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."

The last line is the best part

[nizo]

Reader input is appreciated.

I am so tempted to mention in his forum that he left out "asking a bunch of random monkeys to type in comments on stories through the internet" but I decided to be a Slashmonkey today instead.

Smokers outside the building is weird?

[plover]

In the 1920s cigarettes were much more of a luxury item than the "staple" they've since become. It took a serious marketing effort to get them into everyday life -- actors and studios were paid to show smoking on movie screens, ad campaigns were designed to convince women that smoking wasn't a "men's only" pleasure, and the like. Besides, smokers wouldn't have interrupted their 1920s workday for a cigarette break -- their bosses would most likely have forbidden it.

Go back another few decades, and you'd probably find smoking a cigarette inside a building would have been weirder. Or only bring the time travellers in from the 1960s -- they'd be the ones weirded out.

Umm, some more basic changes...

[fantomas]

"I've often thought about the new commonplace practices in society that someone from 1920 might find odd"

Umm, get more basic, complacent geek! How about:

- women having equal rights, being paid the same as men.
- ethnic groups treated equally in many countries (people were still being burnt alive in the USA in the 20s for being the wrong colour, right?)
- people living for much longer

oh... too many to mention, even before you talk about the minutae of technological habits...

quiet day at the office Mr Dvorak?

Nobody

[suv4x4]

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.

If Dvorak was born in 1920-s I bet he would've predicted it.

By the way, we found it crazy that people talk "to themselves" on the street (actually to their cell phones) on the street and we though this makes you look insane. This wasn't 1920, it was 1995. So, things change.

One thing Dvorak is wrong about though:

Whatever the case, it appears as if we are now stuck with these new archetypes.

We're all but stuck with anything. In just 20 years we'll discuss how having rotating mini satelite dish on your head would've looked strange to someone from 2006.

But things change so fast, you just become accustomed to seeing odd stuff at home and on the streets. We no longer see strange as strange.

The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[khasim]

Yeah, someone from the 1920's would be amazed at the people walking around while talking on their cell phones ... and by seeing people of color eating side by side with white folk.

Women in the workforce? Dressed like chippies? With skirts above the knee?

Kids with metal stuck through their skin?

Dude! A magic talking box would be the LEAST of the shocks that person would have.

Re:Have Things REALLY Changed All That Much?

[RingDev]

No joke, this guy is one of the most worthless internet contributors with a solid distribution channel. Why the hell does he rate /.ing for an article any articulate 8th grader could have put together?

-Rick

Ready for this?

[greenguy]

<breaking news>Technology changes</breaking news>

C'mon. It's not hard to figure out that the technology of the '20s would have looked strange and magical to people of eighty years previous to that: airplanes, automobiles, tractors, radios, light bulbs, motion pictures, telegraphs, trains, steam engines, and the list goes on.

Nothing to see here...

[klynch]

None of these technologies that he points out are actually revolutionary. They are simply logical progressions of old tech. The most revolutionary of these is the concept of the telephone. The telephone was the first device to allow people miles apart to communicate in real time. Cell phones are simply the same thing minus the wire. Same thing with iPods. They're a different medium and portable, but it's the same thing as a phonograph. Chat rooms, email, and the Internet in general, are also somewhat of a social revolution as they largely remove identity and encourage anonymity. People no longer have to take responsibility for what they say as it is a lot easier to hide your true identity. Digital camera screens? Please... there have been viewfinders for a long time. All of this technology, though innovative, won't throw off people from the 1920's too much. What would probably throw them off more is how they got into the current day.

1920? Try 1970.

[boristdog]

I don't think you'd have to go back to 1920 to find people weirded out by these things. Most were only figments of the imagination in 1970, when I was just a lad.

I remember thinking about "the future" (i.e. AD 2000) back then. Mostly it involved flying cars and jet packs. I couldn't comprehend the astounding amounts of data that would fit in the palm of your hand, and judging by the science fiction I used to read, most of the authors of the day couldn't either.

