5 ms·

Youtube has been around 17 years now. It still amazes me that so much high quality and informative content like this is made on a near daily basis and available

by rcarr 4y ago

Youtube has been around 17 years now. It still amazes me that so much high quality and informative content like this is made on a near daily basis and available at any time completely free of charge. I wonder how different my life would be now if I had access to such an amazing resource my entire life. I don't think the kids of today have any idea just how lucky they are.

ricardobeat 4y ago
We used to have content like this on TV. Choice was limited, but it turns out most kids (and adults) will simply watch hours and hours of shit comedy sketches when given the opportunity. Nothing was really gained except for the odd ones that use it to gain knowledge on specific areas or become content producers themselves. It kills me to see that the vast majority of people take little benefit from this.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Yeah I'm not disputing that stuff like this wasn't on TV, but you mostly stumbled on it unless you'd been specifically reading the TV guide and you could only watch it again if you recorded it on a VHS tape, otherwise it was gone forever. If you're a young kid now and this video finds it's way into your feed, you can not only watch it again but you can click through to the channel and watch hundreds of hours of construction documentaries on this channel alone, let alone any of the other channels YouTube will likely recommend to you. Even with the pandemic limiting schooling, Gen Z and Gen Alpha by all rights should turn out to be a bunch of super geniuses that out perform everyone based on the fact they've got such a headstart when it comes to both access and depth of information compared to any other generation before them. Unfortunately I don't think it will work out that way because, like you say, far too many people are content to just zone out at the end of the day with shows and video games. I'm not saying those things don't have a place (in fact they are some of my favourite things to do and I would quite like to be involved in making a show one day) but there does seem to be a massive opportunity for bright and motivated kids who are interested in any subject imaginable to get up to speed in it to an almost professional level before they've even left school. This just wasn't possible on such a wide basis before. However passionate you were, you would have been limited by either whatever materials your local library had or the depths of your parents' wallets. I remember my friend's older brother was super into maths and used to go to all the different libraries around the town taking out any maths textbooks he could get his hands on. He ended up going to Cambridge University to study it and during his first year he only went to third year lectures because he had already taught himself everything that was covered in the first and second year lectures and found them boring. I imagine that if he had access to all the Maths content and lectures that are available now it wouldn't have been third year lectures he would have been attending in first year but grad ones. He might have even ended up being one of these people who go to university early and graduating before he even turned 20. I can see that becoming a more common occurrence for sure.

by rcarr 4y ago

ricardobeat 4y ago

We used to have content like this on TV. Choice was limited, but it turns out most kids (and adults) will simply watch hours and hours of shit comedy sketches when given the opportunity. Nothing was really gained except for the odd ones that use it to gain knowledge on specific areas or become content producers themselves. It kills me to see that the vast majority of people take little benefit from this.

rcarr 4y ago
Yeah I'm not disputing that stuff like this wasn't on TV, but you mostly stumbled on it unless you'd been specifically reading the TV guide and you could only watch it again if you recorded it on a VHS tape, otherwise it was gone forever. If you're a young kid now and this video finds it's way into your feed, you can not only watch it again but you can click through to the channel and watch hundreds of hours of construction documentaries on this channel alone, let alone any of the other channels YouTube will likely recommend to you. Even with the pandemic limiting schooling, Gen Z and Gen Alpha by all rights should turn out to be a bunch of super geniuses that out perform everyone based on the fact they've got such a headstart when it comes to both access and depth of information compared to any other generation before them. Unfortunately I don't think it will work out that way because, like you say, far too many people are content to just zone out at the end of the day with shows and video games. I'm not saying those things don't have a place (in fact they are some of my favourite things to do and I would quite like to be involved in making a show one day) but there does seem to be a massive opportunity for bright and motivated kids who are interested in any subject imaginable to get up to speed in it to an almost professional level before they've even left school. This just wasn't possible on such a wide basis before. However passionate you were, you would have been limited by either whatever materials your local library had or the depths of your parents' wallets. I remember my friend's older brother was super into maths and used to go to all the different libraries around the town taking out any maths textbooks he could get his hands on. He ended up going to Cambridge University to study it and during his first year he only went to third year lectures because he had already taught himself everything that was covered in the first and second year lectures and found them boring. I imagine that if he had access to all the Maths content and lectures that are available now it wouldn't have been third year lectures he would have been attending in first year but grad ones. He might have even ended up being one of these people who go to university early and graduating before he even turned 20. I can see that becoming a more common occurrence for sure.