cut. We would not feel so stagnant if manufacturing was more of a thing in N. America. Lots more factories with lots more 3d printers, laser cutters, drone, robots would exist. If you needed to get your hands on some such tool, you'd only have to ask around. 3D printers didn't penetrate the home like desktop publishing did in the 1980s and 90s.

nerdponx 4y ago
What is the point you're trying to make here? That somehow people were better off for having to spend hours thumbing through books instead of searching things on the Web?
- mymythisisthis 4y ago
  The fastest way of learning something is to have a professional teach you. Not even the Internet can beat that. Because of cut backs to education, we have fewer good mentors. Because of loss in manufacturing in N. America there are fewer skilled professionals to pass on their knowledge.
  - denimnerd42 4y ago
    Plenty of professionals are out there teaching on youtube. I can fix my car, my plumbing, my electrical, I can frame an addition to my house, I can setup an irrigation system. Rebuild a chainsaw, build my own furniture, refinish my floor, fix my drywall, concrete flatwork. These are all things I've done in the past year. The proliferation of digital video, high quality cameras, microphones and editing software has made it easier than ever to learn from professionals. Books just aren't the same thing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

torginus 4y ago

With regards to books, this is such a weird take - high quality, well curated books had (and have) such a density of good information, that a stack of paper had all the information you could possibly look on a given for in a concise, reliable manner. For example, when I tried picking up electronics as a curious high-schooler, I managed to pick up a clearance sale copy of The Art of Electronics - it had all the information I could possibly look for (and I'm pretty sure once could make a career in Electrical Engineering using nothing but that book as a source even today). I'm pretty sure I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet.

nfbyte 4y ago
> I'd be hard-pressed to find such an accurate and comprehensive reference on that topic anywhere on the internet You can find The Art of Electronics on the internet... And you can put it on an old tablet with dozens of other reference books.
- cudgy 4y ago
  However, you can’t read it without electricity to charge the battery and an internet connection. The device you read it on distracts you with notifications, emails, and other communications. You cannot easily scribe notes in the margins or easily flip between two pages that have related information. The device you read it on costs $1000 and must be replaced by every few years due to operating system obsolescence. You cannot read the book in bright outside sunlight on the device. The site that you purchased the book from goes out of business or the link to the book is broken or the site is down preventing access to the book. You drop the device and it breaks, while dropping the book is typically not an issue.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    $1000? Try $100 for an Android e-ink device. No notifications, WiFi is only on for 10 minutes from enabling to preserve battery life. Furthermore, plenty of stores sell you files to consume however you want. Oh and e-ink works fine in sunlight and lasts weeks without charging. And FYI, there's plenty of notetaking systems. My partner and I have been using these e-ink devices for almost five years. Works fine. No replacement required thus far. It is a specialized version of Android.

blenderdt 4y ago

For me the navigation example is a bad one because I still navigate like 30 years ago. I also don't have internet on my phone other than Wi-Fi. I don't want to be connected all the time. What I see is that people have no clue anymore about where they are. They rely on GPS. Is this an improvement? As long as GPS is working, yes.

flohofwoe 4y ago

Oh come on, maps had been a thing 30 years ago, just not digital. General availability of the internet on the other hand was a real revolution, GPS too, but such revolutionary events are still pretty rare (e.g. I don't count the mobile phone as such a revolutionary jump because it "just" combined things into the same device that were separate before).