I’m currently reading “Madness & Civilization” by Michel Foucault and there are several paragraphs here that completely elude my intellect and absolutely require the internet for me to fully grasp it. This got me thinking, how did the poor souls from the 60s cope up with books like these? How did the freaks who read these books for fun get their doubts cleared?
In: Technology
Libraries were and still are a thing
People would read books on the subject that interested them.
TV documentaries and rentals were also common
Science shows on the radio and TV would often have call in segments as well where people could ask questions. The Discovery Channel for example had YAFI (You Ask for It!) a segment where people would submit questions to be answered by experts.
Sometimes though you just wouldn’t get an answer
Things were fairly different in the days prior to instant access of information
Are you asking how *research* happened before the internet? You went to the library.. hopefully at a good university.. You might look up the reading list for some SubjectMatter 101 classes and.. read those first. You’d subscribe to and read scientific journals to stay current in your field of expertise or interest…
And that goes for today, too. It’s a big problem with science-reporting and scientific literacy in America. You have to read the foundations before you read the cutting edge, and if the person you’re listening to hasn’t even developed their foundations, you really shouldn’t take anything they’re saying seriously.
* Go to a good library
* Ask the reference librarian for help.
* Learn the card catalogue and Dewey decimal system.
Work hard for your knowledge.
In addition to the other answers, a set of A-Z encyclopaedias was common in houses pre internet. I still remember them being cracked out the odd time to answer questions when I was a kid.
you lived with some ignorance. as other said you could get books or magazine. but even those were hard to get as a young person. I had questions about certain topics that didnt get answered for 1 or 2 decades because of the internet. i just always lived with not knowing what something was. For more mainstream things, those were answered easily. Even up to the early 2000s things were hard to find online. search engines operated differently before google came along, so even it was hard to find things on the internet. Before it was like a directory where you had to list your website on search engines.
If this was something you were reading in school, what would happen is that you wouldn’t first ask the internet but instead you’d go to your professor’s office hours and ask the professor to explain it a bit more. You might also look to see if the library had some sort of study guide to Madness and Civilization or some books about the work of Foucault in which you might hope to find something written about that part of the book that you can understand.
Latest Answers