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[–] 48 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If you had a question that nobody could answer, you’d go down to the library, open up a drawer with a bunch of note cards in it, look to see if any of the note cards had a word about a concept you wanted to learn about, hope that the card existed, was in the right place, and listed a book that would actually give you the information you wanted.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago

    Or you wouldn't go through the effort, you'd ask a trusted elder or a friend, they would lie to you, and you'd peddle that misinformation for decades while refusing that you might be wrong. Guess which one was more likely

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The first step would be opening an encyclopedia. A lot of households actually had an encyclopedia on their shelves for this very reason. Something which these "pre-internet" rumination threads always seems to neglect.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I still have an encyclopaedia on my shelf. I have to admit it’s the small edition though.

    I also still have a bunch of dictionaries (different languages), and a very outdated atlas.

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