5 ms·

I am just glad to see I am not the only one making up imaginary scenario where I bring people from the past to have them marvel at our world.

tetris11 2y ago
I do this with music, and measure how good a song is by what fraction f of the words I would need to change for me to send it n years back in time to be understood by an older audience. I have a small community (n=1 or 4?) where I write this up: https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless
- nicbou 2y ago
  Which one would require the most explaining, according to you?
  - scarby2 2y ago
    Not OP but it's likely some modern rap. A lot of the language used deviates significantly from what we would consider to be standard English and derives from cants that are not very old (80s/90s maybe).
  - genewitch 2y ago
    It's the end of the world - R.E.M.; One Week - Barenaked Ladies. That's just off the top(ical) of my head.
  - tetris11 2y ago
    https://lemmy.ml/comment/5509793 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5509793 Otha Fish by Pharcyde has tons of references ranging from 50s-90s. Scroll down to the main comment to see them explained.
epiccoleman 2y ago
My favorite "one of these" is the idea of taking a Raspberry Pi, or ATtiny, or modern Macbook Pro back to the ENIAC guys. Can you imagine how they'd have reacted to see these tiny little devices which pack orders of magnitude more computational power than their warehouse-sized computer? The mind boggles.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I tend to always play the cynic in these games. And I think one little way to easily do that is to reverse the roles with an example you are giving. So for your example, imagine somebody from the future came and showed you a pinhead sized device with countless exabytes of computational power projected onto a holographic screen. While I'm sure you'd be impressed and have plenty of questions, I don't think there would be any particular shock. Evolutionary progress - even at absurd scales, is still just evolutionary progress, and easily 'graspable'.
  - epiccoleman 2y ago
    I don't think they'd necessarily have some sort of existential crisis, or even have their minds blown - but I'm positive they'd be impressed.
  - gs17 2y ago
    Agreed, I think if you showed me as a kid that a tiny microSD could store every game I ever played and still have room for every TV show I ever watched without getting remotely full, and was affordable, it'd be impressive. But it wouldn't blow my mind as something inconceivable, I had already known floppy disks both shrunk in size and increased in capacity. Plus, I'd imagine "the ENIAC guys" would quickly realize all the things that were computationally infeasible in their time had more or less been done along the way to modern computers.
  - throwaway11460 2y ago
    That's because you have witnessed the decades of exponential growth. It's not hard to extrapolate that growth further, albeit it still blows my own mind when I see a disk that looks like a RAM, is way faster than my RAM was 15 years ago (2 GB/s? You must've forgotten to take your crazy pills), and has 2000 times more storage. But show it to a guy working with electromechanical or vacuum tube computers and I'm sure it would be a very otherworldly experience for them. I'm actually not sure what would blow their mind more - a very big and unimaginably fast computer, or a by today's standards very slow computer that fits on few millimeters. Things like payment cards or SIMs are just incredible too - enough compute power to land on the Moon hidden in a piece of plastic.
chasd00 2y ago
me> in my pocket contains a device that gives me access to all of the world's information almost instantly person from the past> wow! what do you do with it? me> look at pictures of cats and argue with people i don't even know /i think that's from an xkcd
- pixl97 2y ago
  Benjamin Franklin: "So you're telling me there are hot single women in my area that are looking to date?"
  - sethammons 2y ago
    Known for his womanizing, this is kinda funny
- more_corn 2y ago
  Xkcd having a joke for every occasion might be a true modern marvel.
quectophoton 2y ago
My made-up imaginary scenarios are usually about scientists of the past that had to do everything by hand, and today's Desmos Graphing Calculator[1]. [1]: https://www.desmos.com/calculator https://www.desmos.com/calculator
eleveriven 2y ago
It's fascinating to imagine how people from the past might react to the technological advancements and societal changes of the present day! I love to imagine my great grandpa exploring the world now.
- tolciho 2y ago
  Indeed. For instance, one might ask Von Neumann what he thinks of the progress on nuclear power, given his prediction "given a decade of really large-scale industrial effort, the economic characteristics of reactors will undoubtedly surpass those of the present by far" in "Can we survive technology?"
munchler 2y ago
I do when I'm driving to the airport in the DC area. I imagine that I'm actually picking up Abe Lincoln from the 1860's and what I'll show him on the drive back.

