Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[LizzieMaine]

OK, besides P51....

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile, all baseball fans know that we're now seventy years removed from the last time anyone could say "National League Champion Chicago Cubs" and be up to date.

That's as historically remote from us today as the days *before the formation of the National League* were for the victorious Cubbies fans of 1945. As remote as the days of the National Association and the original Chicago White Stockings. As remote as the days of Albert Spalding, Candy Cummings, "Orator Jim" O'Rourke and Bob "Death To Flying Things" Ferguson. As remote as the days when overhand pitching was illegal, gloves were for pansies, and nine balls made a walk.

Or, to put it another way, the last Cubs pennant is just one year less remote to us today than the only time anyone could say "American League Champion St. Louis Browns."

Or to really boggle your mind, we are as historically removed from the last time anyone could say "World Champion Chicago Cubs" as those proud Cubs fans who celebrated that last world championship were from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

"Holy cow!"

 

[p51]

OK, besides P51....

Yeah, point well taken.
Many people don't even know NASA ever lost a second orbiter, as the invasion of Iraq was coming very close and that's what the media was focusing on at the time STS-107 broke up.
Meanwhile, there are oodles of these same people who can name every single baseball player that ever played in any position, on any team, in any year:

Why do normal people only remember the Challenger and not the Columbia? It could have likely had something to do with kids having a connection to the first teacher to be launched on a shuttle.
Maybe it's also like when Sister Teresa passed away, that was overshadowed by former Princess Diana's death in Paris, in regard to the Iraq invasion planning when STS-107 broke up on re-entry.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Okay, here's a mind-bender: Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of the first Pizza Hut than she did to the building of the first Pyramid. Egyptian history is that long.

Indeed. And we Americans think we're hot pups because our experiment is "almost 240 years old!"

If you date modern Western civilization from the Norman Conquest, as used to be the common convention, we've got 949 years under our cultural belt. That's a little over one-third the lifespan of Ancient Egypt.

 

[GHT]

It disturbs me how the concept of personal privacy seems to be disappearing.

The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

It's not just that actual privacy is threatened but that every little thing in your life is shared nearly real time with essentually the whole world and that's as it should be. There really does seem to be a hive mind developing.

That's as it should be? Really? Am I really a minority of one? I don't do loyalty cards, you are giving big business all the information they need to know. To know when you buy, what you buy, how much you spend, how you pay, cash or card, so much information.
I don't do social media. Zuckerberg's above quote fills me with dread. I don't do credit cards and I do debit cards as little as possible. Cash is king, untraceable, no footprint, no information inadvertently given away. I don't do direct debit, Every bill gets paid, cash on the nail. Only my wife and I have access to our bank account. I never, ever, fill in a so called market research form. Like millions of others, I have never won the car or the fabulous cruise that's on offer for one lucky entrant. There again, I don't get pestered with unsolicited mail.
A hive mind will only develop if we are lax about who we let see our personal details.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Yeah, point well taken.
Many people don't even know NASA ever lost a second orbiter, as the invasion of Iraq was coming very close and that's what the media was focusing on at the time STS-107 broke up.
Meanwhile, there are oodles of these same people who can name every single baseball player that ever played in any position, on any team, in any year:

Why do normal people only remember the Challenger and not the Columbia? It could have likely had something to do with kids having a connection to the first teacher to be launched on a shuttle.
Maybe it's also like when Sister Teresa passed away, that was overshadowed by former Princess Diana's death in Paris, in regard to the Iraq invasion planning when STS-107 broke up on re-entry.

One reason is that half the world was watching live on tv when the Challenger blew up. That made it terribly immediate. The Columbia was destroyed on re-entry when nobody was watching. Many only learned about it the next day. It just wasn't as intense and immediate an experience.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It may well be that Mark Zuckerberg will have a greater direct impact on the lives of more people than any one individual of the past thousand years. Think about that, and quake with fear.

Henry Ford only changed the way people move around. Zuckerberg is turning the basic foundation of human interaction into a vehicle for psychologically-invasive marketing.

 

[GHT]

James Powers posted 54,323 times. Since I have been here, four years and a few months, I have posted 1471 times. By my reckoning, if I am to outpost James, I shall have to stick around for another 144 years. Now that's a seriously disturbing realisation.

 

[JimWagner]

That's as it should be? Really? Am I really a minority of one? .