And smokers were everywhere even back in the mid 1980's. I remember coming home from work at the office smelling like a damn ashtray every day! Remember when all ceiling tiles were permanently yellow from all the smoke? Not that long ago.

Re:Psych!

[paladinwannabe2]

Oh hell, there went another two minutes of my life spent on mindless drivel that I'll never get back.

If those minutes of your life were so important, you shouldn't be reading slashdot anyway.

The Andy Rooney of the net

[cheezit]

Every real-world entity seems to require an internet analog. However, we have heretofore been missing out on an internet analog to Andy Rooney. You know, from "60 Minutes," with the bushy eyebrows and whiny kvetching about "why is it that..." and "didja ever wonder why..."

Dvorak is not wrong that the modern world would look alien to someone from a long time ago---it's just a truism, so trite as to be banal. This kind of comparison, when done well, can put much-needed perspective on current developments. When done poorly it just sounds like an old man at the park.

The microwave oven

[The Barking Dog]

If I had to guess, I'd say the device that most people from the '20s would be astounded by would be the microwave oven. No apparent heat source, yet you put food in and a couple minutes later it comes out piping hot (I'd add "and delicious," but most food that comes out of a microwave doesn't qualify). That affects daily life, and while it's something of an extension of existing technology, it's quite an evolutionary step from the range and oven.

Re:Mislinked?

[JHromadka]

The submitter links themself to pcmag.com. I'm sure they're one of Dvorak's lackies.

Of course technology is incremental...

[IANAAC]

But that same someone from the 20s would probably be surprised that his horseless carriage can now run off from corn oil. And doesn't have a carburator. And can tell you where you are going. And tell you when it's time for a tuneup.

Not to even mention al the medical technical innovations that have come along. Another person's heart in someone else?!? Impossible, he would say. Twenty years ago that was a VERY (as opposed to today's very) risky operation. Yet it's a common operation now. If I were from the twenties and transplanted in the here-and-now, medicine is what would blow my mind.

Re:Dvorak's never seen a twin-lens reflex?

[the eric conspiracy]

What is sad about this is that the twin-lens reflex or 4x5 view camera takes VASTLY superior photos compared the junk coming out of a cell phone camera. A 4x5 camera has HUGE negatives with resolution equivalent to 100's of millions of pixels. Equip such a thing with a classic Rhodenstock lens and there is no modern camera that can beat it. There are reasons that quality photo magazines like Arizona Highways don't take digital images. Not only does the resolution of digital cameras not stack up to large format film, but the dynamic range doesn't either.

The same thing applies to iPODs. These are the modern equivalent to AM car radios. Only the speakers are 100 times smaller, and therefore even crappier.

Another Thing Dvorak Missed

[odhinnsrunes]

Probably more unusual to someone from the 1920s would be the staggering number of career choices available as a result of the technology boom of the 20th century. In the 20s, career options had been basically unchanged for hundreds of years. Educated people would have been lawyers, doctors or accountants. Trained people would have been blacksmiths, farmers, etc. Other people would have been factory workers (still a fairly new career path at the time), artists, etc.

Now there are careers, companies and entire industries worth trillions of dollars, that did not even exist then. These are the people and entities that created the things mentioned in Dvorak's article, and would far more unusual to someone from the 20s than their strange creations.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[Government Drone]

Yeah, someone from the 1920's would be amazed at the people walking around while talking on their cell phones ... and by seeing people of color eating side by side with white folk.

Cell phones, probably. But not necessarily by people from different races mixing in public. It did happen in Northern cities, particularly in places like public transport, which was too crowded to allow for separate sections.

Women in the workforce? Dressed like chippies? With skirts above the knee?

Women did have jobs, at least till they got married. I don't know what a "chippie" is, but skirt hems did reach at least the bottom of the knee in the later '20s. http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/westspringfieldhs/academ ic/english/1project/99gg/99gg2/clothe2.htm [k12.va.us]

Kids with metal stuck through their skin?

