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Finnforest 
Special Collaborator 
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 17332 |
 Posted: September 08 2016 at 09:04 |
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@ Dean....good post
@ Madan.... Interesting, they called the sauces "pickles" which at the time I couldn't figure out, since pickles to an American 10 year old are those little cucumbers immersed in a brine. So perhaps this was simply a language thing....only about half of their large family spoken any English and so there were always fun times with conversations. Another lasting gift from this friendship was learning all about Carrom. His uncles would play this game for hours on the floor of their living room, and when they were finished, we were allowed to play. It was so much fun I bought an authentic Carrom board for my own family and this game is part of many of our holidays! |
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...that moment you realize you like "Mob Rules" better than "Heaven and Hell"
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 08 2016 at 08:58 |
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Dean, I could go point by point disagreeing with many of the things you have said above, starting with the notion that we only use the internet to confirm what we already know. But long story short, I still want to know how the internet MAKES us parochial and insular. Internet is just a thing. It cannot make us behave in a particular way unless we are already capable of it and have already exhibited such behaviour. If you had said it makes us project our latent parochial and insular tendencies (because the anonymity of the net emboldens people to voice their opinions more confidently), I would have agreed with you. Or perhaps that is what you are trying to say. I am just saying we have already shown magnificent capacity to hate each other in the rich history of our civilization, so we don't need the internet to find excuses to kill fellow humans.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 08 2016 at 06:13 |
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Yeah, that came across as a generalisation but in the context of Internet users I stand by what I typed. Yes, it can reinforce, and in a sense validate, our inherent insular nature, but if we regard that inherent insularity as being a normalised average that occurs naturally without the Internet then it becomes the base reference point for what we can then describe as being "insular". So I'm not talking about absolute insularity and parochialism, but relative insularity and parochialism. [We can of course transpose that verbatim to any discussions over "originality" in t'other thread, hence my contention that connotation is more important than definition or meaning, because then it becomes a delta-function where something is original when it deviates from a normalised average. But I digress.] While I'm not completely comfortable with the tourist example, sightseers are passive observers - they may sample a taste of something different for a brief moment, but they are also happy to return to home comforts and reassuring familiarity. I think passive exposure to other cultures, philosophies, views and opinions does little in adding to the depth of our knowledge or understanding - the Internet puts the world at our fingertips in a non-intrusive way so we can be voyeuristic sightseers without having to be changed by what we see. We can learn from the Internet but more often we use it to confirm or validate what we already believe. There is the adage that "no one ever had their mind changed by the Internet" because we have a tendency to like opinions that validate our own and argue strongly against those that don't. I am under no delusions that I am not a prime example of that, in fact if I were a C-List celebrity I could be the poster-boy for it, yet because I agree with you more than I disagree I am more receptive to anything you say that contradicts my own view on a given topic, especially in areas where I recognise that you have a better understanding or deeper knowledge of the subject being discussed. You may not change my mind, but you can cause me to modify my thinking, whereas I'm more likely to reject the same view from someone who argues against me at every turn. This is another example of normalisation where like-minded views come together so that this creates an entrenched attitude where views become so heavily defended they start to mirror the most extreme excesses of any view that is perceived to threaten them. This leads to a 'clumping' of Internet content. In an issue of Nervous Horse I observed that the World Wide Web was very wide but it wasn't very deep and with that in mind the terminology we use to describe accessing that ocean of data further emphasises that shallowness - we Surf the Internet and we Browse the WWW. Similarly tl;dr, skimming and just reading the headline then jumping to the conclusion are common practices when faced with huge blocks of text so that anything of length (but not necessarily depth) is dismissed or ignored. How information is presented dictates how it is accessed and consequently how that information is accessed dictates how it is presented so over time Google's search algorithm has defined how deep the WWW can be which directly (and indirectly) results in my second flippant (Highlander inspired) comment: 2. The general rule of the Internet is "there can only be one". We are presented with the most popular search results in descending order and those are the ones we want for that very reason - part of that is the fear of missing out rather than any desire to conform but it means that the difference in popularity between the winning site and it's nearest rival is so vast that the alternative simply cannot compete. Add into this any commercial aspect, such as revenue from direct sales or advertising, and this is skewed even more - e.g., Amazon isn't the best, it's just more successful than anything else because of its perceived popularity. So not only does the Internet produce 'clumped' data, within each clump one broad aspect, view, outlook or opinion will predominate, and that will tend to colour perception of everything in each grouping to be equal to the most popular. For example the Internet didn't create religious fundamentalism or the four horsemen of the non-apocalypse but it has brought to the surface a strange phenomenon were anyone who expresses an opinion about their own beliefs expects to be treated with the same weight of argument as any extremist so we get the oxymorons of extreme moderates, extreme indifference and militant agnostics. Of course no one would ever describe an agnostic as a militant extremist but when they present their opinion with the same adamant degree of commitment and weight as any extreme fundamentalists and militant atheists they are arguing against then that's what they are. That's what I call insular and parochial  |
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What?
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 08 2016 at 01:54 |
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Yeah, guess you're referring to chutney. I am of South Indian descent too though I live in Mumbai.
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ProgMetaller2112
Forum Senior Member 
Joined: December 08 2012 Location: Pacoima,CA,USA Status: Offline Points: 3150 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 21:19 |
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That is a very tough question 😂😂😂😂
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“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "Ignorance and Prejudice and Fear walk Hand in Hand"- Neil Peart |
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 17332 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 21:08 |
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When I was a boy my best friends family were from southern India....I loved going to their home and smelling the food. While my friend was more interested in american food I was able to dine with the family a couple times. His mom and sisters prepared a mountain of rice and they had all of these brightly colored sauces. I remember taking my rice and one of the sauces....then I asked if I could try this other sauce....and they just laughed. One of them said basically.....you couldn't handle that one kid....that's big leagues hot! I took his advice  |
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...that moment you realize you like "Mob Rules" better than "Heaven and Hell"
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Atavachron
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: September 30 2006 Location: Pearland Status: Offline Points: 65684 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 21:03 |
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^ The best I've had is in London, but I like the family-style cooking.
