Did you know "May you live in interesting times" is a old Gypsy curse, and I consider this interesting....
Did You know...
- Thread starter Sheldon
- Start date
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
Most of the statistics listed in the video are a little misleading and oversimplified. Bermuda is the highest in BB penetration because it's small and easily wired. The US is much larger, and not so easily wired. Quite a few people in the US use satellite internet, which doesn't necessarily get counted. I use a cellular data connection, and it probably doesn't get counted. Japan makes wide use of wireless internet, as does Taiwan. It's possible to use a wifi phone in large areas of Taipei.
Radio and television were both mediums that really took a lot of infrastructure build-out, and grew when the population was smaller. Internet got a head-start because it grew on existing phone lines and didn't require any new equipment (early adopters already had computers). iPods are not a medium of communication; they're just a consumer electronic device, so they're hardly comparable with television or the Internet. Facebook is simply a website, and should only be compared with other websites. A better comparison might be telephones, radio and television.
As far as comparing the amount of "information" between time periods, that's highly relative. What's "information"? Is that what's recorded and written down? Information can also be conveyed orally, but is not easily measured. Stained glass windows are information. While the volume of available recorded information could be said to be increasing, our ability to effectively catalog it for future use more or less keeps pace. Reference tools simply become more sophisticated.
Honestly, I don't find the current rate of change in the world at this point to be in any way overwhelming or confusing. When aliens land and introduce themselves or we have a war with nanoweapons, that will be a bit of a change.
Radio and television were both mediums that really took a lot of infrastructure build-out, and grew when the population was smaller. Internet got a head-start because it grew on existing phone lines and didn't require any new equipment (early adopters already had computers). iPods are not a medium of communication; they're just a consumer electronic device, so they're hardly comparable with television or the Internet. Facebook is simply a website, and should only be compared with other websites. A better comparison might be telephones, radio and television.
As far as comparing the amount of "information" between time periods, that's highly relative. What's "information"? Is that what's recorded and written down? Information can also be conveyed orally, but is not easily measured. Stained glass windows are information. While the volume of available recorded information could be said to be increasing, our ability to effectively catalog it for future use more or less keeps pace. Reference tools simply become more sophisticated.
Honestly, I don't find the current rate of change in the world at this point to be in any way overwhelming or confusing. When aliens land and introduce themselves or we have a war with nanoweapons, that will be a bit of a change.
HK4U
New member
I don't think there is any doubt that knowledge has increased and is increasing at a faster and faster rate. There was and article in the Parade section of the newspaper back in the 1970's that talked about how all knowledge that was present at that time something like 80% and been gained over just part of the 20th century. We went from horse and buggy to putting men on the moon. from waging war with simple firearms to atomic warfare in about 50 years. Someone that is 100 years old today has seen their world go from a time when few houses even had telephones to the internet. Watch a t.v. show like Leave it to beaver ofrthe Andy Griffith show, shows that for many of us were not that long ago, and see what we have today that was not around then. Technology that we take for granted today will be obsolete in just a few years. By comparison there was no where near the changes between say 1400 and 1800. It is a brave new world.
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
So...someone went around with their "knowledge ruler" and measured what people knew? Quantifying information is an extremely tricky business - it's subjective and highly dependent on the observer's point of view.
What knowledge are we measuring? MySpace is full of information, but it's mostly useless gossip. I get at least several hundred KB worth of text emails all day long. 90% of it is nonsense meetings and stuff that doesn't have anything to do with me. It's "knowledge", but it's of little utility to anyone. Then there's stuff that's outdated or incorrect from the beginning. Records pile up on all sorts of things. People get patents on inventions that are never built, or are rendered pointless due to paradigm shifts.
People living in caves had knowledge - they knew every bump, mud puddle and jutting root in the forest. Measure that and you'll find it can add up to a huge amount of information. A detailed topo map of 15 sq miles would take a huge amount of memory.
More likely, our knowledge has simply been transformed - we've gotten in the habit of committing it to a medium with a potentially longer lifespan - rather than actually increased. Considering that we're always gaining new knowledge, one could argue that there's an inevitable accumulation which necessarily leads to a net increase in knowledge.
However, mere records are not sentient; just because something is on page 138 of some PDF in a digital library somewhere doesn't necessarily make it "knowledge". Information that is known to a living being is animate and alive, being used for some useful purpose - it is "learned" knowledge. Knowledge that was known, but whose owner has long since passed away, is not of nearly the same magnitude.
Scarecrow
New member
common sense is a special kind of knowledge that so many people lack these days. almost to the point where it might be of great benefit to have a "common sense" course in schools.
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
How much knowledge was required to put men in the horse and buggy versus putting them on the moon?
HK4U
New member
A lot less I would say.
Claire Worley
Banned
wow that was hot
