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To Understand the Past, Pick Up an Old Magazine
- ramraj07 3y agoMy PhD alma matter had a library until a year before I graduated and I found myself there once every few months just to browse and find a random Science or Nature issue from the 80s. It was a fascinating read for sure. Definitely much is lost even in science, people discovered a lot more with far fewer methods. I suppose the science was also easier and simpler.
- dm_me_dogs 3y agohttps://archive.is/oVz97 https://archive.is/oVz97
- ErikAugust 3y agohttps://trimread.org/articles/39034 https://trimread.org/articles/39034
- rlawson 3y agoOne of my favorite hobbies is browsing 80/90's computer magazines
- stevesimmons 3y agoByte magazine is the best. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine I only half jokingly say everything I know about computers I learned from reading Byte around 1985-1990.
- defrost 3y agoI have my stack of Byte magazines still, but I much prefer going back through the Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia (1977-) pile. https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01 https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01
- GrumpyNl 3y agoIs there a way to do a text search on those magazines?
- doxeddaily 3y agoTerrific Ohio Scientific! I love the old ads lol. Except I also read these mags back in the 80s.
- user_named 3y agoYou mean '90s.
- rrreese 3y agoByte Magazine [1975 - 1998]
- kps 3y agoByte was a shadow of its former self by 1990. Creative Computing was long gone. Dr Dobb's held out a bit better.
- Ekaros 3y agoI think things started to go downhill around mid-nineties... My collection of local computer magazines ends in 95...
- PopAlongKid 3y ago>80/90's computer magazines Comment was evidently trying to point out incorrect use of apostrophe.
- kzrdude 3y agoScientific american has that nice section of "50, 100 and 150 years ago". They flex their history and also provide snapshots of the past. I haven't read in a long time, but I assume they still have it.
- KineticLensman 3y ago'Nature' does the same, for 50 and 100 years ago. A recent issue has the prediction from 1973 that beef wouldn't be eaten by the year 2000 because of the production inefficiencies, and a 1923 review of a book about cryptography. I've been reading Nature on and off for about 40 years. When I started, the '100 years' ago pieces were from the late 19th C, and often conjured up an image of amateur gentlemen scientists writing letters to learned societies in London, very different from today. [Edit] 40 years rather than 35. Doesn't time fly!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mguerville 3y agoI collect memorabilia of business scandals, crises, etc. and getting a newspaper or magazine from the early days of an event is often eye opening when contrasted to the final version that ends up in the history books
- bluetomcat 3y agoYou also have to be careful not to interpret the past through the lens of the present gestalt. Perhaps what now could be deemed as "toxic masculinity", was considered "masculinity" back in the day.
- atourgates 3y agoI mean, interpreting the past through our present lens is a valuable exercise. Just because past generations didn’t have a label for “toxic masculinity” doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, or that we can’t learn from its historical effects. Same goes for plenty of modern social and relational concepts that were either ignored, or not-understood in the past.
- motohagiography 3y agoOn the contrary, our current lens is a narrow ideology that generates criticism and complaints that apply so indifferently to everything as to make it meaningless. It exists mainly to separate people from their histories, which politically neutralizes and subordinates them to a small cadre of activated ideologues. It has discovered nothing. The value of books and magazines prior to about 1995, and art in general, is they are physical artifacts of peoples diverse lived experiences that provide waypoints, continuity, and a fabric for a society and civilization. They enable a stability and freedom from the power struggles of the present, and they are there for more than to be just gawked at and complained about, imo.
- throw47382746 3y agoOn the contrary, our current lens is much more diverse and inclusive due to how much exposure we have to different cultures and viewpoints. It's also much more accepting and empathetic to those who were bullied for being different.
- Ancapistani 3y ago... and much less accepting and empathetic to those who are excluded from the "diverse cultures" category. Seriously. I understand that this is a politically charged issue in all kinds of ways, but as a white man who is the sole income earner of a traditional family, I expect to find all kinds of support for various identity groups pretty much everywhere I interact with others - but I've yet to find a single one that I identify with. While I don't share that view, it's easy to see how people who are explicitly excluded in that way can come to feel that "diversity" initiatives are a thinly-veiled attack on everything they believe in. Personally I see it as a correction of a long-term problem, and like most reactions, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. In a generation I think it will settle down into something much more reasonable and equitable.
- marikio 3y agoThe 1957 issue of Life that includes the first coverage of Psilocybin Mushrooms in the Western World also has an advert for a local KKK sponsored baseball team. Wild.
