> How does having cheap access to internet makes the quality of your life better
Whoa that's a bit of a reach no? How about the ability to drive around with GPS? Or stay easily in touch with family living far away? Taking photos of your baby and having it stored on the cloud for free? The ability to learn almost anything for free?
I'm not saying it's all great, it isn't, but we can't deny the benefits.
I did a cross country drive back in 2008 without GPS and it was great. In fact I would argue by removing all the components of randomness out of your life, you make yourself fragile and your susceptibility to risks much worse.
As an example, I lived in NY for three years and recently when I went there at my cousins place (who is GenZ) our batteries died and we had to walk our way to subway. Despite living there all his life my cousin was having a hard time finding the subway station in Astoria (because he just uses the Map) whereas I could remember from my vague memories of alleys and shops to find out rather quickly.Or how about driving into that diner you have never been instead of looking at Yelp or Google review and finding the best reviewed store? You deny yourself simple pleasures like that when you rely too much on Google or other technologies. I am not saying they don’t have their places but saying without them our quality of life would decline is a fallacy.
I would also argue writing letters and occasional/less frequent long formed phone calls were much better than frequent short form SMS or DMs which most of the time come off as devoid of same level of care or efforts. Keeping in touch with people we know have become such a low effort thing, try writing a letter or making a phone call next time instead of texting and realize how much more effort it required.
Have you traveled using maps and GPS? They are very different, and not even comparable.
It seems to me like comparing a shovel to a ditch digging machine.
It is possible to navigate using maps. But not practical for the mass audience of GPS who can’t use maps. And impossible for the industries that require GPS (uber types).
Technology is a multiplier that increases the returns on things my removing labor and letting it focus on other, more productive things.
Similarly, arguing that the internet isn’t 1000x easier to learn things because libraries exist is odd to me. Have you ever tried to use a book in a library to find that it’s checked out? Or not available at all. Inter library loans used to take 30 days, if I had access to a good library, and now that information is available to me for free.
This doesn’t mean the world is perfect or that we don’t still have so much work to do. But it’s just an odd perspective that seems unmoored from reality, since these things can be objectively measured.
Am I in some kind of weird HN bubble where no-one has ever used a physical map?
I've travelled extensively pre-turn by turn navigation using physical maps, i spent a year motorcycling across mainland Europe in my early 20's using nothing but physical maps, I did the same but in the US during the early-mid 2000's.
Was it as easy as sticking a zip code into a magic box and having it tell me where to go and when to take a turn? Probably not. But it wasn't much more complicated because I know how to read maps and can remember things for more than 10 seconds.
I used a physical map, but especially inside cities how the hell are you supposed to keep your eyes on the road and navigate at the same time? A 30 minute drive can have idk 50 turns. Do you memorize those 50 turns? What about places where the street signs suck?
Lol... no it's quite the opposite and far less distracting to actually navigate by map. You read the map, interpret the relevant bits, hold (in broad strokes) the entire strategy in your mind, and then just drive. Most of the small decisions don't matter. In fact, this greatly improves situational awareness. I don't need to pay attention to navigating every interesection when I just read the map and realize that every road as long as I'm heading roughly east will dump into the big collector road that I need to get to. I remember whether I'm on one side of the freeway, or the other, and I can find my way onto it without any additional assistance.
Interestingly, it's often MORE efficient than using Waze or some navigation app with ADHD that can't see the forest for the trees. I pity those that never learned to see the forest.
I'm not sure it's an HN bubble so much as a people under a certain age bubble. Smartphones in the modern sense have only been mainstream for a bit over 10 years. The internet was only mainstream for about 10 years before that. But a lot of people seem to assume that we were hunting woolly mammoths with flint spears before that time.
Yes today's communications are nice but we really didn't need GPS or cell phones to leave the house however primitive paper maps and, yes, some degree of planning seem.
Well as a society we are super screwed if some event wipes out the internet or computers. The dependence is gonna keep increasing. I wonder when we'll hearing stories about Amazon servers shut downs inadvertently killing some people.
