Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

Oh how the internet has changed things. We are so much better off now than we were back then. Information then was totally controlled by the network and newspapers. No such thing as mass optional news sources. Like blogs. Or videos. Or direct contact with author.

This poster time warped me. Recalling my father saying while at the wheel of our Impala, "Look at that girl," to upset my older sibling. The boy had long hair like in the picture.

Teens and young adults died in a war. The news machine was all citizens had. I suppose you could say it was all fake news to some point but we never new any different. The draft was a ticket to potential death.

Now, anyone with a keyboard can publish anything and anyone with a phone can read it. No more Walter Cronkite or NYTimes to dish out news in a manner they believed was fit.

Growing up in a midwestern university town life meant you believed your happily married parents; They were conservative. Voices that disagreed had to be sought out. And it was very hard to do so. Like if you really didn't believe in the war or wanted to learn more. Where could you get it? Look, Life, Time, Newsweek? The Library? All forces with editors.

Now, we don't need them. We have Facebook to get others' thoughts; we have email to direct connect; we have web pages of groups positions; we can meet virtually. Want to know history, Google is my personal librarian.

I was a teen in the 60's, in a small town in Pennsylvania. I had no problem getting information about the anti-war movement - it was everywhere. I migrated to San Francisco in 1967 to be a hippie. That movement and the protests were all over the news. The nation was polarized on the issue. Both sides were represented in the media. It was hard not to be affected by the films of atrocities on the nightly news.

That said, in some ways, there is perhaps even less opportunity to to be a free thinker, with so many people getting deeper into their selected schism on facebook and other selected media outlets.

It's just so easy to get deeper and deeper into an echo chamber of ones own choosing.

> Google is my personal librarian

While certainly an improvement over legacy media, are you not trading one information curator for another?

Yes.. but my thinking was not that that so much as the level of effort to research any topic.

Say, for example, you wanted to know how your representative voted. Or, you wanted to see how other universities planned for the March on DC January 20? Or, you simply wanted to know the preamble to the Constitution (which we now have on our phone but I know my family didn't have that at home).

If you wanted some standard text like the constitution, university and public libraries were usually an available source, but definitely not "at your fingertips" by any means.

Encyclopedia put it at your fingertips. Our household had a general Encyclopedia Americana, then specialty encyclopedias for subjects such as science, the occult, and a couple others not coming to mind at the moment. Most kids I knew had at least a basic encyclopedia at home. I mean... how else would you do your homework?

In those days you actually learned the preamble to the Constitution in school. I still remember it 35 years later.

It's required in every classroom in AZ.

I think it's part of the common core curriculum so it's likely required in every public school in America now.

While there is a point of view encoded in the algorithms that Google runs, I see it as more of an indexer than a curator. It's not the same thing, is it? Especially when the index is somewhat tailored to my preferences (when I'm logged in).

Good points.

On the other, these days the subject would be identified nearly right away and left vulnerable to retribution and abuse (both from authorities and "cyber bullies").

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