Slashdot Mirror
Modern Tech Versus the Past
CNETNate writes "Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? CNET decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs. dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs. actual war craft, iPhones vs. hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh."
We Have: Putting one page of data on one page
They Had: Dividing data up into eight pages to maximize pageviews
Thanks for finally filing this CNet Crave UK stuff in Idle/Entertainment!
My work here is dung.
Here are some more recent tech most of you have spurned for all the wrong reasons but which I'll never give up and you can pry from my cold dead hands (but you won't want to!!)
We have: Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.
I Have: My 21" newsroom Trinitrons, three of, for a combined resolution of 4800x1200 at 85Hz. Perfect colours, wide viewing angles, annoying bezels. Windows 7 really likes them...
We have: Computer speakers, tiny badly-designed amplifiers, built-in speakers on TV's, plastic "hifi" speakers with metal cones, etc. Plenty of bass, fair enough, but just whisper "dynamic range" and "signal-to-noise ratio" to these people and you might just cause a flamewar.
I Have: Wharfedale Modus Twos and a Rotel RSX-03 amplifier with 6 discrete channels (RSX-03), FLAC, Cds. And yes, decent speaker wire (4mm) I found! I'm not a hifi snob, but I know mine sounds better and with wise buying cost less!
Not all progress is good, only good progress :-)
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
I miss the days before cell phones. Don't get me wrong, cell phones are convenient and allow me to stalk any number of girls that I like, but still..
I remember before cell phones became mainstream, if you wanted to spend time with your friends, you had to tell them where to meet you and when and they had to be there or else you just wouldn't catch up. It didn't matter if you had anything planned or not. There was much less of the, "Well, I might come out, what did you have in mind?" cruft. During lunch at school you would say, "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out." Then, the evening was yours for adventure or mischief or what have you. Not always having a plan was half the fun. It meant you would all get together and just start talking or walking or going somewhere seeking something to do until someone had a brilliant...or at least intriguing...idea.
I remember how, for the weekend, you and all your friends would be sure to meet Friday night somewhere then spend the whole weekend sleeping on each others' floors and couches because if anyone skipped out you wouldn't be able to find them for the rest of the weekend. I remember girls writing their numbers on my hand in pink gel ink and walking around, intentionally holding my hand turned just out slightly so as to subversively brag about my score. I remember setting up dates and saying, "I'll pick you up at..." and not having the crutch of cell phones to be able to work out the details when the time came.
Yep part of me misses those days. I am only 23 and I feel old writing about that kind of thing....the worst part is I don't even have a lawn yet....
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. ...it just doesn't have the same feeling.
I think you just summarized every analysis in TFA. "The old stuff is better 'cuz it has an old-timey feel to it." Personally, I appreciate being able to communicate half-way across the country w/o having to run to the telegraph station and blow a half-day's pay even if it's less personal. I like that Swine Flu is less deadly than the Plague, even if that's not as scary. I like that I can re-spawn after dying in some game rather than getting my head lopped off in battle, even if it's less manly.
But that's just me... Now, I'm off to take a leak in the street because that's more neighborly than "modern" sanitation.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Can I use all of my moderator points to rate this article as -10 extremely stupid.
One day we will consider modern chemo to be just a step above savagery and will also say that unlike ancient chemo, our modern remedies work. We'll say that because there won't be questions of survival rates over 5 years or so, just which one will cause complete remission the fastest and keep it from coming back.
Notably, some of the big medications and surgical procedures out there today have an effect, but evidence is growing that the effect they have is useless. One day we'll see those as no better than bloodletting for a broken leg. It's easy to make fun of the old state of the art in hindsight, sorta like all that advice to just relax, drink milk and perhaps see a shrink to treat a simple H. Pylori infection looks kinda silly now.
Our modern state of the art psychiatry won't likely fare much better than the mid-20th century use of insulin coma and lobotomy. We'll likely look back on ECT and wonder why the doctor didn't just break a 2x4 over the patient's head.