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The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have n

The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. In fact, all the stuff we’ve designed to capture attention is almost the exact opposite of a good use of the internet. I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis. And I try. Imagine all the people without the time to discover enough good content.

hk__2 2y ago
> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. Good newspapers usually allow you to do that.
ibejoeb 2y ago
> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take There's practically an undoable number of hours of free courses on Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, and others. Thousands of hours of interesting material on youtube.
- kergonath 2y ago
  I used to think so, but with more experience a lot of dark patterns and perverse incentives are becoming obvious. These people are not there to explain something interesting in a useful way, they are there to get your eyeballs to extract money from advertising or a Patreon. They are not teaching you, they are making you think they teach you to make you feel satisfied and give them money. Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    > Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really. How does the ratio of actually good to not really in the real world compare? It seems pretty amazing that anyone, anywhere can watch a physics lecture from the multiple top professors at any time.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  There's also Wikipedia. It takes a pretty long time to exhaust that, although I've tried my hardest.
  - viktor_von 2y ago
    Ad-free and fast, Wikipedia is imo the best learning resource on-the-go, at home, or at work.
exe34 2y ago
I have a massive folder of ebooks, pdfs, YouTube videos, etc that I've downloaded on my phone. I also have a list in Google keep of about twenty of these things in order of preference, so I always have something to read/watch/listen to based on my level of energy.
sgt 2y ago
HN enters the chat...
kergonath 2y ago
> The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I have a list of links to read for when I have time to do so. But yeah, if I don’t have anything to do, I prefer just doing nothing than seeking engagement. Social media are a mind killer. > I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis. When I come across something that looks interesting, I add it to the list and stuff accumulates until I go through each link and read the page, usually during my 30 minutes commute. (or not, sometimes it is not as interesting as I thought it would be). For me it works quite well.
- seydar 2y ago
  Sounds like you have a good list — can you share some of it?
cableshaft 2y ago
I would agree that most people don't use the internet for that when they're bored (including me more often than I'd like to admit), and the big tech websites are all about capturing attention and not providing good uses of the internet, for the most part, but that doesn't mean it's not available for people if they want it. Last night I was working through some shader tutorials, for instance, albeit on my laptop (I prefer laptop to phone when possible). I also playtest one of my games (current one has a mobile version), or brainstorm and take notes for my game designs, or read up on something I want to do with one of my games, or go through my github issues list and sometimes even look at my code repos while I'm killing time while out and about (I mostly don't use my phone when I'm not out, I'll just use my laptop). I try to remember I have a Kindle app with lots of informative books to read but I do forget about a little too often. When I was younger, I would program text-based games all the time on my TI graphing calculator. I would even bring that instead of my Game Boy to my grandparents sometimes, because I just wanted to code more of my games. I do think that capability is lacking on phones. It's technically possible, but the environment (at least on iPhone) is so sandboxed it's difficult to do effectively, or at least it was the last time I tried. Anything you're making on the device directly does not have access to the same capabilities as what you make from a laptop or desktop, and that's a shame.
simonsarris 2y ago
Sure there is. I used to read Wikipedia's Article of the Day every day at lunch. I only stopped because I found even more interesting (to me) things to read about.
itishappy 2y ago
> The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I'd argue you're holding it wrong. The repository of all human knowledge absolutely does contain numerous "learn about the world" courses in all shapes and forms. HN, arXiv, Wikipedia, parts of YouTube, and dedicated learning platforms abound and each probably has enough content for a lifetime of learning. I agree it's not designed to make this easy, but it's also not particularly hard. Hit "random article" a few times on Wikipedia and you're off to the races.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Well, it's not all knowledge. It doesn't know the inner thoughts of everyone. And human explicit knowledge is limited, it can't tell me whether I'll enjoy a certain bookstore if I go there. And it's only explicit knowledge, not tacit knowledge. Nobody learns skills from browsing the Internet.
nunez 2y ago
My brother/sister in Christ, its time for you to embrace TikTok. You'll never be bored again! /s
theonething 2y ago
> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I've been testing https://brilliant.org/ https://brilliant.org/ and like it so far. Its scope is limited to STEM topics, but the thing I like about it is you can set courses to bite sized daily chunks as small as 5 minutes.
edanm 2y ago
What are you talking about? Find any topic you're vaguely interested in, say history. Type "history" in YouTube, and you'll very quickly find enough videos to fill hundreds of lifetimes, to suit exactly what you want. Prefer high-production high-graphics videos? Check. Prefer a person speaking into a microphone? Check. Prefer a university lecture? Check. Rinse and repeat for anything you're vaguely interested in. The problem is way too many interesting things to see, not too few.