Less pleasant than GPS, sure, but by no means a rare skill or impossible to achieve. Would you get the road wrong more often, and have to stop and re-check? Yeah, definitely. Would you still get from A to B in roughly the same time? Yeah, definitely.
For what it's worth, my experience is the opposite. When I read the map and know the whole path ahead of time I'm far more likely to get it right the first time compared to using an app in the city that tells me to turn right 200 feet from the intersection when I really needed that information 200 yards from the intersection. Or sends me on some weird right then left then right thing instead of realizing I can just go straight.
I don't think anyone is disputing that technology makes things easier.
And I've frequently commented that early career me would be incredibly frustrated by the difficulty of accessing information about just about anything were I to be transported back in time.
But it's also the case that we were actually able to travel, communicate, and learn about things in 1990. Yes, it was generally higher friction and relied more on physical artifacts like maps and printed photos but we were able to manage quite well.
When I was younger and lived in California, people had Thomas Guide maps. These were the best. As a pizza delivery dude in college, it made it pretty simple to find a house/apartment. And it didn't require batteries etc. Now it wasn't as easy as an iPhone with maps built in, but it wasn't like it was impossible.
There used to be a whole trope of men (especially) not wanting to stop and ask for directions. I'm sure there are younger people who would watch a movie or a TV show where this happens and go "Huh????"
There are also any number of plot points that revolve around not being able to reach someone that also wouldn't make a lot of sense in general today.
You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops. I'd even say its a bit risky to drive like that.
> Phones, you know good old land lines
So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s? It used to be crazy expensive to call abroad. And you couldn't see!
> Why do I need physical photos stored in the cloud?
Do you physically develop all your photos? If you do you are an exception to the rule, most people develop maybe 1% of their photos.
> Have ya heard of libraries?
Come on now. Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that. Also, it's only the rich world that has high quality libraries accessible to everyone.
So many misunderstandings in here, probably because you're too young to have done any of these things. (Source: I am pushing 50.)
Driving with maps doesn't require another passenger or a lot of stops, generally. You plan your route with the map before starting out, and if necessary write the turns on a piece of note paper. You may need to stop and consult the map if you miss a turn. I'll grant that GPS is more convenient, but maps worked better than you think they did.
Phones vs. video calls, I'll mostly grant you. Long distance calls were expensive, and video gives you facial and body language cues. On the other hand, audio quality was a lot higher when everyone was on land lines, so you didn't need those cues as much to make up for indistinct audio.
Physical photos: before 2000 or so, everyone developed all of their photos. Most cameras were film, then. Even when digital cameras came into widespread use, it was common to print the best pictures. People really only started not developing photos when smartphones became common.
Libraries: I learned C from a couple of textbooks, and C++ (such as it was in 1993) from a book published by the company that sold me the compiler. All of these would have been available in a reasonably sized library, or in a small library via interlibrary loan.
> I learned C from a couple of textbooks, and C++ (such as it was in 1993) from a book published by the company that sold me the compiler.
You ignored that part of my argument about only the rich world having high quality libraries. What if you'r from India or Africa or even rural America? Now even a poor Indian can solve Hackerrank challenges on his phone. It's not as easy or as convenient but it's much better than his prospects 30 years ago.
Unfamiliar cities could certainly be more challenging to drive around prior to GPS, you got lost more often, and yes you often needed to have a paper map. It took me a while before I really developed a decent mental map for driving around the Boston area. But I find people seemingly arguing that travel to unfamiliar places was this daunting task absent GPS availability rather amusing.
For photos I shot B&W (which I printed selectively) and then slides. But most people just took their roll of print film to the pharmacy or whatever and got a stack of 3 1/2" x 5" color prints back.
> You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops. I'd even say its a bit risky to drive like that.
Oh, FFS. Pre-GPS, I would look up my destination on a map or street atlas and learn the route. If a portion was especially tricky, I might jot down a few reminders, or pull over before that leg and review the map.