- anon____ 3y agoThat's interesting, thanks! > "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" is a 1957 photo essay by amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson describing his experience taking psilocybin mushrooms in 1955 during a Mazatec ritual in Oaxaca, Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_the_Magic_Mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_the_Magic_Mushroom I found this issue of Life in the Internet Archive, here's the Magic Mushroom photo essay: https://archive.org/details/sim_life_1957-05-13_42_19/page/100/mode/1up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/sim_life_1957-05-13_42_19/page/1.... The KKK baseball team story is a report, not an advertisement (although there's an insane amount of ads in that magazine): https://archive.org/details/sim_life_1957-05-13_42_19/page/43/mode/1up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/sim_life_1957-05-13_42_19/page/4....
- marikio 3y agoThanks for the correction! Haven’t browsed it in about 5 years now, so memory is foggy :)
- AlecSchueler 3y agoAnd to understand how big of a pinch of salt you need to take in with you, compare your reality with a contemporary magazine.
- guerrilla 3y agoI don't think most people are very good at doing that, rather the media ends up shaping their reality itself both subjectively and eventually objectively.
- hn_thrwn 3y agoIf you want to see just how much salt you need read a history book with the same delta t from now to then as from an event. The amount of presentism in 2023 is ridiculous and completely uncritically accepted by most everyone.
- drewcoo 3y agoAnd consider the relative cultural relevance of today's magazines and the historical ones you've chosen. For all the moaning about how we've lost a monoculture because we don't all watch the same TV channels, I think those people are too young to remember things like LIFE magazine, the big, unavoidable, pictorial shared American experience, never really breaking news but always showing us the zeitgeist in broad strokes. Today's magazines have niche or tabloid appeal at best.
- anthk 3y agoMy dad had a bunch of Reader Digest's magazines from the 70's and 80's, and I liked computers from that era.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- trebligdivad 3y agoA good birthday present for a youngster is one of your computer or electronics magazines from the month they were born.
- JoelMcCracken 3y agoI’ve been pondering the possibility of an app that could archive magazines over the eras, make them searchable, etc. something like this could be very neat to browse all magazines in public domain.
- xnx 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/magazine_rack https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoThe internet Archive "Serials in Microfilm" collection is breathtaking in scale: https://archive.org/details/sim_microfilm https://archive.org/details/sim_microfilm Literally vaults and shipping containers of microfilm reels: https://archive.org/details/all-serials-in-microfilm-sim-microfilm-and-microform-collections https://archive.org/details/all-serials-in-microfilm-sim-mic...
- cenazoic 3y agoMy favorite was browsing a 1902 Ladies’ Home Journal and finding a lament about how commercial Christmas had become, and essentially, how much better things were back in the good old days. It’s amazing how evergreen that general sentiment seems to be.
- raxxorraxor 3y agoLikewise it is very true for almost everyone. Younger people and kids first don't experience anything like the usual shopping rush associated with Christmas so "back in the good old days" it was indeed less commercialized.
- civilized 3y agoThe eternal dilemma: given a change in society or social perceptions over time, is it a time effect, an age effect, or a birth cohort effect?
- JJMcJ 3y agoIt has been recorded from the earliest days of the Christian holiday. Maybe even before that with its predecessors.
- floren 3y agoSeneca in a letter to Lucilius, circa 62 AD: > It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very moment in a sweat. Licence is given to the general merrymaking. Everything resounds with mighty preparations, – as if the Saturnalia differed at all from the usual business day! So true it is that the difference is nil, that I regard as correct the remark of the man who said: "Once December was a month; now it is a year." (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_18 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...)
- namaria 3y agoPeople have been writing about "kids these days" ever since the alphabet got invented...
- karaterobot 3y agoTo understand the past, read more primary historical sources, such as some magazines.
- lastofthemojito 3y agoI came across a copy of a 200-year-old newspaper for my town (not a big city) and the little thing that jumped out at me as I flipped through was that there were multiple advertisements for local shoemakers. Of course now there are no shoemakers around here, because who goes to a shoemaker right? You just buy the same Nikes or Dr Martens that are available everywhere. But before Zappos and before Payless and before the Sears Roebuck catalog, people still needed shoes, so we needed folks in each town to make them. It's one of those things that is completely obvious in retrospect but must have been a huge change to both shoemakers and shoe buyers as the transition happened.
- SoftTalker 3y agoAs there are still high-end custom tailors, are there still high-end custom shoemakers?
