12wonderY
This clip about young people not ever using basic reference books
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTBQ87sQr/
I left this comment:
@Still wondering: My daughter was in high school at the turn of the century. We’d just got a computer. She had bonus history questions to answer every week. She’d search on computer while I used the encyclopedia to see who could find the answers faster. Was Google existent then?
Just checked. Google was born 1998. Wikipedia in 2001.
I recall surfing the internet in the same way we used to enjoy dipping into the encyclopedia; skimming from one entry to another related one and so on.
Have we become information saturated nowadays? I think I’ll go have a conversation with a children’s librarian this week.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTBQ87sQr/
I left this comment:
@Still wondering: My daughter was in high school at the turn of the century. We’d just got a computer. She had bonus history questions to answer every week. She’d search on computer while I used the encyclopedia to see who could find the answers faster. Was Google existent then?
Just checked. Google was born 1998. Wikipedia in 2001.
I recall surfing the internet in the same way we used to enjoy dipping into the encyclopedia; skimming from one entry to another related one and so on.
Have we become information saturated nowadays? I think I’ll go have a conversation with a children’s librarian this week.
2MarthaJeanne
We used to have big dictionaries next to the dining table, you know, the two and three volume ones with etymology and everything. And we used them. Maybe not every dinner, but certainly multiple times every week. Today we need it less often. No high school kid in the conversation. And if we do, we use Google and co.
We never competed on the searching, but when the boys got fancy calculators, Jerry would set us math problems in the car. I usually had the right answer just in my head or with paper and pencil before they did. Of course way back when, Mom wanted to do mental arithmatic with her 5th graders, and used us to ptectice on. I learned lots of good tricks for calculating in your head. Somewhere there is a sf story about somebody reinventing doing math on paper when the navigation computers of the space ship stop working.
We never competed on the searching, but when the boys got fancy calculators, Jerry would set us math problems in the car. I usually had the right answer just in my head or with paper and pencil before they did. Of course way back when, Mom wanted to do mental arithmatic with her 5th graders, and used us to ptectice on. I learned lots of good tricks for calculating in your head. Somewhere there is a sf story about somebody reinventing doing math on paper when the navigation computers of the space ship stop working.
32wonderY
>2 MarthaJeanne: I hope someone can come up with the title of that story.
4ABVR
>2 MarthaJeanne: The SF story you're remembering may be "Misfit" (1939) by Robert A. Heinlein, about a mathematical genius in a future, space-going version of the Civilian Conservation Corps who saves his shipmates by doing complex calculations in his head when the ship's navigational computer fails.
It's collected in Revolt in 2100 and The Past Through Tomorrow.
It's collected in Revolt in 2100 and The Past Through Tomorrow.
5MarthaJeanne
>4 ABVR: This is a good story, and also the one my husband thought I meant. Libby is a great guy, and does amazing feats of mental math, but he has never been totally dependant on computers, and knows about how to do math. He does not have to figure out that you can do math/arithmetik without a computer.
6MarthaJeanne
Jerry has found The Feeling of Power https://dn710709.ca.archive.org/0/items/TheFeelingOfPower/The%20Feeling%20of%20P... Which is a lot closer to what I remember. We do have The Mathematical Magpie so this is probably what I remember.
