Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[villa4europe]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

It's a fair point. I do wonder whether we retain it better from a book, but I have no real evidence for that. 

That's why I like doing the sporcle stuff, the repetition

I like knowing that the capital of Mongolia is Ulaanbaatar, its utterly pointless but I still enjoy it, I think Google is concise, it tells you exactly what you want to do instantly, the ability to go off exploring on it to find out stuff yourself? Not so sure, when googling stuff about Italy do you start to look north, east and west to find out stuff about their neighbours? With an atlas I did 

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

But what's the difference between looking up the answer on google or looking it up in an encyclopedia? Google is faster?

 

I think the internet and google gives a huge amount of opportunity for learning that people never had before. When i hear about something now or have a question I can google it and then go down a rabbit hole reading about it. Before google and the internet I wouldn't have been able to do that. Ok if it was a school assignment I'd have to research it, but in general day to day I just wouldn't bother. If I had a question about something I'd think about it for a second and just forget about it. Now I can google it and read loads of stuff about it in seconds.

this .

 

I think if you draw a line from the rollout of the web to the masses , exclude the first 12 months when all anyone did was download porn and that video of a whale being blown up on the beach  , then i think you'll see a huge leap in the populations general all round knowledge  .

it takes me 80 minutes to watch a 60 min TV show nowadays as i have to fact-check everything in it via google and then last thing before i go to bed I usually fire up flipboard and see what's been going on in the world and catchup on current events and inventions    ... when I was at school if i didn't know something I'd just copy it of the person sitting next to me , who probably didn't know it either

Edited January 28, 2021 by tonyh29

[Xela]

5 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

 

It is horifically expensive for what it is.

I have audible and I use it so I can't really complain. But like V4E when I first signed up I expected it to be a Netflix of audio books. £7 a month and as many as you want. Nope. 

I don't understand why it's so expensive. £7 a month gets you unlimited access to a billion films and TV shows on any streaming platform. BUt it gets you ONE book a month on audible. Makes no sense to me

I'm sure there is a reason, same as unlimited ebooks. There are platforms but they don't include many of the main publishers, which make it pointless really.

There have been unlimited audiobook sites but they soon change their method to a credit system as a lot of people were listening to 1 a day while working, or driving. They're £25+ each to buy on CD and you'll only ever listen to it once, unlike music, where you can listen to it multiple times. Thats a £1000 of audiobook content in a month. 

With films a lot of the money is made through the initial cinema release and subsequent spells on rental before it hits the streaming platforms. Not sure how TV shows work but would imagine something similar with commercial TV stations purchasing the shows for their prime time slots before it trickles down to streaming. 

I'd love an unlimited audiobook site but its just not viable, it seems. 

[mjmooney]

59 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

I think you'll see a huge leap in the populations general all round knowledge 

A cursory watch of any TV quiz show would suggest otherwise. 

[tonyh29]

48 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

A cursory watch of any TV quiz show would suggest otherwise. 

I don’t disagree , but that isn’t really a benchmark for society though .

 

[Mark Albrighton]

2 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

this .

 

I think if you draw a line from the rollout of the web to the masses , exclude the first 12 months when all anyone did was download porn and that video of a whale being blown up on the beach  , then i think you'll see a huge leap in the populations general all round knowledge  .

it takes me 80 minutes to watch a 60 min TV show nowadays as i have to fact-check everything in it via google and then last thing before i go to bed I usually fire up flipboard and see what's been going on in the world and catchup on current events and inventions    ... when I was at school if i didn't know something I'd just copy it of the person sitting next to me , who probably didn't know it either

Hmmm. Not sure on this. My gut feeling is that having all the information in your pocket all the time has meant people don’t feel the need to “know” things. What’s the point? You can look it up in thirty seconds and forget it just as quickly because if you need to find out again, it’ll still be there.

But as I say, that’s a gut feeling. I’m not sure how it would be measured.

[turvontour]

24 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Hmmm. Not sure on this. My gut feeling is that having all the information in your pocket all the time has meant people don’t feel the need to “know” things. What’s the point? You can look it up in thirty seconds and forget it just as quickly because if you need to find out again, it’ll still be there.

