Dvorak on Our Modern World

DigitalDame2 writes "If people from the 1920s suddenly landed in the here and now, they'd probably find modern technology a bit weird. Take digital cameras for instance. Nobody would have predicted that most people would now take pictures by holding the camera out in front of them and look at the preview screen to frame a shot. Then there's the iPod phenomenon. Is anyone's music collection that interesting? How many people are being deafened by these things, and what kind of a public health disaster is this? Take a stroll through our modern world with John C. Dvorak's hilarious take."

Mislinked?

[grub]

Take a stroll through our modern world with John C. Dvorak's hilarious take.

Darn, the summary is mislinked to typical Dvorak filler. Where's the 'hilarious take'?

To the future!

[Emrikol]

Let's not forget

Go Home

[Ritalin16]

If this guy thinks the 21st century is so weird, maybe he should build a time machine and go home :O

Ancient

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt Dvorak was around during the 20s, so he should know.

Have Things REALLY Changed All That Much?

[ZaMoose]

I mean, twenty years ago or so, who would've thought that we'd still be reading John C. Dvorak columns filled with intellectual self-puffery?

Re:To the future!

[Emrikol]

mult-page articles.

*cough*

quick quiz

[bunions]

What do iPods, video games, copyright law and Steve Ballmer all have in common?

• They all center around computers
• They have all been the center of some legal controversy
• They have all been the subject of an exasperatingly pointless essay by John Dvorak

Meh

[Bryant68]

I enjoy John C. Dvorak's articles.

Re:On the Value of Research

[harrkev]

Yeah, but nobody looks at their digital camera with a black cloth covering their heads.

Oh, wait. With the readability of some of those LCDs in bright sunlight, that is not a bad idea. Coming soon to a Best Buy near you...

Grumpy Old Man

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

"I'm old and I'm not happy. Everything today is improved and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day we didn't have hair dryers. If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull and that's the way it was and you liked it! You loved it."

Re:Have Things REALLY Changed All That Much?

[eln]

Slashdot has been suffering from a severe lack of pseudo-intellectual self-puffery since the departure of Jon Katz. It's a relief to finally see a return to useless columns by self-important blowhards on Slashdot. In fact, have Katz and Dvorak ever been seen in the same room together? Hmmm...

Re:Mislinked?

[Rob T Firefly]

This is obviously sone new definition of "hilarious" that we weren't previously made aware of.

The meaning of Dvorak changed

[GungaDan]

from a fine composer to some douche with a head too big for his intellect.

Re:On the Value of Research

[nizo]

I'm a muslim photographer who is a woman, you insensitive clod!

Re:Missing some other stuff from the 1920's.

[bunions]

Wesley Willis anyone?

no thanks, I'm trying to quit.

Looking around for my hover car.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I came from the past I'd be more upset that I couldn't find my hover car or jet pack.

carnage

Misquote...

[somethinghollow]

Take a stroll through our modern world with John C. Dvorak's hilarious take.

Don't you mean "Take a troll through our modern world with John C. Dvorak..." ?

Re:Mislinked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dvorak couldn't manage to be funny in a clown suit that was on fire....well, I might laugh at that, but it would be a different kind of laughter, I think.

Observations about nothing

[thehubbell]

Kinda like Seinfeld, but not interesting, funny, or clever. Oh well.

Re:Umm, some more basic changes...

[Anonymous Monkey]

I think some one from the 1920s would be able to addapt to the technology very quickly, I think they would have a harder time with adapting to the lifestile.

1920's nerd - "This computer is the bees knees, I can find lots of information from around the world, and it makes my job more productive. I don't need to do mechnical drawings of my drafting projects, the Computer will do it for me. This is wonderfull"

2000's nerd - "Yeah, cool, want to see my case mod and have a Mountan Due"

1920's nerd - "Wow you are fat, and your teath are repulsive."

2000's nerd - "Yeah well I'll FRAG you in (insert FSP or MPORPG)!"