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"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 20:49 |
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We tried two restaurants while we were in America and both were really good. In fact, the manager of one restaurant told us the flour being unadulterated was better than in India.
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 17332 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 19:25 |
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Madan, how did you find the Indian food over here? I ask because we love Indian food and have several restaurants that we think are good....but I'm always kind of curious what Indians think of American Indian places.
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...that moment you realize you like "Mob Rules" better than "Heaven and Hell"
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 18:50 |
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Sorry Dean, but this is too generalised. When I and my parents visited America, all the previous exposure to American culture as well as the availability of online maps and other information certainly made us feel much more comfortable in what was for us a new world. It's not like nobody traveled far to visit America before, but the internet can make it a much better experience. To illustrate your point about insularity, one evening we were searching for a place to eat in Niagara. We saw what looked like a restaurant and I walked up to it to check it out. As I was walking back, a group of four-five Indian tourists were also walking along, looking for a restaurant. They asked me what was that place and I said it seemed to be a pizza joint and they recoiled almost instantly and said (with typical Indian hand gestures
), "No, no pizza." Well, we did find an Indian restaurant to dine for the night but the next day we headed to the same pizza joint and it was great. So it is not the internet that makes people insular; that insularity is already there (maybe at worst internet gets us in contact with such insular attitudes more often than we would desire but again my example above was a face to face interaction). We have the choice to get out of the internet whatever we want. If we are loath to learn from our mistakes and hell bent on repeating them over and over, I don't think internet nor anything else can ever help us get over that. Personally, I think it is a terrible idea to travel all the way to America and insist on only Indian cuisine. Better don't waste your time making that trip, then. I mean, you still have internet to look at photographs of all the tourist spots. |
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Luna
Forum Senior Member
Joined: July 28 2010 Location: Funky Town Status: Offline Points: 12794 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 15:11 |
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Is the world better off because of automobiles?
Is the world better off because of the telephone? Is the world better off because of cameras? Is the world better off because of the printing press? Is the world better off because of written language? You could argue yes or no for any of these, but the world would be unrecognizable without any of these things.
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CPicard
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 03 2008 Location: Là, sui monti. Status: Offline Points: 10841 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 12:35 |
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Reading all the posts about cute animals pictures make me wonder if you're talking about the Internet or your Facebook threads.
Or maybe I don't spend enough time looking for lolcats on the web and spend too much time watching re-runs of "Sick, Sad World"? |
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Barbu
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 09 2005 Location: infinity Status: Offline Points: 30855 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 12:29 |
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Wan't to really surprised her...get three. 
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 10:44 |
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EDIT: actually, if she still visits these territories every now and then, I'm not too sure about the "surprise" part...  Edited by The T - September 07 2016 at 10:53 |
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micky
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 02 2005 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 46838 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 10:08 |
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well.. after all these years.. and jokes and ridicule of my coworkers for not having a cat even though we both adore and love them.. more than people in general... I'm likely going to just bite the bullet and surprise her.
Our 10 year mark being a couple comes up next month... she couldn't possibly get too mad at me if I did and surprised her with a feline child of our own |
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 10:05 |
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Actually I already have 2 cats. The internet makes me want MORE. AND add a dog or two
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micky
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 02 2005 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 46838 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 10:04 |
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*spits beer on monitor* good one Teo
yeah.. f**k that internet. IF Raff didn't have all those cute cat vidoes and pictures to download than she'd actually want to get a real cat. God I love women. She has comittement issues about adopting a cat in case she had to go back to Italy... this from the same woman that moved half a world to meet me.. who could have been an axe murderer. so what does that say about her dear husband..... are cats more important than ME!! Leave the Mick.. grab the felinewomen... go figure.  |
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 10:00 |
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No internet = no cat and dog videos
What would be the point of anything then...
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chopper
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: July 13 2005 Location: Essex, UK Status: Offline Points: 20033 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 09:35 |
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There are plenty of good things -
1) I can play practically any music I want 2) I can have a video chat with relatives in Australia and the USA 3) I can order things and have them delivered the next day instead of trudging around loads of shops in an endless search for them. 4) I can have a chat with the guys in my band to arrange rehearsal dates without having to make hundreds of phone calls. and then there are plenty of bad things as well that I don't need to go into. and there are photos of cute animals. |
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progaardvark
Special Collaborator
Crossover/Symphonic/RPI Teams Joined: June 14 2007 Location: Sea of Peas Status: Offline Points: 52786 |
Posted: September 07 2016 at 08:16 |
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We have a community here of fans of prog rock. Without the Internet, we'd have to join an old-fashioned society with quarterly (maybe even monthly) publications, pay dues, and maybe even attend an annual conference. Imagine all of those unknown bands we might never discover. Imagine all the bands from the 1970s that were able to record some music but could never get a record deal. Without the Internet, many of these recordings would never see the light of day.
To skip to another hobby, imagine what genealogical research was like before the Internet. Who would want to go back to that? This is just two areas of interest to me. What about scientific research? Or any area of academia? It may be a tool that has been abused by the "socially outcast," but it has brought a lot more of us together that would have never had the opportunity to meet, converse, share our knowledge, and form wonderful communities. If you "can't say anything positive about the Internet" than why are you connected to it at all?
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i'm shopping for a new oil-cured sinus bag that's a happy bag of lettuce this car smells like cartilage nothing beats a good video about fractions |
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Is the world better off because of the Internet?
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rogerthat wrote: