So you're saying that computers and computer science didn't revolutionize the world? They just made people's lives "slightly easier"?
What about free instant communication with people who live halfway around the world?
What about massive knowledge bases like Wikipedia that never existed on this scale in the past?
What about search engines that make every piece of knowledge available to humanity instantly available to you?
What about having access to all of that in a small device in your pocket?
I really don't know if you're trolling or you're just being obtuse. If the only benefit you've been able to get from all this wonderful technology is watching porn and cat videos, then that says more about you than it does about the technology.
>I really don't know if you're trolling or you're just being obtuse.
So, people "not getting it" are either obtuse or trolls? I'm over thirty -- not some teenager making internet pranks. As such, I don't troll. I say what I believe. Can you fathom that people can have different standards about what it takes to call something "world-changing"?
Take a Buddhist monk as an extreme example of a different viewpoint. He wouldn't raise an eyebrow for trivial stuff like "instant communication" over the intertubes. Especially knowing the triviality of the majority of such communication. Heck, such a figure would be even unperturbed about normal communication (speaking), preferring meditating silence instead.
Now, I'm not a Buddhist monk. But I'm not a starry-eye millennial optimist either, nor I consider any and every technological advance "progress" in the full sense of the word.
For example, you say:
>What about free instant communication with people who live halfway around the world? What about massive knowledge bases like Wikipedia that never existed on this scale in the past? What about search engines that make every piece of knowledge available to humanity instantly available to you? What about having access to all of that in a small device in your pocket?
Yes, what about all those things? Any real effect on my everyday life?
E.g Has the instant availability of "every piece of knowledge available to humanity" to us made as any more clever? For some, it even made us stupider:
Even before "instant availability of everything", e.g even when availability was a problem itself, people knew that it wasn't about the availability but about the distinction. To put it in a little more archaic terms, that the important thing was wisdom, not information.
You're over thirty? I'm over fifty. And I have seen huge change in my every day life due to advances in communication. I still remember the first time I used email (summer of 82) and the first time I had a "chat" with a friend of mine who had moved to Germany (in 1986). Perhaps things have not changed significantly for you since you became aware of technology, but they certainly have for me and for countless of other people.
What about free instant communication with people who live halfway around the world? What about massive knowledge bases like Wikipedia that never existed on this scale in the past? What about search engines that make every piece of knowledge available to humanity instantly available to you? What about having access to all of that in a small device in your pocket?
I really don't know if you're trolling or you're just being obtuse. If the only benefit you've been able to get from all this wonderful technology is watching porn and cat videos, then that says more about you than it does about the technology.