I’m still sometimes amazed of our modern technology while my little ones more or less ignore it. But when I showed them a telefone with a dial and a cable and told them that I could not move it around they would not believe me at first.
Like the man in the comic said, “uncanny”.
It’s fascinating to see how a comic from 1912 still holds up today. Also I didn’t know they had ‘colored moving pictures’ that early, I always thought Wizard of Oz was the first one in 1939. Turns out 1908 was the year the first color film came out. Neat!
Many early color films were hand-tinted, but there were definitely processed color films early on too. They were just incredibly expensive.
I used to lament how my nieces and nephew would never be able to appreciate the modern internet because they grew up with broadband. Now I don’t think about it cause the idea itself has got old.
That said, I like this comic and saved a copy because it’s a historical artifact. I love history. Thanks for posting.
Don’t worry. If the recently discovered superconductors at room temperature lk-99 is real they’ll be visiting mars.
I’m not a materials scientist, can you please explain how room temperature superconductors eventually leads to Mars colonization? Serious question. I hear a lot about how it’ll change society, but it just seems to be “existing tech but slightly better” from what I’ve read.
My take on it is that it does improve existing tech, but by a lot. That makes whole new use cases possible. Consider long-distance power transmission.
I am not a material scientist either and my knowledge is extremely limited so here’s a discussion with people far more knowledgeable explaining everything : https://feddit.de/post/2121990
From that thread, one of the techs it may lead to or vastly improve is a Railgun like launch systems, nuclear fusion, and i think i read somewhere that it can help make artificial gravity a thing.
One other thing is that a lot of our cutting edge technology rely on using superconductors that are cooled to extremely cold temps using helium and a room temp superconductors would mean that these cutting edge tech could be available for everyone.
Thanks! I’ll check out the thread.
I read a lot of fantasy which is generally in a medieval setting.
Sometimes I’ll just stop and appreciate that I can turn a handle and get limitless clean drinking water, or that I drive 35 miles to work every day, which would normally be an all-day trip.
Not to mention things like instant long distance communication.
Just a few hundred years ago they would freaking be amazed to know you can videochat to someone at the other end of the world while traveling at high speed in the air and eating food out of season.
A few hundred years ago? What you stated would be magic to someone less than 100 years ago. Even 50 years ago it was just science fiction.
We had barely working internet on mobile phones in 2005. People forget quickly.
I saw a horse carrier driving on the highway the other day and all I could think was, that horse is so lucky he doesn’t have to walk all that distance. His ancestors had to pull humans and now a human is pulling him.
Wholesome
Kind of fascinated by the subtle linguistic differences in this comic. Mainly saying “See the…” instead of “Look at that…”
It’s funny, we basically have magic now
I can talk to anyone, miles away instantly, anywhere on earth. It’s mental. But it’s totally normal for us to make phone calls.
My wife and I were just mentioning the other day how we can have video chats with family half way around the world, for free. When we were kids making a long distance call to someone a few counties away was a big deal and we didn’t talk long because it would cost too much. Wild stuff.
I was having a conversation about telepathy and blew my own mind. Essentially, telepathy would be a means of sending thoughts to other brains. It would require some sort of transmitter organ to produce waves that travel through space, and then some sort of receiver organ to “hear” the transmissions.
That’s when we realized we do have all of that. Our brains convert ideas into words, and we form those words passing expired air across muscles we constrict to form specific wavelengths that can transmit through the air. We also have tiny hairs that pick up the otherwise imperceptible vibration stimulus, and a completely separate area in the brain that decodes antennae hairs back into ideas.
It’s so mundane, and yet hardly any other living can manage it, and hundreds of lifeforms have inconceivable forms of communication that we cannot perceive.
Anyway, people rarely marvel at the amazing things we have.
Yeah, speech is a form of telepathy.
So is telephone call.
Also, a virus is what was referred to as a “ghost” or “spirit” at earlier times: You cannot see it (it has no body), yet it carries information.
We are basically wizards
Dopamine levels in the reward system are affected by novelty. Novelty is often important to pay attention to when it comes to survival, which is likely why this thrill of the “new” is conserved across many species.
Novelty has pretty seismic implications in the realm of instructional technology. I like to think that new methods are intrinsically beneficial, but the research shows no real benefit.
This is a really poignant comic and a great post!
What is this trying to convey?
That kids who grow up with new technologies are unphased and take them for granted, but marvel at old fashioned things that the elders grew up with and took for granted.
Funny how I was always marveled by new tech growing up. I consider it a blessing to have come up with the evolution of gaming basically from the roots. Every generation was a revelation.
The kid was just a baby when cars were invented. He didn’t live through the transition, and probably never saw a cart pulled by an animal. The kid’s parents, as seen in the first panel, did live through the transition from carriage to car, and presumably grew up with the animal driven vehicles.
So, when the kid sees a goat pulling a cart, this is a novel and new thing for him. But to the parents, it’s like going back in time, a relic of the past, so they see no wonder in it, because it’s something they’ve known about all their lives. They thus find the kid’s wonderment puzzling - what is there to marvel at? Nothing new here.
Like the title says, things don’t seem wonderful if you’ve seen them all yoir life.
Imbeciles are amazed by technology. The truly wise are amazed by dog.
Try putting an Oculus Quest on! 🤣 🤣 🤣
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