But as I say, that’s a gut feeling. I’m not sure how it would be measured.

Yes this is my point, you dont really need to know any facts any more because you have them on you. 

Forget 30 seconds, its more like 6 seconds. 

[turvontour]

29 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Hmmm. Not sure on this. My gut feeling is that having all the information in your pocket all the time has meant people don’t feel the need to “know” things. What’s the point? You can look it up in thirty seconds and forget it just as quickly because if you need to find out again, it’ll still be there.

But as I say, that’s a gut feeling. I’m not sure how it would be measured.

Yes this is my point, you dont really need to know any facts any more because you have them on you. 

Forget 30 seconds, its more like 6 seconds. 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by turvontour

[tonyh29]

40 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Hmmm. Not sure on this. My gut feeling is that having all the information in your pocket all the time has meant people don’t feel the need to “know” things. What’s the point? You can look it up in thirty seconds and forget it just as quickly because if you need to find out again, it’ll still be there.

But as I say, that’s a gut feeling. I’m not sure how it would be measured.

as you say hard to measure directly ,  however to state my case I’ll use VT’s very own @Demitri_C

he can’t spell for shit but through the power of the internet and the education it brings , he is now at least aware he can’t spell for shit

( no offence intended )

Yes , you can point to the type of people going on reality tv shows as proof that people have got thicker , but personally with this much information available to everyone , I’d be staggered if it didnt  form some sort of direct correlation to a rise in people’s overall knowledge 

 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by tonyh29

[turvontour]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

A cursory watch of any TV quiz show would suggest otherwise. 

Oh man, how much thicker are tv quiz shows nowadays. I'm in my mid 30s, and have watched that decline in difficulty of question accelerate in the last 5 years. It's not just the easier questions, it's the topics that have declined for me. More and more questions about things like kim Kardashian's dogs names.

Incredible watching re runs of old bullseye episodes from late 80s early 90s, the questions are solid, but the contestants get the majority of the answers correct.

[tonyh29]

6 minutes ago, turvontour said:

Yes this is my point, you dont really need to know any facts any more because you have them on you. 

Forget 30 seconds, its more like 6 seconds. 

possibly people are getting a bit too hung up on the definition of knowledge here 

I think just  a general thing like going to the pub with people , a meeting with clients , or even talking to a stranger at a party ... knowing some facts and engaging with these people would create  a better impression than standing there with your phone in your hand going errrm let me just check that .

 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

15 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

as you say hard to measure directly ,  however to state my case I’ll use VT’s very own @Demitri_C

he can’t spell for shit but through the power of the internet and the education it brings , he is now at least aware he can’t spell for shit

( no offence intended )

Yes , you can point to the type of people going on reality tv shows as proof that people have got thicker , but personally with this much information available to everyone , I’d be staggered if it didnt  form some sort of direct correlation to a rise in people’s overall knowledge 

 

 

 

It’s difficult to articulate because what information and facts people *should* know is open to interpretation and perhaps changes as the years go by, generations disappear...but I’ll try.

I know that as 10/11 year old in the mid 90’s I could tell you what Neil Armstrong is famous for. That, to me, is kinda entry level general knowledge. I think I even thought that at the time. By the time of adulthood, you *should* know that.

Fast forward to now. Are you confident that a higher proportion of the population could tell you Neil’s occupation? I’m not. As I say, I’m aware of the flaws with using this as  an acid test.

What I will say is that people who want to know more and fact check like yourself, they will be more knowledgeable because of the internet. And more obscure facts will be more widely known because there’s people out there who are interested enough to seek them out. 

I’m just not sure it applies to the population as a whole.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Mark Albrighton

[turvontour]

7 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

possibly people are getting a bit too hung up on the definition of knowledge here 

I think just  a general thing like going to the pub with people , a meeting with clients , or even talking to a stranger at a party ... knowing some facts and engaging with these people would create  a better impression than standing there with your phone in your hand going errrm let me just check that .

 

 

I was thinking exactly that scenario of how learning facts enables you to have better conversations with people. As a 9 or 10 year old I learnt and memorised most European capitals and about another 25 main non European capitals. When I think back its incredible how useful that has been when first meeting new people through work, when on holiday, at parties etc.

