• Memory, typing, spelling (was: Voting)

    From JOE MACKEY@1:135/392 to GEORGE POPE on Wed May 11 06:17:58 2022
    CP wrote --

    I wonder if he had a true vision of the future & he saw the computers & what was behind them ("Big Brother") but didn't have the words or concept for "computer" in his time or language

    The message was right, just the wrong medium.
    I doubt anyone could have predicted the internet in 1948 any more than
    the average person could have predicted radio in the 1890s.
    I'm sure someone must have thought "Wouldn't it be nice if...." but no
    ways or means to create the item.
    I've seen tv shows from the '60s predicting life in 2000 and they had somewhat primitive ideas of an internet, mostly for just shopping and news, and picture phones (face time or whatever).
    I visited a friend in NY state in the mid '80s who was really into computers. He sold them.
    He had a complete room in his apartment just for them, he had a couple.
    He bragged how he could print out an entire newspaper to read. I thought
    that was interesting but why not just buy a paper and not spend all that time on line, cost of paper, etc.
    The idea of instant information was there, but no way do it and just
    read things on line as today.
    A few years ago I was talking to a local reporter and asked if the local birdcage liner would ever be on line. He said no. Today online
    subscriptions are more than the print edition, and they even dropped the printed
    Monday edition.

    providing quick & easy entertainment to the masses ("them asses"

    LOL!

    my interpretation of "hoi polloi")

    I am pleased with your not using "the hoi polloi" which would be The the people. :)

    & guess who elects our government (not "leaders" as it was at one time composed exclusively of those who were solid leaders in tight(military) situations, putting their men's lives ahead of their own when required. Even the military only has "commanders" no

    I think it was around the time of The Great War this thinking started.
    Probably by the brass who didn't want their uniforms muddied in the
    trenches.

    I spell beautifully, but I type lousily

    My typing is somewhat lousy as well.
    I always proof read whatever I write since I tend to think faster than I
    type and leave out a word here and there.
    Plus if my index fingers stray from the key letters I get all sorts of
    odd spellings.

    I'm the same with my own written notes -- this is why I love my phone -- I can make a legible note at any time

    As you wrote somewhere in the message, using your own short hand, I do
    the same. And did that long before text speak was invented.
    My first phone with text was a pain to use.
    You had to use the phone key pad (ABC, DEF, etc) and if you wanted a B
    you had to press ABC twice, a D was once, F was three times...
    Took me forever to write just a short line of text.
    My current phone has intuitive spelling which I really like.
    I'm still a "hunt and peck" with my index finger on the phone, never
    getting the hang of using my thumbs and zipping along.

    Yup, Google was always with a geographical bias for results -- which helps most people

    What I like is when using Norton VPN and Google giving me an address who knows where it might be at the time. :)

    A teacher millennia, ago lamented the use of paper & pencil because children no longer learned stuff by heart (completely memorizing a half book or two was standard)

    Twas the same when writing was invented and one no longer had a poet or someone whose job it was to remember everything and pass that on to the next generation.
    The main problem before then was if that person died suddenly all the information was lost. At least when on paper it was available, unless the paper was lost.
    I had a cousin who while in school (teens and 1920s) had to learn to
    recite various things of different lengths. Maybe a short poem or long story. In her 80s she could still recite something she learned then.

    ingredients, & prices (I did the math for taxes in my head, if asked for a total -- saved me walking back to the register, ringing it up as a dummy sale

    When I sold cars in the mid 1970s there was a salesman who would had a
    long string of numbers in his head, then do the same on the adding machine. I asked why he did that and he replied to make sure the adding machine was correct. :)

    I'm not lazy -- I'm efficient

    LOL
    Joe
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