> I would bet that the people of the 1920s would find the world of the 2020s much more recognizable than the people of the 1820s would find the world of the 1920s.
Let's start by explaining smartphones, then Twitter and Facebook and then on how companies used them to hijack elections and destabilize democracies in multiple countries.
Or, for an amusing time, try to explain how a cryptocurrency works.
My mom, born in 1935, doesn't understand what I do beyond that I write computer programs (which isn't even that much true anymore).
They had electric telegraphs, telephone and radio, so I'd explain it as miniaturized wireless telephones and typewriters combined, additionally with capabilities of paperless networked teleprinters of a kind. Some of the stations would be libraries with expert librarians on hand to tirelessly answer your questions.
> then Twitter and Facebook
I believe this is already covered. Anyone can now own a small personal broadcast station.
> try to explain how a cryptocurrency works.
I'd use the analogy of a network of tabulating machines with accumulators controlled by inputs according to something quite like point to point teleprinters instead of by punch cards. Records with a copy on each machine, would store on a very flexible type of automatically configurable control panel board with a special arrangement of relay circuits capable of acting as a memory, rather than in boxes of cards. Such a machine could track some quantity, addable and subtractable like a currency. I would then bring up the difficulty of protecting against liars and double spending. One solution might be to connect each machine to automatic slot machines and have them play till there was a winner who then got to broadcast an append to the record with the longest history in their collection of records. I'd also note that the more slot machines there were, the more slots were magically added to each. The idea being to make it costly for any one view to dominate the network.
Far from perfect but the gist could be communicated to anyone with a bit of imagination. Modern technologies have had a large impact on life but can be connected to 1920s tech. This is unlike the gap from the 1820s to 1920s that saw electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, radio broadcasting, telephone, electricity and electric engineering, atomic physics, flight, automobiles and more.
The internet is a big change. Cryptocurrency is not on the same scale. But I would be inclined to agree that the impact of even computers and internet on the recognizability of everyday life is less than that of eg. telephony and airplanes.
> I would be inclined to agree that the impact of even computers and internet on the recognizability of everyday life is less than that of eg. telephony and airplanes.
Remember when we needed to go to a payphone to tell our parents we were in the mall and to ask them to pick us up? And that they had no way to phone us while we weren't home?
Some quantitative changes become qualitative in enabling completely different behaviors. Few people had phones, they were tied to a physical location. Now we do video calls between people in different countries while driving.
You can ask your phone what's the molecular mass of methane. Or ask it to identify a song that's playing in the restaurant.
Let's start by explaining smartphones, then Twitter and Facebook and then on how companies used them to hijack elections and destabilize democracies in multiple countries.
Or, for an amusing time, try to explain how a cryptocurrency works.
My mom, born in 1935, doesn't understand what I do beyond that I write computer programs (which isn't even that much true anymore).