tetris11 2y ago

I do this with music, and measure how good a song is by what fraction f of the words I would need to change for me to send it n years back in time to be understood by an older audience. I have a small community (n=1 or 4?) where I write this up: https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless

nicbou 2y ago
Which one would require the most explaining, according to you?
- scarby2 2y ago
  Not OP but it's likely some modern rap. A lot of the language used deviates significantly from what we would consider to be standard English and derives from cants that are not very old (80s/90s maybe).
- genewitch 2y ago
  It's the end of the world - R.E.M.; One Week - Barenaked Ladies. That's just off the top(ical) of my head.
- tetris11 2y ago
  https://lemmy.ml/comment/5509793 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5509793 Otha Fish by Pharcyde has tons of references ranging from 50s-90s. Scroll down to the main comment to see them explained.

epiccoleman 2y ago

My favorite "one of these" is the idea of taking a Raspberry Pi, or ATtiny, or modern Macbook Pro back to the ENIAC guys. Can you imagine how they'd have reacted to see these tiny little devices which pack orders of magnitude more computational power than their warehouse-sized computer? The mind boggles.

somenameforme 2y ago
I tend to always play the cynic in these games. And I think one little way to easily do that is to reverse the roles with an example you are giving. So for your example, imagine somebody from the future came and showed you a pinhead sized device with countless exabytes of computational power projected onto a holographic screen. While I'm sure you'd be impressed and have plenty of questions, I don't think there would be any particular shock. Evolutionary progress - even at absurd scales, is still just evolutionary progress, and easily 'graspable'.
- epiccoleman 2y ago
  I don't think they'd necessarily have some sort of existential crisis, or even have their minds blown - but I'm positive they'd be impressed.
- gs17 2y ago
  Agreed, I think if you showed me as a kid that a tiny microSD could store every game I ever played and still have room for every TV show I ever watched without getting remotely full, and was affordable, it'd be impressive. But it wouldn't blow my mind as something inconceivable, I had already known floppy disks both shrunk in size and increased in capacity. Plus, I'd imagine "the ENIAC guys" would quickly realize all the things that were computationally infeasible in their time had more or less been done along the way to modern computers.
- throwaway11460 2y ago
  That's because you have witnessed the decades of exponential growth. It's not hard to extrapolate that growth further, albeit it still blows my own mind when I see a disk that looks like a RAM, is way faster than my RAM was 15 years ago (2 GB/s? You must've forgotten to take your crazy pills), and has 2000 times more storage. But show it to a guy working with electromechanical or vacuum tube computers and I'm sure it would be a very otherworldly experience for them. I'm actually not sure what would blow their mind more - a very big and unimaginably fast computer, or a by today's standards very slow computer that fits on few millimeters. Things like payment cards or SIMs are just incredible too - enough compute power to land on the Moon hidden in a piece of plastic.

chasd00 2y ago

me> in my pocket contains a device that gives me access to all of the world's information almost instantly person from the past> wow! what do you do with it? me> look at pictures of cats and argue with people i don't even know /i think that's from an xkcd

pixl97 2y ago
Benjamin Franklin: "So you're telling me there are hot single women in my area that are looking to date?"
- sethammons 2y ago
  Known for his womanizing, this is kinda funny
more_corn 2y ago
Xkcd having a joke for every occasion might be a true modern marvel.

quectophoton 2y ago

My made-up imaginary scenarios are usually about scientists of the past that had to do everything by hand, and today's Desmos Graphing Calculator[1]. [1]: https://www.desmos.com/calculator https://www.desmos.com/calculator

eleveriven 2y ago

It's fascinating to imagine how people from the past might react to the technological advancements and societal changes of the present day! I love to imagine my great grandpa exploring the world now.

tolciho 2y ago
Indeed. For instance, one might ask Von Neumann what he thinks of the progress on nuclear power, given his prediction "given a decade of really large-scale industrial effort, the economic characteristics of reactors will undoubtedly surpass those of the present by far" in "Can we survive technology?"

munchler 2y ago

I do when I'm driving to the airport in the DC area. I imagine that I'm actually picking up Abe Lincoln from the 1860's and what I'll show him on the drive back.