- diablerouge 3y agoDefinitely - searching for bespoke shoes yields quite a fair number. Before the reddit blackout, /r/goodyearwelt was the place to discuss fine men's footwear across the price spectrum. They tend to be dress shoes or workboots nearly exclusively, and as styles have changed, there's little growth in the industry.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoOnce in a great while, I find myself in the market for a cobbler, aka shoe repair shop. They do exist in my metro area, but they are indeed few and far between. The extant ones are very old businesses and they're usually run by some old codger who won't be selling or handing on the business to a successor. The last shoe repair shop I used was very nice, had merchandise for me to purchase; I picked up a few aromatic cedar shoe trees, some polish and brushes, and had a couple pairs of shoes repaired very nicely. The owner was the only worker there and utterly overwhelmed; he gestured at his backlog which was immense. He cranked the 80s hair metal while he worked. There was supposed to be a shoe shine service, but no shoe shine boy to do it. He was kind to the homeless and passers-by, and people could sit and hang out in his store if they wanted. He was murdered by a homeless fellow while trying to be kind to him. The homeless guy had gone to use the bathroom, and found the owner's gun lying on the counter, and for some reason used it against the owner himself. I will really miss that owner and his store.
- beowulfey 3y agoI fully maintain that a lot of information known by the general population back in the day has been (or will be) lost to the sands of time. Sometimes it feels like information I find online for certain trades, like cooking or carpentry, is just a series of blogs all parroting each other. Old books contain an abundance of helpful tips, knowledge and ideas that I usually can't find as easily online, and I find them fascinating to read.
- namaria 3y agoWhile there's insight in your observation, comparing old books to current blog posts is like comparing current books with old bar talk. There is plenty of high value sources in print.
- beowulfey 3y agoThat's true -- you mean comparing old books with new books? That's a good point!
- BoxOfRain 3y agoI've recently got into old-school valve (tube) based electronics and it makes me wonder how much practical knowledge has been lost over the decades in that field or worse obscured by grifters trying to sell snake oil to audiophile types.
- eternityforest 3y agoThe biggest reason is probably that nobody makes anything anymore.... Plus, about half those old books had information a modern person generally hopes to never use, even if they do still make things. Much as I love living history, I don't want to mill lumber by hand or do anything that involves the phrase "Measure out the white lead and mix it into the...". There's lots of stuff that would be interesting and potentially useful, but information these days seems to spread based on immediate usefulness (Except math. Everyone just accepts people all should learn a pretty large amount even though only some of them will ever use it), and people don't really think about uncommon scenarios. But now it seems like we're right on the edge where even modern practical things are being forgotten, and "I don't know how to cook" is starting to literally mean "I doordash every day and couldn't make a pot of spaghetti to save my life, and I think an impact driver must be a porn star name".
- xnx 3y agoI've been meaning to create a single page website that shows the front page of the New York Times and/or Fox News from one day, one week, one year, and 10 years ago.
- cuttysnark 3y agohttps://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/06/15/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/06/15/nytfrontpage/scan... [0] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/06/15/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/06/15/nytfrontpage/scan... [1] Should be helpful—the date syntax is straightforward. NYT does this daily. The first one I can find is: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan... [2] [0] NYT front page scan from 15 June 2023 [1] from 15 June 2013 [2] from 06 July 2012, seemingly the first
- tanseydavid 3y agoOne of my favorite quotes is: "if you want to learn something new, read an old book." Can't remember who said it though.
- namaria 3y agoI really like reading international economics and politics from the 60s and 70s. You realize that a lot of non fiction gets recycled often, and the no-nonsense analysis they did back then gets watered down a lot with the current touchiness of talking about different cultures. There was a lot of bias back then too, to be sure... But comparing different biases is the best way to filter some of them out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WillAdams 3y agoI've always regretted that I didn't keep one magazine from each month of my life --- unfortunately, most of the older ones got pitched a couple of moves ago. Articles which I'd like to revisit: - Popular Mechanics and the first mention of a CNC which I read of --- the U.S. Navy putting one on an aircraft carrier at the cost of half-a-million dollars - the computer magazine which had a review of the GRiD Compass (I later bought a GRiDCase III spending way more than I should have) - the issue of Newsweek which had the 16 page insert ad for the original Apple Macintosh - the issue of Time which had an article on gun control where the photo of weapons from a gun buyback prominently featured an inexpensive air pistol - the news magazine which had a tiny sidebar article covering an international incident which I actually had direct knowledge of
- AlbertCory 3y agoI used newspapers.com heavily for research in my first book. "No hindsight" was my strict rule, so learning what people thought THEN was indispensable. It has a monthly subscription, and searching is, well, tedious. Like, you want to go to the Business section, and binary search of the pages plus guessing is the only way.
- subpixel 3y agoIn the early 20th century there were guides published for every business in the state - like a proto- yellow pages, but hard bound and carefully illustrated. I found a listing an ancestor of mine had for his booming asbestos business in San Francisco. You can learn a lot about the times through the businesses and products that were thriving (elevators!).