"Just 'Google' It!"

[JJ Homestead]

Gosh, I say that all the time. Do you?
The phrase has really caught on in my family.

With smart phones, endless apps, and Wi-Fi allowing practically constant internet access, it's become super easy to learn something new. Around my house, it is the final word used for settling an argument.

Now, I personally don't subscribe to a lot of apps, but am amazed by the generation behind mine that will push a few buttons on their cell, then tell me the stats of the last Health Dept. inspection received by the restaurant where we're considering dining.

More recently, my go-to for learning, especially concerning anything DIY, is 'YouTube'. One caveat on 'YouTube' research is that you may hear the channel's host unabashedly proclaim, "This is the first time I've tried doing this!". So, not only is it a forum where you can learn what to do, but also what not to do, as many hosts will allow you to view their human side, by airing all the mistakes they've made along the way.

If "experience" is a valuable tool for learning. Further, trial-and-error, I have to say 'YouTube' certainly has that going for it, in the sense that someone else has already been down that road. And when I see them get a blowout after hitting a pothole, I'll be sure to steer clear of it.

Really, I believe the main reason I like it is because I'm a visual learner. We have downloaded e-book encyclopedias, and own a few handy educational books too; gardening, carpentry, animals, homesteading knowledge, etc. They are my occasional go-to's for specific things. But, of course their contents are limited.

If and when the lights go out, so to speak, all that infinite access that we find so convenient will cease to be an option.
In the 'Going Home' series, I think it's Morgan who says the same thing, in 'Forsaking Home', something like, "we carry our knowledge with us, and it's something no one can take away from us." Again, that knowledge is so limited.

Sorry to put a pessimistic spin on it, but it's true. One man or woman can only know so much.

Here and now, I'm considering the term "strength in numbers", not only by its literal meaning of physical strength, but the intelligence and experience that come with each and every body.

Right now, I find an urgency to push that envelope, like there is a window of opportunity to consume knowledge while it is still available to us in unlimited access. Whereas just a couple of short years ago, life was consumed with the day-to-day of going to work, raising kids, living "the life", that takes us from the hectic work week, to the ahhh, two days of relaxation. Well, one for chores and the other for faith and family, but still... at least it feels like mine and not 'The Man's'.

Does anyone else think about this? What steps or techniques have you and yours implemented to secure your knowledge and skill? What are your thoughts on what's been said here?

[Boston_Joe]

Even with numbers of people knowledge will be lost, moving civilization back in time. Some may not see the use or need for certain subjects. Years ago I read Earth Abides by George R Stewart. It's a pre internet tale of the collapse of civilization after a plague. The protagonist tries to save the physical books that he knows contain what people will need to not only go on but to rebuild what was. He even seeks to foster the idea that knowledge is important in those around him. I don't want to spoil things if you plan on reading it but it doesn't end well.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't try and preserve knowledge or pass it along. In fact we must. We do need to be wary that most will be so caught up in the day to day task of survival that they may not see the need to do so. Even to day many have the attitude that they only need "enough" of anything to get by and that certainly includes what goes in and out of their brain.

[Cwi555]

Thought a lot about it, you could call it a family tradition of recording information going back to the civil war. Logs, diaries, papers, books, etc

It is something I no longer go into detail about. Meaning no disrespect, but youtube or wiki isn't something I consider a viable resource post shtf. Nor do I trust the content of either. It is my opinion that far more people are going to die trying to run off information they believed from those sources that is wrong, than the number of people it will save.

They can be a good jumping off point for research of your own, but that's where it ends for me.

[Sacajawea]

Books. Definitely Books - in quantity, and selectively. I'm building a reference library. That doesn't mean just the sciences or how-to books either. There are books I consider "essential" to the basics of what-was "Western Civilization" and literature as well.

It's not something a person can "bug out" with... boxes & boxes of books... but if you're bugged in, get it in hard copy that won't fade or disintegrate in 50 years and forget depending on electronic sources -- they're fine if you can protect them and generate enough power to run a system that is compatible with the stored format, but IMO - NOTHING beats a book or working directly with a master in a skill.