I'm still a little shocked today. Actually, grossed out.

Re:No not really.

[Grishnakh]

Change has been basically incremental in our modern society. Take someone from the 1920's and he would point out that a car is a horseless carriage.

Sounds like you need to go take some history classes. Cars were fairly common in the 1920s, especially models like the famous Model T. People from the 20s wouldn't be surprised at all by modern cars, except maybe that some of them are so ugly, that the brands they know from the 20s (Ford, Chevy, etc.) are all teetering on bankruptcy, and that all the good ones are made overseas.

Someone from the 20s would probably be more surprised that we're still using gasoline-powered engines and cars which really aren't that different from those 85 years ago, instead of cars that fly.

Camera posture = sweeping societal change, eh

[StreetStealth]

Perhaps the weirdest societal change has to do with digital cameras...

So we've had a smorgasbord of social moviements ranging from racial equality to mainstream postmodernism, built a comprehensive and ubiquitous freakin' global telecommunications network and the "weirdest societal change" Dvorak can come up with is HOW WE HOLD OUR CAMERAS? HOW WE HOLD OUR CAMERAS? One more time, with the understanding that he's talking about a society that's been through the hardscrabble years of WWII, the booming years of the 1950s, the anguish of Vietnam, the excess of the 80s, the boom and bust of the late 90s, 9/11, the war in Iraq and the weirdest societal change of all these is HOW WE HOLD OUR CAMERAS? The mismatch of scale here is so staggering I still fail to comprehend it myself.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[John Hasler]

> Women did have jobs, at least till they got married.

More shocking that women working would be women in positions of authority.

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

A whore.

> ...but skirt hems did reach at least the bottom of the knee...

More shocking would be women in trousers.

> I'm still a little shocked today. Actually, grossed out.

Then you don't want to read about the equally stupid things people did to themselves in past ages.

Technology takes time, a long time

[AlpineR]

I read that Discover article and the point seemed to be that since modern gadgets are based on 40-year old discoveries we aren't implementing new technologies anymore.

But I think that 40 years is how long it takes to move from scientific discovery to mature, widespread adoption. Many modern gadgets were prototyped in the 60's and 70's (cell phones, satellite communication, networking, UNIX). Likewise the technological boom around World War II was based on discoveries from the 1890's and 1900's (radio, atomic energy, pharmaceuticals).

I think that more recent discoveries are being commercialized at least as quickly as before. But it will be 2020 before we see the cutting-edge discoveries of 1980 widely available, and 2046 before today's ideas are fully realized.

AlpineR

Re:My wifes grandfather

[Eivind]

I don't buy your slower uptake claim.

Telephones where invented around 1875. It took atleast 75 years before most households had one.

First television-signal was transmitted 1925. 40 years later the majority of households had a tv.

First geosynch communication-satelite goes up 1965, 20 years later it's perfectly common, a large fraction of households have satelite-receivers. (would've been majority if not for competition from cable)

Tim Berners Lee makes the first prototype web-browser and web-server at CERN in 1979. 10 years later a very large fraction of households have it.

Where's your evidence ?

To me it seems very much like the oposite is true: each new generation of gear takes hold a lot *quicker* than the previous generation ever did. What was the time from introducation to say 25% market-penetration for telephones, mobile-phones, dial-up-internet, dsl-internet, television, radio, cars, bicycles ?

In general, the older the invention is, the longer it used to become accepted.

People won't change

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

So there's cheap charge coupled device cameras, video codecs, a routing infrastructure, undersea fiber. Does it change humanity?

When you turn 86, even if the technology is faster-than-light telepathic holograms, you'll be using it to see and talk to your grandchildren.

Re:To the future! - Hear, hear!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And can't it be mitigated somewhat by say, using that little wheel marked "volume"?