[tonyh29]

2 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

It’s difficult to articulate because what information and facts people *should* know is open to interpretation and perhaps changes as the years go by, generations disappear...but I’ll try.

I know that as 10/11 year old in the mid 90’s I could tell you what Neil Armstrong is famous for. That, to me, is kinda entry level general knowledge. I think I even thought that at the time. By the time of adulthood, you *should* know that.

Fast forward to now. Are you confident that a higher proportion of the population could tell you Neil’s occupation? I’m not. As I say, I’m aware of the flaws with using this as acid test.

What I will say is that people who want to know more and fact check like yourself, they will be more knowledgeable because of the internet. And more obscure facts will be more widely known because there’s people out there who are interested enough to seek them out. 

I just not sure it applies to the population as a whole.

I think knowing the first man to walk on the moon should be a “given” , not knowing  his previous job or what car he drove I would let slide tbh 

As I said in another post , I think it’s  definition of knowledge / being smarter that is throwing the discussion a little  ... knowing Kim Kardashians dog name would be knowledge that pretty much is ONLY gleaned from the internet , though you can argue the merits of if actually knowing it  makes someone smarter .

The web has made knowledge more accessible to people , for that alone it has to be almost impossible not to have made people “smarter”

[bickster]

Just now, tonyh29 said:

knowing Kim Kardashians dog name would be knowledge that pretty much is ONLY gleaned from the internet ,

I've heard it said that this family have a reality TV show, which would give people that can't read this exceptionally interesting knowledge

[useless]

With the internet there's probably a sense for many that they don't need to record things to memory because they've got the information recorded elsewhere and can access it whenever they want, the problem with that perhaps is that when you do look up things on the internet you're getting them in isolation, whereas if you have had them memorized in your head for a while you start to get an intuition for how things work in conjunction with each other, or how they might relate in other ways, so you're not just getting the facts, but also a sort of langauge of knowledge, similar to how if you need to make use of a foreign language it's better to have some of it learned rather than relying on a phrase book

But probably just depends on how disciplined the individual is, if you're making sure that your taking in the information, then probably doesn't  make too much difference whether you read it from a book or on the internet

[Seat68]

A friend of mine who I contact fairly regularly deleted whatsapp off his phone and installed telegram. He asked me to contact him via Telegram, completely fine with that its just an app. 
Anyway. My boss has seen that I have Telegram and immediately started sending me “funnies”. The funnies have now morphed into soft porn. This is beyond irritating. My grandson has access to my phone, my google pictures are open to my daughter and my wife and I have pictures set to auto upload. I am **** livid. 
So now I contact my mate and tell him its text or nothing. 

[Follyfoot]

On 28/01/2021 at 20:54, tonyh29 said:

I think knowing the first man to walk on the moon should be a “given” , not knowing  his previous job or what car he drove I would let slide tbh 

As I said in another post , I think it’s  definition of knowledge / being smarter that is throwing the discussion a little  ... knowing Kim Kardashians dog name would be knowledge that pretty much is ONLY gleaned from the internet , though you can argue the merits of if actually knowing it  makes someone smarter .

The web has made knowledge more accessible to people , for that alone it has to be almost impossible not to have made people “smarter”

My Dad calls her Cue Karmison, never felt the urge to put him right nor should I as I’m amazed that he knows who vaguely she is and the fact she’s got a big arse

Edited January 30, 2021 by Follyfoot

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Follyfoot said:

My Dad calls her Cue Karmison, never felt the urge to put him right nor should I as I’m amazed that he knows who vaguely she is and the fact she’s got a big arse

I only know the name. I wouldn't be able to pick her out of an identity parade. I assume she's some ghastly botox woman. 

[Follyfoot]

6 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I only know the name. I wouldn't be able to pick her out of an identity parade. I assume she's some ghastly botox woman. 

she’s been in some reality TV nonsense, made a sex tape and married some singer, All the family are ‘famous’ as well I think one of them had a sex change. Do you not think you’re missing out on much mate in all fairness

Edited January 30, 2021 by Follyfoot