[KyDave59]

Note that modern digital storage devices have a limited lifetime. Recordable CDs/DVDs may only be a few years (if stored properly, and only a few days if stored improperly!). Read-only CDs/DVDs are good for a number of years, but will eventually fail. USB flash keys are good for somewhere between about 5 and 20 years, but they will gradually start failing. Even magnetic media will have the oxide coating flake off the substrate and fail (NASA has lost a LOT of 1960s/1970s space data due to that!). Paper, on the other hand, can last for 1000s of years, if properly stored. The biggest failing factor for paper very well may be that the language changes under it (We won't even talk about programming languages, data formats, or hardware interfaces changing for digital media! How many of y'all can still even read a 3.25-inch floppy disk? How about a 5.25-inch or 8-inch floppy?).

Dave

[southernmom]

I think about this as well. I am a huge believer in books, and I have hundreds and hundreds of them. I used to own a bookstore and I have books on everything from midwifery and natural healing to survival and homesteading issues to all manner of philosophy and religious study and history (particularly civil war). Genealogy has really put history in a different perspective for me....and I own many different types of books inbetween.
That being said, I am the first to google for a bit of random info (and I check several sources) and I do enjoy youtube videos on gardening and such. I also really love 'Great Courses Plus' on our internet TV to get college level courses on history and science. So nice to just watch a series of videos on something. I also have dozens of books on my phone kindle app. I love it. Of course it doesn't beat a real book but still useful. Instant information is great, a great tool.
I feel that knowledge of all sorts and critical thinking are necessary. I have taught my kids to be the same way. They have tried to tell their friends to be the same way. Some of their friends have 'gotten' that knowledge is important and that it is power. I DO believe a person can hold on to vast amts of info in their head and pass it on to their kids or friends, or whoever. No, a person can't hold enough in their head alone to rebuild society but they certainly can help raise part of it.
Yes we need groups, I believe humans are tribal by nature so that makes sense to me. Yet I do believe many of us have the capacity to hold vast amts of knowledge in our heads. Esp. knowledge that is linked to muscle memory and 'doing'. So I keep the books but I constantly strive to remember more and more because books are also a sort of 'instant' bit of info that is as easily destroyed as google. I mean, think of the Library of Alexandria, right? History of mankind was destroyed (and the rest the catholic church has a damned chokehold on). So the point of my longwinded post is: don't assume google OR books will be there. Learn by doing and become philosophers and critical thinkers and brush up on memorization.

If the grid goes down and our instant society is gone (instant info, instant entertainment, instant food) I think we will be more preoccupied with the physical survival aspects for a while and all the esoteric knowledge (history and science and philosophy-which is just as much the building blocks of a new society as guns etc) will take a back seat. I think it's important for that sort of thing to be part of the survival arsenal as well.

[Cwi555]

Magnetic tape, punch cards, most versions of floppy. At one point I had an IBM 3330 running as a hobby but the expense out weighed the benifit. I have 1 operational 8" drive, but all the disk are crap, even the ones never opened. I have 2 5.25 and a few disk still new I believe will work which are run on an early 486 which also runs the 3.5. Zip drives, etc to current. All information has been transferred fwd along with the environment/virtual shell to read them. The goal being to keep and read the data. The 8" gear will be going away soon as I am in process of selling to a collector. She claims a source of disk which I do not have.

The system (media, software, and hardware) is worthless without all of its three components to me. I still practice mental flagellation with the FFD 486 and DOS system. Call it a variant of meditation.

Note that modern digital storage devices have a limited lifetime. Recordable CDs/DVDs may only be a few years (if stored properly, and only a few days if stored improperly!). Read-only CDs/DVDs are good for a number of years, but will eventually fail. USB flash keys are good for somewhere between about 5 and 20 years, but they will gradually start failing. Even magnetic media will have the oxide coating flake off the substrate and fail (NASA has lost a LOT of 1960s/1970s space data due to that!). Paper, on the other hand, can last for 1000s of years, if properly stored. The biggest failing factor for paper very well may be that the language changes under it (We won't even talk about programming languages, data formats, or hardware interfaces changing for digital media! How many of y'all can still even read a 3.25-inch floppy disk? How about a 5.25-inch or 8-inch floppy?).

Dave

[southernmom]

Magnetic tape, punch cards, most versions of floppy. At one point I had an IBM 3330 running as a hobby but the expense out weighed the benifit. I have 1 operational 8" drive, but all the disk are crap, even the ones never opened. I have 2 5.25 and a few disk still new I believe will work which are run on an early 486 which also runs the 3.5. Zip drives, etc to current. All information has been transferred fwd along with the environment/virtual shell to read them. The goal being to keep and read the data. The 8" gear will be going away soon as I am in process of selling to a collector. She claims a source of disk which I do not have.

