
The Cop at the End of the World - Thevet
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewmcmillen/the-constable-of-birdsville#.iexMRlj2Kj
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kabdib
A little meta:

We live in the future; a town I've never heard of in the middle of Australia,
and 30 seconds later I can see a map of it, view aerial photography, and read
about its history and its surroundings. I've been reading about the Simpson
desert and other geography of the area.

My little group's lunch conversation earlier in the week started with "How
much would you pay, in 1985, to have the iPhone in your pocket with similar
network access to that period's knowledge?" Opinions varied; intrinsic
knowledge is interesting, but a lot of the interesting stuff involves access
to people. It might be little more than a novelty.

But it's easy to forget how fast and accessible things are today. When I was
10 my parents bought our family an encyclopedia, a significant amount of money
for knowledge that was of high quality, and readily accessible by walking
across our living room, but years out of date. For anything better you had to
drive across town to the library, when it was open, and hit the stacks.

I'm not sure that fast-and-vast is always compelling (the downside? you chase
trivia and entertainment a lot, probably). But if I'd had StackOverflow in
1985 . . .

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chris_wot
The Australian Geographic had many pictures of the Simpson Desert and the
Birdsville Track. The pictures show a stark, raw beauty.

One day I'm going to have go there, given I live in this country!

