Comic Strips

I lived in Pittsburgh during my formative years. Pittsburgh has an awesome library system, with world class libraries like the Carnegie library, and each universitie's libraries, plus all the local libraries. I spent quite a bit of time in these. The net adds convenience, and some niche things, but it's not the information, it's having it in your pocket.

Also, you have to sift through a lot of bullshit.

Weapons?

conclussion

/kən-klŭsh′ən/

noun

When the [probably wrong] answer, or its immediate consequence, hits you like a brick

I grew up poor and we couldn't afford a set of encyclopedias. We lived in the country so libraries were not a walk away. I never even thought to ask my friends if they had encyclopedias when visiting their houses and having this happen.

Encyclopedias were also somewhat limited. It could be useful if you were wondering what the main export of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was, but if you were wondering what strategy to use to beat the final boss in Ninja Gaiden you were likely out of luck (I know, I know, these are terrible examples It's 3:30am, cut me some slack).

TV had plenty of educational stuff

Sure, but it's not like you could be sitting there with your friend and be like "I wonder what the most common name in the world is?" and turn on the TV to the answer to your question.

Plus you weren't always at somebodies house, you could be on a hike or at the lake and think of a question.

There were a lot of times back in the day where I would think of an interesting question and then by the time I got to a place where I could research it, I had forgotten all about it. I guess I could have and probably should have carried around a little notebook and wrote those questions down. Hindsight is 20/20

And how’s the newfangled Google knowledge world panning out so far? Lots of people getting informed?

Pretty great honestly. I can't speak for other people but now when I have one of those "I wonder about X topic" moments I actually just look up the answer.

It even took me a while to catch up to the fact that it was now an option. I remember several times when I first got a smart phone and I would have the "I just thought of something I would like to know more about" experience and then forget that I had the ability to find out an embarrassing amount of times before it finally got to the point where it's second nature to look it up now.

you mean houses you go to now aren't filled with books? I don't know anyone who doesn't have at least a small book shelf.

I thought the comic was supposed to be funny. I found it amusing. Maybe I’m just dumb lol. But I mean, I used to read the dictionary and especially the encyclopedia, go to the library, all sorts of stuff before the internet. It was fun.

For context, this comic was made before Google changed their company motto away from, "Don't be evil". There was a sense that they might not turn evil back then and they were still giving reasonable search results based on your query.

And now LLMs came and ruined people ability to think. Idiocracy was a prophecy CMV.

Call for minutes!? That was expensive and in my small town everyone would know what i was searching for in no time.

Assuming you lived in a place with access to a library like you mentioned, that is. For me, libraries were a once a month thing growing up.

Y’all heard of librarians right? They do a little more than stack books. Most are accredited professional researchers who can find what you’re looking for, or try to get it for you.

Talk to more humans and kindly please support your local libraries.

And you still have to go to a university library if you want any scientific papers and research knowledge, because most of it is behind a paywall and only universities can afford to subscribe to the journals.

Don’t you know the Dewey decimal system?

I'd askjeeves all sorts of things. Or hotbot. Or yahoo. I think MSN even had one. I think the term Google is the same as Bandaid at this point, and synonymous with Internet search.

I appreciate the sentiment though. Did many research papers in school where it was go to library, get books, quote them, place citation in bibliography. I enter high school in 2001 and Wikipedia is a thing, and that was that. We had been "allowed" to cite websites at that point, and while Wikipedia was off limits, some of us would just jump down the wiki article to it's citations and use those.

But yeah, I remember the days of writing papers in a library, that or using Encarta. Encyclopedia Brittanica or Encarta.

And before that we had tiny wikipedia's written on paper.

I mean, the bar to go get a reference book to look something up is significantly higher than "pull my smartphone out of my pocket and tap a few things in".

Here's an article from 1945 on what the future of information access might look like.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm

The Atlantic Monthly | July 1945

"As We May Think"

by Vannevar Bush

Eighty years ago, the stuff that was science fiction to the people working on the cutting edge of technology looks pretty unremarkable, even absurdly conservative, to us in 2025:

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials.

If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

How about the misinformation from Uncle Mike who overheard your question and confidently spews you some bullshit? If it's not in the encyclopedia upstairs, most of the questions that cross your mind went unanswered or you took everyone at their word.

Sure, you write down important questions and topics, but this post doesn't seem to be about that.

Yeah! I mean, we had Alta Vista!

I think there used to be a kind of mystery about things though, you could debate in a pub for hours on a subject where now there's a definitive answer available within seconds. That delay in accessing information was fun and led to all sorts of debates and wonder. I remember when the original Pokémon games came out on Gameboy and there were all sorts of rumours flying around about how to get certain Pokémon, missingno etc. you never knew what was real or not until you saw it with your own eyes. Now you go on Google/YouTube and someone's already done an hour long deep dive to prove/debunk everything. I think having all of this information at our fingertips has actually stunted our curiosity and drive to explore and experiment

Wikipedia is way better for learning shit than google anyway.