Re:Camera posture = sweeping societal change, eh

[jdray]

We went to the moon and found something other than cheese; we've sent robots to Mars and found there were no Martians (yet); we think nothing of getting in an aircraft and flying to any named destination in the world; we have a permanenly-manned space station; we can shoot at each other from any where in the world; people commonly live underwater for months at a time; we cook things with radio waves...

Yup, the way that guy holds his camera while talking on the telephone and listening to music is about the weirdest thing.

Re:To the future!

[iocat]

I resent the implication. I *remember* quite well that I am now yelling at teenagers about the exact same crap my parents' generation yelled at me about. But I also understand that just as then it was my role in society to be a sullen, disgruntled, teenager, who no one understood, it's now my role to yell at kids to get off my lawn, stop smoking pot, stop talking on their cell phones, and go get jobs. Can you imagine how fucking BORING being a teenager would be if everywhere you went you encountered calm, understanding adults who were like "ahh, listening to your iPod too loud... I did just the same thing with my walkman when I was a lad..." Those are the kind of adults kids loathe even more than the get-off-my-lawn-and-get-a-job variety.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[Ithika]

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

A whore.

Not someone who works in a chip shop then? Oh well.

More shocking would be women in trousers.

Well, considering that in the 1920s the Great War was a very recent event, when women had to wear trousers as they worked in munitions factories, I think they wouldn't be so shocked by the idea.

I'm shocked by the idiots that think we're all so advanced nowadays.

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[Angostura]

Actually, in the UK a 'chippie' is a carpenter.

Re:The Andy Rooney of the net

[Mille Mots]

The only problem I see with Dvorak being the 'Internet analog of Andy Rooney' is that Andy Rooney actually seemed intelligent and, on occasion, his rants even rose to the level of 'pithy.' In my opinion, Dvorak isn't even in the same league, let alone the same ballpark. I think he's more like a 'non-legal Jack Thompson' than an 'Internet Andy Rooney.'

YMMV. Just my $0.02US.

--
Only filtered sigs for me, please!

Re:The "hilarious" is what he missed.

[objwiz]

so glad Im living in 2006. Sounds boring no women in the workplace. No mini skirts.

As I look around I see no girls in my workplace. No miniskirts either. I hate being a programmer.

Grandma's Junk Closet

[rdmiller3]

Did Dvorak's grandma not have a junk closet?

My first camera had a viewfinder like a door on the top of the box that you looked down into. My grandma let me have it when I found it in her junk closet. Film was impossible to find in that size any more but I was just using it as a toy anyway. My next one had the little hole you look through. Then I got the digital with the screen on the back. All that in just 40 years. Big deal.

I'm it total agreement that this guy missed all the really major things that would shock someone from the 1920s.

1. Another world war (Duh!)
2. Communism
3. Television
4. Nuclear weapons/energy
5. Space flight
6. Computers and the Internet

Or socially...

1. Modern feminine swimwear. Woohoo! :-)
2. Everyone drives half an hour to work and hardly knows their neighbors.
3. Everyone has telephones everywhere.

More telling, I think, would be the developments that people in the 1920s thought were "just around the corner"... but weren't.

1. Farms in even the most developed nations still use manual labor instead of being fully automated.
2. The "war to end all wars", didn't.
3. ...and despite practically-cost-free global communication, businesses and governments still waste tons of money making bad translations into multiple languages instead of using an obvious solution like Esperanto [lernu.net].

Also...

[geobeck]

"$2.50 a gallon?! I'd have to work a week to fill my tank! What? You make how much?"

I think the value of the dollar would be one of the most shocking things someone from the '20s would notice. Back then, $25,000 a year was a nice executive salary, not what a retail clerk would make.

And if anything, they would be shocked at the lack of expected technological advances. "Where's your flying car? You were supposed to have them in 1999! And where are the moon colonies? Eighty years and all you've come up with was an itty-bitty wireless telegraph?!"

Re:Grumpy Old Man

[RollingThunder]

There is one thing that the LCD will catch that the viewfinder won't.

My wife's goddamned finger. Until I turned the LCD on, half the pictures had her fingertip in them.