The system (media, software, and hardware) is worthless without all of its three components to me. I still practice mental flagellation with the FFD 486 and DOS system. Call it a variant of meditation.

Geez you sound like my son, cwi
I got in trouble in middle school back in the 80's when they started rolling out the odd computer to teach us 'the new fad'. I figured out the system to find everyone's password-which got me in trouble and kicked out of computer class. Ah the good old days.

[KyDave59]

Magnetic tape, punch cards, most versions of floppy. At one point I had an IBM 3330 running as a hobby but the expense out weighed the benifit. I have 1 operational 8" drive, but all the disk are crap, even the ones never opened. I have 2 5.25 and a few disk still new I believe will work which are run on an early 486 which also runs the 3.5. Zip drives, etc to current. All information has been transferred fwd along with the environment/virtual shell to read them. The goal being to keep and read the data. The 8" gear will be going away soon as I am in process of selling to a collector. She claims a source of disk which I do not have.

The system (media, software, and hardware) is worthless without all of its three components to me. I still practice mental flagellation with the FFD 486 and DOS system. Call it a variant of meditation.

Cool on the IBM 3330. That predates me a bit. I've used 3350s, 3380s, and 3390s, but the 3330s were all gone by the time I started messing with computers. They were rather incredible, back in the 1970s, but they're MUCH too small to be practical now, especially given the space and power requirements.

I did have a PDP-11/03 machine that a friend gave me, vintage mid-1970s, but that was rather tiny compared to modern standards (4K of SRAM, 64K address space, pair of 14-inch hard disks for 5 and 10 MB). I ended up donating to a collector.

I do have an XT/370 processor, although I haven't fired it up in about 20 years. It was a cute toy, but pretty useless now. I've played with the IBM 7437, and P/370, and have lusted after a P/390, although was never able to find one. Plus, I just don't have time to play with toys like that now. :-/

As for disks, I don't have any 8-inch stuff now, although I have some external 5.25-inch drives which, theoretically, should still be functional, and I have a bunch of internal and external 3.5-inch drives which are functional. I just haven't needed to use any of them for many years, though.

I, too, still keep a 486 DOS-based machine around, but haven't had it powered on in about five years. The biggest problem with it is that it doesn't have a USB port, which makes getting data to/from it a royal pain.

Dave

[JJ Homestead]

Shoulda hit "reply w/ quote"
this is to Cwi555 regarding family tradition of recordkeeping:
I think that first part is kind of amazing and fairly unique. Do you have a small historical museum? Sounds like all that would take up quite a bit of space.

[Cwi555]

Shoulda hit "reply w/ quote"
this is to Cwi555 regarding family tradition of recordkeeping:
I think that first part is kind of amazing and fairly unique. Do you have a small historical museum? Sounds like all that would take up quite a bit of space.

I do not have a museum as the word museum implies open to the public. What I have is storage that takes up 2,000 Sq/ft at this time.
I am not the only one out there with something like this. I know of a few people around the world, and they know more. The largest problem we all have is that a good portion of the information doesn't mesh with the current 'official' historical accounts.

There are still some people alive who remember WW1 and the stories their grandparents told them. Some of those people have diaries and journals as well. Today's youth normally just write off their great grandparents comments as the result of old age dodderings when what they remember conflicts with what the official history is. It is what they remember from living and witnessing directly.

Someone motivated could spend some time with the old folks in nursing homes and piece together some very interesting information, but unfortunately few seem to care anymore.

[KyDave59]

When I pulled into the parking lot at work on Friday, there was a deuce-and-a-half parked there (I actually parked in the next spot.). Now, I'm pretty sure it was some version of the M35:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M35_2%C2%BD-ton_cargo_truck

rather than the earlier version of the deuce-and-a-half. I should have taken a picture of it, but it was one of things that so surprised me that I didn't even think to photograph it.

I'm pretty sure it was a civilian vehicle, probably bought as surplus and reconditioned, since it didn't have the normal military markings. If so, whoever had reconditioned it had done an excellent job. But, those things are out there.

The reason I mentioned this is that I happened to see my dad on Friday night. Dad served with the US Army in Korea. So, I asked him if he ever drove a deuce-and-a-half. His response was that he went to great trouble, even risking a court martial, to ensure that he didn't obtain a military driver's license, and, thus, wasn't eligible to drive one.