1920's nerd - "Pardon?"

2000's nerd - "Oh, you don't know about computer games yet...."Explanes games

1920's nerd - "Shocking! I'm going back to the 20s"

Re:Mislinked?

[Overly Critical Guy]

It's so hilarious, I stabbed my eyes out to make sure no lesser joke would sully my eyes by being not as hilarious as Dvorak's take on modern technology!

Re:Mislinked?

[TheBogie]

How about a banana suit?

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=1 0840 [i-am-bored.com]

Re:Mislinked?

[masklinn]

i don't know about others, but I sure would like those 5 minutes of my life back.

And In 2020...

[buzzcutbuddha]

If you were to take someone from 2005 and show them the world of 2020 they'd find many things weird, including the fact that John Dvorak is still getting published, someone still finds it relevant, and people still submit his half-assed half-baked phoned-in nonesensical crap to Slashdot.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[soft_guy]

I think they would be most shocked to find out that the X-ray machine used at shoe stores to measure your feed and fit the shoes was actually bad for your health.

Its his little secret.

[dilvish_the_damned]

Secretly Dvorak feels like that every day, all the time. He hides it so well.

A visitor from 1970

[objekt]

Hi, I'm from the 1970s! Tell me about the future.

We have smokers outside the buildings.

Ah... is there someone else I can talk to? I want to know the interesting stuff that's changed.

Perhaps the weirdest societal change has to do with digital cameras and the practice of framing shots in the preview window by holding the camera out in front of yourself.

OK...perhaps I'm not making myself clear. Do we have vacations in outer space yet? Human clones? Gay marriages?

The second big change is people walking around town or in the store with cell phones up against their ears, talking loudly into them.

Oh. Nice. Walkie-talkie phones. That's just great.

Wait, I have more! Blackberry Thumb punchers! E-mail addresses! Loud music!

Bye now!

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever seen an old national geographic that had pictures of some African tribes where the women wore nothing above the waist?

Ever seen them? Dude, I lived on those pics until I discovered Penthouse!

Re:Mislinked?

[grammar fascist]

This is obviously sone new definition of "hilarious" that we weren't previously made aware of.

He's obviously using the subdermal geriatrical form of "hilarious," which is Latin for "things that only old farts find funny." Here's another example of the subdermal geriatrical "hilarious:"

I was waiting for the bus, and some young buck stepped in front of me! I said, "Sonny, in my day we let the old farts go first!" and he said, "Sorry, mister." Then I said, "Don't use that tone of voice with me!" and I done smacked him across the head with an adult incontinence product.

That there's prime Prairie Home Companion material.

Re:Mislinked?

[grammar fascist]

It's so hilarious, I stabbed my eyes out to make sure no lesser joke would sully my eyes by being not as hilarious as Dvorak's take on modern technology!

Great! If you're really done with them, you could donate them to a new fund I'm setting up: the Trust For People Who Clawed Their Eyes Out Reading John C. Dvorak.

Re:Grumpy Old Man

[I_Love_Pocky!]

You've summed up not just this article, but the majority of what Dvorak says.

I don't even know where he is coming from on this. Do people really take pictures using the preview LCD? You can barely even see those things in the sunlight (not to mention you are limited by the terrible resolution). I still use the viewfinder, and it seems like most of the people I see taking pictures do too. Unless of course they have one of those awful cameras that doesn't have one.

Don't get me wrong though, I like Dvorak. Everything he says is so forcefully opinionated I can't help but laugh. It doesn't matter that I rarely agree with him. He is entertaining none-the-less.

Re:Camera posture = sweeping societal change, eh

[It's all Krista's Fa]

The Onion got this best:

Man Lands on the Fucking Moon!

It's amazing how mundane that seems now. How it fulfilled *thousands of years* of human hope and effort.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I don't know what a "chippie" is...

>A whore.

Now, do you know what a midget prostitute is called? A microchippie.