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Comments: 219 +- Entertainment: Modern Tech Versus the Past on Monday November 23, @01:48PM
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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."
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not always quite so (Score:5, Funny)
As you can see, ancient life beats modern life in all respects. Modern life doesn't even come close, scoring a rather embarrassing nought out of ten.
I would have to disagree. Sure you can pick a few things which outcome is that, but you really have to look at the larger picture.
As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:
1) by horse
2) by walking
This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around. For a real world example, it also created problems for pizzeria's home delivery, because the horse would eat the pizza.
But one must also note that some things actually were better on older times. When you ordered a pizza, you knew it would be baked for you with love and it would be delicious to eat. Now someone justs sends me a pizza gift on Facebook. Thanks for the mockery, I say.
Basically what I am saying is that technology makes things less personal. The same way that salad is shit compared to Pizza Hut's delicious pan pizza, e-card is shit compared to a real postcard because it just doesn't have the same feeling.
Re:not always quite so (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let the older times be in the past. People don't realize how smelly and unsanitary streets were when horses and carriages were the mainstay of transportation. There was no fire, police, or EMS. If you came down with something, hopefully your immune system could take care of it, because there was no penicillin or other medicines to clear up even the basic infections. Most of America at that time was living in hovels or tenements and barely making a sustainable living. Any police protection were for the
Re:not always quite so (Score:4, Funny)
1) by horse
Not only that, but if you were pulling a wagon and heading toward Oregon, you were likely to be killed by a bout of dysentery.
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Re:not always quite so (Score:4, Insightful)
As an example, if you think about the medieval era and how you moved around, there we're basically two options:1) by horse
2) by walking
This meant that every business had to own a horse and feed it to move around.
It meant that you had a tight little monopoly in your own neighborhood .
The handsome brick structure on on our village main street was originally a three story department store that served a population of less than 1000. The alternative, if you wanted to shop for a set of dishes, a mattress or sofa, would be to take a train into Buffalo and pay the freight back.
Parent
They Missed One (Score:5, Insightful)
They Had: Dividing data up into eight pages to maximize pageviews [slashdot.org]
Thanks for finally filing this CNet Crave UK stuff in Idle/Entertainment!
No... WoW vs pretend warfair with sticks for guns. (Score:5, Funny)
Age is the way to go (Score:2)
I still play Age of Empires 2, so that I know if I mystically get teleported back to medeival ages, I will be the best General the world has ever scene.
Now, how do I make real life town centers 'build' villagers?
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Alcohol.
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Needle and a condom section in store.
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Sorry. We geeks playing World of Warcraft would not be engaged in killing each other if not for the game.
True. I wonder how many closet murderers indulge their taste for mayhem in a virtual world but avoid it IRL simply because it's permitted in one place and punished in the other. Or, to put it more plainly, how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.
"I once stabbed a man to watch him die. And also for 8 honor points."
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how many would do it IRL if they were guaranteed they could get away with it.
A lot.
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I play airsoft, which I often refer to as 'FPS', much to the annoyance of all the other geeks :)
Sorry, but it is!
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When I was growing up, we had *real* dirt clod fights!
We would mound up dirt a short distance from one another, and a combination of lobbing and more direct throws were done until you hit the *enemy*. At which point, if you hit them hard enough or partially blinded them with dirt in the eyes, you then grabbed a handful of dirt clods, rush your enemy's bunker, rapid firing to keep him pinned down, then while he was writhing on the ground, if you had any clods left that this point, you would finish him off an
telegraph 419.... (Score:4, Funny)
i represent the duke of america and recently a $25,000 sum of pirate spanish gold seized off the coast has been placed in our care.....
Better comparisons (Score:4, Funny)
Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls
Science vs. Mad Science
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MP3s vs. 1 Man Bands
Twitter vs. Bathroom Walls
Science vs. Alchemy
Fixed that for ya
Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Insightful)
Science vs. Mad Science
Wait, which one is the "modern" side? ;-)
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Re:Better comparisons (Score:4, Informative)
Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.
The professional photographers that I know have been quite happy with their digital cameras since 8MP was the level no one could afford. They're up in the 12MP and 15MP levels now, but they produce prints for their customers, and they're indistinguishable to all but the trained eye from what would have been done on film. Even an 8x12 at 8MP makes for 83,000 dots per square inch, or 1/288 of an inch (.088mm) across. Given that the same lenses are being used in many cases (Nikon lenses from a decade or more past fit on current Nikon SLRs), it comes down to the sensor, and the difference just isn't there.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't have to go that far back... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Washed out LCD monitors, rubbish refresh rates, pale colours, all reds are orange.
Solution: stop buying "XTRA SPECIAL SALE NOW ONLY $50" monitors and get good ones instead.
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.
Solution: buy a decent amp and speakers, can be had for a couple of hundred bucks.
Both your examples are examples of people buying crap because they either fell for the advertising or just don't know there is anything better out there.
/Mikael
Re:You don't have to go that far back... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
2fer - Zombies that run vs zombies that shuffle (Score:4, Funny)
Endless useless meetings and reports vs forging and basic survival
One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
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When you do get a lawn, I for one will be proud to get off it. /salute
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I always feel more assured when things are set up in advance, or at least some sort of planning met-up is set up beforehand. Waiting 'til the last minute seems like asking for trouble, especially if the others don't pick up their cell phones.
