This is probably gonna seem like a weird thread, but today I'm musing on the internet, and the availability to instantaneous, seemingly infinite amounts of data, often in real-time, and what that means and how it affects us as people.

Because...

Somewhere, somewhen, my former habit of visiting libraries, finding dark corners in abandoned isles and curling up with a pile of books in my youthful data-searches seems to have disappeared, and without me even noticing, been replaced first by embedded online text links, then Googling, and now just verbally querying the nearest AI wannabe.

Loooooong gone are the sets of Grolier, Britannica and other encyclopedias (probably decades out of date) at grandads house....

So now, with the little boxes housing my ai assistants scattered throughout the house, I can simply ask the open air about the weather, the best temperature to cook chicken wings in an air fryer, The closest venue that sells Turducken's.... 🤔

I notice that over time, the constant bombardment of data has shortened my attention span to the point that I notice myself looking at my phone to fill up the few seconds that it takes my computer to boot, and even impatiently scrolling the web while MSFS boots.....

Videos synopsize whole movies so that you don't have to take the time to actually watch them, and services offer to read books for you so you don't have to stop whatever else you're doing while (kind of) absorbing the narrative.

(People on the forum ask others to summarize videos for them, because they can't spare the time/maybe don't have the attention span to watch them themselves.....)

Family gatherings, whether at home or at a restaurant are full of entire families (including me) staring at their phones between the boring verbal pauses within conversations.

So! What caused this sudden introspection? Well, noticing my own behavior this morning.

Semi-randomly scrolling the web, I saw somebody mention Coney Island. This immediately set off a stream-of-consciousness Boojum-hunt whereupon I instantly wondered if the place still resembled my childhood memories, or whether it had fallen into decrepitude in the intervening decades since my last visit.

This quickly led to a 24-hour live camera feed of the park, and me noticing a shining silver subway train

It was so clean! So now I was thinking about my childhood, old movies and the ubiquitous graffiti that used to cover seemingly every NY subway train from stem to stern. Where had it all gone. How had NY solved the problem?

This led to articles regarding the invention and utilization of power washers, and the cleanliness of the entire NY subway system, which then led to articles about the City's new congestion pricing program, and the use of the money for the upkeep of the transportation system, which led to......

Yikes. So easy to be drawn into aimlessly down these data rabbit-holes nowadays!

Or... is it just me? 😱

You mentioned the clean subway cars....Back in '95, my sister and brother-in-law and I took the train
from Harrison, NY (Upstate) to Grand Central in New York City.  From there we took the subway out
to catch the Staten Island ferry and then back towars "Little Italy" for lunch.  No graffiti on any of the 
train cars.  Also no "Warriors",  "Baseball Furies", or "Orphans" were spotted riding on them!

Well... this is what I remember.....

 

34 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

This is probably gonna seem like a weird thread, but today I'm musing on the internet, and the availability to instantaneous, seemingly infinite amounts of data, often in real-time, and what that means and how it affects us as people

No, not weird at all, it’s an excellent post. It can be a double edged sword. Having the world at your fingertips is just awesome. For me personally, it’s a total victory over the tyranny of the Dewey decimal system.  As a kid I hated having to go through those index cards to find a book at the library.  Now it’s a breeze with the internet.  But on the other hand, it can become a time sucker. Lately I’ve discovered all sorts of threads on Reddit and before I knew it, I found days seemed to have less time than they used to.  And an unintended consequence can be the toll it takes on personal relationships.  It reminds me of this scene from “The Best of Times” (substitute internet for football)

 

9 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Or... is it just me?

No, certainly not, same here.

And just a week ago i was suddenly thinking of the possible consequences of this behavior for children growing up now.... or for the whole of mankind for that matter.

What kind of beings will this make us, how will this change us? Will it change us for the better, or..... ??

1 hour ago, Wildblue said:

And just a week ago i was suddenly thinking of the possible consequences of this behavior for children growing up now.... or for the whole of mankind for that matter.

Well, kids nowadays are already kind of little aliens.....

With their cellphones, their lives are completely documented: endless pictures of friends (apparently cellphones are ok in schools) movies, 24/7 contact via various platforms, instant access to the sum total of human knowledge. Infinite access to movies/music/books (hey, even I use kindle and am beginning to think physical media is prehistoric)

No need to visit physical stores, Amazon can get it to you by the next day, and if drones work out maybe in just a few hours.....

Which is to say the universe kids are growing up in now only superficially resembles that of their forbears, even if we are mostly oblivious to it. They honestly think in ways that are completely and radically unique to their generation in how it perceives the world/universe.

This has happened before of course, but I think the perhaps unprecedented degree of the current change will not be fully revealed until they reach an age to begin taking charge of the planet themselves.

Edited April 29, 20251 yr by HiFlyer

On 4/28/2025 at 7:29 PM, HiFlyer said:

hey, even I use kindle and am beginning to think physical media is prehistoric)

Same here! I received an email from Amazon a few weeks ago letting me know that I had read 456 e-books last year. Even so, I still find myself trying to turn a physical page instead of using my right thumb to flip the page... 🤣