Dave

[southernmom]

I do not have a museum as the word museum implies open to the public. What I have is storage that takes up 2,000 Sq/ft at this time.
I am not the only one out there with something like this. I know of a few people around the world, and they know more. The largest problem we all have is that a good portion of the information doesn't mesh with the current 'official' historical accounts.

There are still some people alive who remember WW1 and the stories their grandparents told them. Some of those people have diaries and journals as well. Today's youth normally just write off their great grandparents comments as the result of old age dodderings when what they remember conflicts with what the official history is. It is what they remember from living and witnessing directly.

Someone motivated could spend some time with the old folks in nursing homes and piece together some very interesting information, but unfortunately few seem to care anymore.

I love this!!! I am the family historian and genealogist and my mother's mother was a professional genealogist from the late 1960's til her death (the fbi talent scouted her in high school in 1941 and she went directly to washington and worked for Hoover. Alas, she burned many diaries before her death. I like to call her Agent Grandma-and I remember her certificates on the wall signed by Hoover himself....those are not yet in my possession but will be eventually)and every bit of that came down to me when she died in 1993, Tin types, daguerrotypes, correspondence, deeds, and many other items of historical and personal significance. (some civil war items that will come to me in the not too distant future)
When my father's grandmother died I inherited all the history from that side as well-again, tintypes, daguerrotypes, correspondence from fl to alabama and georgia family prior around 1900...WWII correspondence between my grandfather and the family, land deeds and historical land deeds that somehow never made it to the county land office. I have my great grandmother's school books from the early 1900's and the history in them is a different animal than what we hear, today.
I cannot stress enough the importance of these items. My walls are covered with old family photos.
I can seriously bore anyone to tears with tales of life before here in FL when cattle was run from south fl on up to GA, etc and when it was wild prior and during the civil war from tales that made it to me. I constantly tell my kids. I adore history esp as it pertains to the travels of my bloodline.

- - - Updated - - -

I do not have a museum as the word museum implies open to the public. What I have is storage that takes up 2,000 Sq/ft at this time.
I am not the only one out there with something like this. I know of a few people around the world, and they know more. The largest problem we all have is that a good portion of the information doesn't mesh with the current 'official' historical accounts.

There are still some people alive who remember WW1 and the stories their grandparents told them. Some of those people have diaries and journals as well. Today's youth normally just write off their great grandparents comments as the result of old age dodderings when what they remember conflicts with what the official history is. It is what they remember from living and witnessing directly.

Someone motivated could spend some time with the old folks in nursing homes and piece together some very interesting information, but unfortunately few seem to care anymore.

I love this!!! I am the family historian and genealogist and my mother's mother was a professional genealogist from the late 1960's til her death (the fbi talent scouted her in high school in 1941 and she went directly to washington and worked for Hoover. Alas, she burned many diaries before her death. I like to call her Agent Grandma-and I remember her certificates on the wall signed by Hoover himself....those are not yet in my possession but will be eventually)and every bit of that came down to me when she died in 1993, Tin types, daguerrotypes, correspondence, deeds, and many other items of historical and personal significance. (some civil war items that will come to me in the not too distant future)
When my father's grandmother died I inherited all the history from that side as well-again, tintypes, daguerrotypes, correspondence from fl to alabama and georgia family prior around 1900...WWII correspondence between my grandfather and the family, land deeds and historical land deeds that somehow never made it to the county land office. I have my great grandmother's school books from the early 1900's and the history in them is a different animal than what we hear, today.
I cannot stress enough the importance of these items. My walls are covered with old family photos.
I can seriously bore anyone to tears with tales of life before here in FL when cattle was run from south fl on up to GA, etc and when it was wild prior and during the civil war from tales that made it to me. I constantly tell my kids. I adore history esp as it pertains to the travels of my bloodline.

- - - Updated - - -

i have no idea why my post did that. I guess it knew i really meant it. haha!

[Boston_Joe]

I love this!!! I am the family historian and genealogist......

I'm more or less the self appointed family historian though not to the extent that you are. I was curious so I started digging. I knew that we had a family bible that had some of this info, but alas that ha been lost along with a great many other things that my mother put into storage. She was in poor health and thought it would be safe with a family friend. So it went there for some reason vs being offered to one of the kids. Anyway.......I did the whole online thing and found lots of interesting stuff and hit more than my fair share of roadblocks on my mother's side. My fathers side is fairly well documented and even has a professionally researched and published book on them.

The subject is very interesting to me and i continue to peck away at it when I find the time and money to do so.