reineke wrote:Ser wrote:lavengro wrote:Quick question: to reproduce the squiggly characters...even more gibberishy...without a cat.
...
Back in the day we used pen and paper.
Yeah, about that... For this Christmas that just passed, I found myself writing some Christmas cards by hand, and I was surprised by how awkward that felt. I don't think I had written anything by hand in about 6 or 7 months. And I'm not saying this with a "look at how hip and modern I am!" kind of tone, I'm saying this with an "it's awful how dependent I've become on computers" kind of tone. There is beauty in the physical dependency of storing information on paper, plus security-wise you never really know whether anything you type on a keyboard is being stored elsewhere against your consent.
Wanna hear a horror story? There have been thieves out there going after bank clients' accounts since the 1990s who possess electrical sensors so fine that they can detect what keys are being pressed in an ATM from far away, simply from the electromagnetic energy sent onto the air by the ATM keypad, as long as there is not much electromagnetic noise coming from other nearby keypads or keyboards. I shouldn't need to say this but technology is not always progress or more secure than good old simple tools like pen and paper...
Anyway, I just finished units 1 and 2 from the Old English textbook. Gotta get ready for that new life when I get tired with today's tech horrors and go back in time to early medieval Wessex and its sweet iron age tech. I admit I'll miss my dentist though.
iguanamon wrote:Being one who almost never participates in challenges, nor dabbles, this one looks interesting to me. I have the book, and now an account at TY for the audio. It's a shame there's no DLI course for Old English. OK, maybe they're learning it at area 51 where the time machine is. Hope they don't accidentally kill one of my ancestors or a butterfly- oops, did I just write that? Please disregard this erroneous statement. There is no such thing as time travel... except in books, archaeology, historic tourism. That's my story.
No such thing as time travel? Not necessarily so, although we don't have and are not going to have access to the kind of energy and sturdy materials that may be needed for time travel any time soon (even in the form of tiny observer nanobots).