So I attended the gun show this weekend in Northern Virginia. Bought myself a Remington Defender 12 ga. shotgun.
While completing the paperwork and paying, I got into a discussion with another patron about the merits of this as a home defense tool and what load it should use. He seemed to favor “Double-ought,” or 00, buckshot. I said I liked #4 better.
He responded by saying that he used to buy number four, but it was hard or even impossible to find now. This surprised me, but after a moment it became clear he was mixing up #4 buckshot with “Four ought,” or 0000, buckshot. The latter is somewhat rare; the former is everywhere.
And as i whipped out my phone and quickly found a page that showed the sizes and weights of pellets for 0000 shot and #4 shot to show the dramatic difference between them, it occurred to me that ten years ago, this exchange would have left me frustrated, because I would have had no way of changing his mind; he was absolutely unwilling to believe he was wrong, but confronted with a reference, he had no choice.
Gone are days when the guys at the bar got into an argument about which heavyweight knocked out his opponent in the second round at which title fight, and have to rely on the resident expert’s memory to settle the bet. The answer is at the fingertips of anyone with a smartphone – which, increasingly, is everyone.
Goodness, it hasn’t been that long. I can certainly remember how I lived two or three years ago. Or 10, for that matter.
Books. I looked it up in books. I still have a pretty fair collection of encyclopedias, atlases, almanacs and reference books that I rarely use any more, but I clearly remember looking things up. In your scenario, it would have to wait until I got home, sure, and there’s no IN YOUR FACE YOU’RE WRONG … which may, on a societal level, be a good thing.
The Guinness Book of Records was compiled for this exact reason. Before the fight got out of hand, the bartender could pull out the book and settle things.
I totally agree that the smartphone and the access to information anywhere at any time is a wonderful thing.
I totally agree!!! People say it’s like having god in your pocket, an answer to every idle question in your head.
It has a down side, though. A couple days ago during a meeting, my mind wandered and I found myself recalling that the mother of Peppermint Patty in the ‘Peanuts’ strip was dead, and I wondered if they ever said what she died of. In the old days, I would have thought “Eh, I’ll Google it later”. In the older days, I would have thought there was pretty much no way of finding out without more effort than it was worth, and let it go. But being today, I gotta whip out my phone and go to the Wikipedia entry for Peppermint Patty and find out. Then of course someone asks me a question, and I get caught not paying attention and look like a shmuck.
Yes, but in this case, I didn’t need to look it up – I knew the answer already. The only thing I couldn’t have done back then was show my interlocutor that he was mistaken.
The part I like most about having a smartphone is that I don’t really mind waiting in lines anymore. Also, for waiting-room type situations, I’m not subjected to reading the typical dreck they have for magazines, which are also usually horribly outdated.
Agreed. I used to dread going to Costco because of damn lines, now I couldn’t care less about them. Hell, sometimes I’m annoyed when I get to the register because I’d rather continue reading my RSS feeds.