hk__2 2y ago

> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. Good newspapers usually allow you to do that.

ibejoeb 2y ago

> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take There's practically an undoable number of hours of free courses on Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, and others. Thousands of hours of interesting material on youtube.

kergonath 2y ago
I used to think so, but with more experience a lot of dark patterns and perverse incentives are becoming obvious. These people are not there to explain something interesting in a useful way, they are there to get your eyeballs to extract money from advertising or a Patreon. They are not teaching you, they are making you think they teach you to make you feel satisfied and give them money. Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really. How does the ratio of actually good to not really in the real world compare? It seems pretty amazing that anyone, anywhere can watch a physics lecture from the multiple top professors at any time.
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
There's also Wikipedia. It takes a pretty long time to exhaust that, although I've tried my hardest.
- viktor_von 2y ago
  Ad-free and fast, Wikipedia is imo the best learning resource on-the-go, at home, or at work.

exe34 2y ago

I have a massive folder of ebooks, pdfs, YouTube videos, etc that I've downloaded on my phone. I also have a list in Google keep of about twenty of these things in order of preference, so I always have something to read/watch/listen to based on my level of energy.

sgt 2y ago

HN enters the chat...

kergonath 2y ago

> The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I have a list of links to read for when I have time to do so. But yeah, if I don’t have anything to do, I prefer just doing nothing than seeking engagement. Social media are a mind killer. > I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis. When I come across something that looks interesting, I add it to the list and stuff accumulates until I go through each link and read the page, usually during my 30 minutes commute. (or not, sometimes it is not as interesting as I thought it would be). For me it works quite well.

seydar 2y ago
Sounds like you have a good list — can you share some of it?

cableshaft 2y ago

I would agree that most people don't use the internet for that when they're bored (including me more often than I'd like to admit), and the big tech websites are all about capturing attention and not providing good uses of the internet, for the most part, but that doesn't mean it's not available for people if they want it. Last night I was working through some shader tutorials, for instance, albeit on my laptop (I prefer laptop to phone when possible). I also playtest one of my games (current one has a mobile version), or brainstorm and take notes for my game designs, or read up on something I want to do with one of my games, or go through my github issues list and sometimes even look at my code repos while I'm killing time while out and about (I mostly don't use my phone when I'm not out, I'll just use my laptop). I try to remember I have a Kindle app with lots of informative books to read but I do forget about a little too often. When I was younger, I would program text-based games all the time on my TI graphing calculator. I would even bring that instead of my Game Boy to my grandparents sometimes, because I just wanted to code more of my games. I do think that capability is lacking on phones. It's technically possible, but the environment (at least on iPhone) is so sandboxed it's difficult to do effectively, or at least it was the last time I tried. Anything you're making on the device directly does not have access to the same capabilities as what you make from a laptop or desktop, and that's a shame.

simonsarris 2y ago

Sure there is. I used to read Wikipedia's Article of the Day every day at lunch. I only stopped because I found even more interesting (to me) things to read about.

itishappy 2y ago

> The internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I'd argue you're holding it wrong. The repository of all human knowledge absolutely does contain numerous "learn about the world" courses in all shapes and forms. HN, arXiv, Wikipedia, parts of YouTube, and dedicated learning platforms abound and each probably has enough content for a lifetime of learning. I agree it's not designed to make this easy, but it's also not particularly hard. Hit "random article" a few times on Wikipedia and you're off to the races.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Well, it's not all knowledge. It doesn't know the inner thoughts of everyone. And human explicit knowledge is limited, it can't tell me whether I'll enjoy a certain bookstore if I go there. And it's only explicit knowledge, not tacit knowledge. Nobody learns skills from browsing the Internet.

nunez 2y ago

My brother/sister in Christ, its time for you to embrace TikTok. You'll never be bored again! /s

theonething 2y ago

> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. I've been testing https://brilliant.org/ https://brilliant.org/ and like it so far. Its scope is limited to STEM topics, but the thing I like about it is you can set courses to bite sized daily chunks as small as 5 minutes.

edanm 2y ago

What are you talking about? Find any topic you're vaguely interested in, say history. Type "history" in YouTube, and you'll very quickly find enough videos to fill hundreds of lifetimes, to suit exactly what you want. Prefer high-production high-graphics videos? Check. Prefer a person speaking into a microphone? Check. Prefer a university lecture? Check. Rinse and repeat for anything you're vaguely interested in. The problem is way too many interesting things to see, not too few.