Is GPS a wonderful convenience, especially with traffic monitoring & such?
Hell yeah, I love it and wouldn't want to go back to maps without a damn good reason.
But don't pretend it's somehow vital.
> So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s?
The vast majority don't use video calling.
Still, constantly available communication is, IMO, a huge net positive.
> Do you physically develop all your photos?
That was obviously how it worked before ubiquitous digital cameras.
Photo situation is better today, though I might argue that the low marginal cost of each photo leads to people robbing themselves of vivid memories of what they're seen. There's some research that supports that idea, though I don't have a reference immediately on hand.
> Come on now. Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that.
That's exactly what I did. Checked the ARM out of the library. Eventually bought my own copy when I decided it was worth it.
As much as I love the wealth of information available on the net, I sometimes miss how good libraries used to be.
I’m not trying to be condescending but I’m guessing you’re pretty young?
>> Try learning C++ in a library, good luck with that.
How do you think people learnt to code before the internet? I borrowed large textbooks on Basic/VB, C++, and Turbo Pascal from friends and libraries. And this wasn’t a long time ago. I did this as recently as 2005.
>> Do you physically develop all your photos? If you do you are an exception to the rule, most people develop maybe 1% of their photos.
Why would you take photos and not develop them? When I finish a roll I take it to the local store and they develop the photos. I then put them in an album or store them in another way. People have been doing this for a long time.
>> So you are saying having a high def video call with my brother living across the world, for free, is just like calling him in the 60s?
Most people I know disable video in meetings. The majority don’t do video calls with friends unless they have some friend that calls them that way. I find audio calls much more enjoyable that video calls and I definitely don’t think I’m in the minority there. If you haven’t seen someone in years and they live far away a video call might be nice but in most cases audio is not only enough, but better.
>> You basically need another passenger with you otherwise you'll have to do a lot of stops.
Most journeys people make repeat. You learn the route. The modern obsession with GPS is so we don’t get there a minute early or late. For infrequent, really long drives you can plan your trip in advance, noting down the steps of the journey rather than following the map constantly. It’s also amazing how far you get just following road signs when you know the general towns on your route.
> How do you think people learnt to code before the internet? I borrowed large textbooks on Basic/VB, C++, and Turbo Pascal from friends and libraries. And this wasn’t a long time ago. I did this as recently as 2005.
I'm not denying that, I'm just sating progress was way slower - especially for newcomers before the internet. Imagine trying to solve problems without Google or Stackoverflow when you're a 15 old kid trying to learn programming. You're stuck on some shitty installation of Linux or some missing package and have no idea why the compiler gives this error message. How do you even get Linux? Have no idea how they did stuff back then but it was for sure harder to just to get something up and running.
So easy to give up.
Programming in that era used to be something 1 in maybe 50 children tried. It was no way near as accessible as it is today.
The flip side of that is that since it's now easier for everyone to learn new skills and solve problems, the requirements and expectations from workers pretty much went up proportionally.
I'm fairly convinced that having to do things as you described was better for mental health as well. The always on, always connected lifestyle has big downsides.
Driving with a map was better than how it is now? We're 10 years from having the damn thing drive itself for us.
I suck at directions, I can imagine without the internet I would just avoid drives to places I wasn't familiar with and miss out on a bunch of things.
Yeah, you have to use a map but your kid only has to interact with the school bullies at school and you aren't temped to reach out to your college fling behind your wife's back beacuse you never see her bikini photos.
Things have gotten better, but in lots of ways they have gotten worse.
Have no argument with you there, I'm not saying it was all a win.
Mental health problems seem to be increasing and the internet is part (but probably not all) of the problem.
Whoa that's a bit of a reach no? How about the ability to drive around with GPS? Or stay easily in touch with family living far away? Taking photos of your baby and having it stored on the cloud for free? The ability to learn almost anything for free?
I'm not saying it's all great, it isn't, but we can't deny the benefits.