I probably could have written my post a little better. I meant that those giving up that privacy seem to think that it is a should be - not that I think so. After all, I did start that post with "It disturbs me how the concept of personal privacy seems to be dissappearing.".

 

[HudsonHawk]

I didn't want to call it a drawl, more a vocal elongation of speech. A very long elongation of speech.

That's exactly what a drawl is...elongating words, turning one syllable into multi-syllables. So you get words like "well" turning into "way-uhl" and "damn" into "day-um".

 

[HudsonHawk]

Remember the First Gulf War? "Desert Storm" and "SADdam" and "Stormin' Norman" and the "Scud Stud" and all the rest of it? We are now as historically remote from all that as the premeire of "Sesame Street" was from World War II.

Having spent time working in Kuwait, I can confirm that there is a whole generation of working people for whom the Gulf War is ancient history. They have "Discover America Week" there, but many have no understanding of why.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

but that every little thing in your life is shared nearly real time with essentually the whole world and that's as it should be. .

Only if you choose to do so, fortunately we still have the choice. 'Social media' is simply a means to give those who have nothing to say an opportunity to express themselves.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I still don't use and trust "Face(book)tology"!
I just like to know, who or what stands behind them, in reality. And further, Zuckerberg looks scary, to me.

In school we were warned on that, what Facebook did some years later on his peak in Europe around 2009/2010. Everybody could see it, that they tried to initiate a social peer-pressure all around!
But luckily, this squibbed relatively fast, here.

And, in Germany Facebook is absolutely outdated, lately since 2012. It's called "40+ network".

Teenagers/young adults were mainly "skyping" with headphones, since around 2011.

And now, the youngsters are smombies on what's-app.

 

[GHT]

I meant that those giving up that privacy seem to think that it is a should be - not that I think so.

Apologies for the misunderstanding, and for misquoting you.

 

[GHT]

'Social media' is simply a means to give those who have nothing to say an opportunity to express themselves.

That just about sums up, a good deal of what passes, as informed opinion these days.
Where's the bold, italic and underlined facility gone?

 

[Trenchfriend]

In Germany, I see clearly, what's going on.
We are a well "connected" and integrated single-society. Keeping your single-household is easy, because off a functioning brain and all the useful household-utensils.

Traditional and patchwork-Families? Or even a marriage?? No longer an attractive option to well-educated, intelligent young adults...

"Generation single-society"

 

[Fading Fast]

I probably could have written my post a little better. I meant that those giving up that privacy seem to think that it is a should be - not that I think so. After all, I did start that post with "It disturbs me how the concept of personal privacy seems to be dissappearing.".

I absolutely want the ability for all of us to maintain our privacy - and that requires strict laws about how both the gov't and businesses can access our information, what information they can require and how they can use it. There - like with free speech and other freedoms - is a balance; for law enforcement and terrorism prevention, some aggregation of information is necessary (I am not arguing how much and I am not arguing that what has been done since 9/11 is right or wrong, only that some is necessary), but some is far away from all.

But what is really amazing to me is how much information people willing give away or post - and not just the Millenials (although they are the most comfortable with it). This is scary. Freedom and privacy go hand in hand and that so many people willing give away their privacy and don't even think people should have that privacy frightens me because it is always easier for governments to take away people's privacy (and, ultimately, freedom) if the people willingly hand it over without a fight. "A Brave New World" is an easier totalitarian gov't to run than a "1984" one.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been a face on a dime longer than he was a living, breathing man.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been a face on a half-dollar longer than he was a living, breathing man.

 

[Fading Fast]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been a face on a dime longer than he was a living, breathing man.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been a face on a half-dollar longer than he was a living, breathing man.

If the goal of this and other similar posts of yours is to make me feel old - job well done. Kidding aside, it is stunning how time just chugs along. The post in a similar vein to yours from some time back highlighted that we are now twice as far away from the premier of the TV show "Happy Days" as "Happy Days" was from the '50s that it nostalgically looked back upon.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Tempus fugit, as some dead Roman a couple of millennia ago might have said. It really is disturbing to realize how much of what we consider "the recent past" is fast disappearing into the murk, even though, historically speaking, we, as a society, have only existed in the blink of an eye.

I still know people who are hoarding drawers full of Kennedy halves, and I grew up in a time and a neighborhood when people still displayed framed portraits of FDR in their homes. And now they might as well both be as remote as the Maccabees.