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Informative)
You, sir, have had a VERY different childhood to me. :-)
Parent
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Funny)
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....
No worries, you can get off mine.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm about twice your age, and we had a hang-out spots for night time, one for day time ( arcade ), and out favorite fishing holes for Saturday morning. if you got lost from one spot to another, call your night quits or try to find us.
you could get blasted drunk ( 18 was the drinking age back then ) and get home safely in a cab and still make it to go fishing at 6am.
when you made plans, you stuck to them, "pick you up at 8" meant you are ready at 8pm. however when you are picking up a girl, 8pm is when you g
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Funny)
During lunch at school you would say "Meet at the pool around 4:00 and we'll figure something out."
OK, speaking as an old-timer of 48, I have to second this. That was how we did did "meet-ups" back in the day. Of course, it was "the cracker barrel at the general store", not "the pool". And what we usually settled on doing was some variation of rolling the an old barrel hoop down the dirt road with a stick. But that was mainly to take our minds of the folksy banjo music that accompanied us wherever we went.
Still, we were happy although we didn't have much. Folks weren't so jaded back then. People had solid *values*, like patriotism, racism and exflunctication.
Parent
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the days when being face to face with people meant talking to them rather than watching them take an endless series of phone calls for "just a second" each.
The people who do that are inevitably befuddled as to why I walked away to do something more useful/interesting (once they notice that is).
Parent
Re:One Thing I Miss (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, sure, I guess I grew up under a rock, but there were some really cool things to do under that rock...far cooler than texting each other back and forth for hours saying, "I don't know what to do," "Me neither," "LOL this sucks," "LOL yeah," "=P," "fag lol."
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Probably 1940s peak of USA (Score:2, Interesting)
You could make the argument that for many people the 1940s-1950s was the present local peak of the USA. Since that time, due to resource exhaustion, increasing population and foolish trade deals, the standard of living has dropped in relative terms, the opportunities are not what they were, there's more aggravation, less optimism. The writing is worse, reporting is worse, the arts are terrible and people actually build less and make less. We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs but can't really ev
I say late 1960's - early 1970's was the peak. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Apollo program and moon landings were surely the peak of the USA.
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We're just shoved into boxes with sex and drugs...
Wait... what? I was with you until this part.
WoW does not equal War (Score:3, Insightful)
So what was the Slashdot of the past . . . ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Craftsmen's Guilds come to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild [wikipedia.org]. "They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society . . . tended to form associations based on their trades . . . each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the "arts" or "mysteries" of their crafts."
They had bizarre initiation rituals, We have goatse.
They had secret phrases. We have, "in Soviet . . . X, Y's you!"
They had a monopoly on their trade. We get outsourced.
Oh, I guess they won.
Other topics (Score:2)
Wimmen vs internet pr0n websites...
Remember the old geocities type web pages with absolutely everything on one staggeringly long page vs "clickthru articles" with about one paragraph per page of ads...
World (Score:3, Insightful)
nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
Telegraph vs internet: If you wanted to, you could use VOIP to send the right audio dots and dashes in morse code only this time there's nothing stopping you. The major draw for the author seems to be the scarcity of such communication back in the time period when telegraphs were the big thing.
Twitter vs gossip: gossip isn't dead. There's no evidence that Twitter destroyed gossip, it just went online. A far more efficient means of spreading rumors.
Facebook vs Dinner party: Same as above. The author seems to pine for a time when the world was very disconnected.
World of Warcraft vs Actual war craft: Iraq? War isn't anything to be pinning for.
Swine flu mass-panic vs The plague: not a very good comparison. Try AIDS and the plague.
Iphone vs fire on a hill: Same scarcity makes it cool argument.
Viruses vs the Trojan horse: not really a fair comparison. There's tons of military strategies that put that horse to shame.
MP3s vs Tribal chants: We still have those. Heck, my friends and I went to Denver just to see a few.
Post-Enlightenment scientific rigour vs Superstition and quack doctors: Yeah that living to the old age of 30 sounds great. Get me a piece of that action... We've still got voodoo nonsense and you're free to go get "treated" by one if you wish.
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I imagine Dr. McCoy would agree [youtube.com]
Re:Poisoning people with cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
...which is what much of modern chemotherapy amounts too will be looked back on like we look on bloodletting to keep your humors in order.
Except for the little fact that, as much as chemo sucks and as much as it closely resembles taking just enough arsenic mixed with mercury topped with cyanide to wish you were dead, it is backed up by clinical studies and has been found to work.
Chemo: sucks but works
Leeches: suck and don't work except in special cases as temporary therapy for reattachment of fingers and toes
Parent
Re:Poisoning people with cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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There's a lot less tuning than you think and still not a decent theory of why or how it might work and when. There is also evidence that the only reason cognitive and memory deficits aren't reported is that nobody's looking for them anymore.
I can understand it's use as a treatment of last resort especially for suicidal patients, but there are still a few psychiatrists that seem a bit trigger happy with it. Why TMS isn't tried first every time is beyond comprehension.
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Re:this is a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I use all of my moderator points to rate this article as -10 extremely stupid.
Parent
Re:this is a joke? (Score:4, Interesting)
We have: use your wimpy moderation points to bury it.
They had: kill it with fire.
Parent