I'm wayyy too new here to be commenting or contributing to this thread but...
I have no idea what genre of "computer science" you are in. I'm just shy of 40 and I find it very frustrating how hard I have to constantly study and learn to keep up with the times... and then the next minute I'll turn around and have an 8yo kid teaching me how to use my iPad... (I do niche hosting and DR for financial service companies.)
...when you realize you know very little about it
I remember being told that same thing by a priest when I was in grade school; religious ed class referencing the bible. It's true.
I could be way off base with this comment/addition to the thread; I've had the opportunity to travel a good amount and I still travel frequently, mostly for work. One of the things that always amazes me is the differences between people and things --sometimes just a few miles away. In the south pacific the difference between tableware is amazing. (wooden carved) Spoons and bowls can vary wildly (width/depth/style). Being on different sides of some islands is like being in a different country (because of prevailing winds and precipitation). People in Central and South America have different physical features based on the elevation of where they live.
There are plenty of examples but New Zealand is a great one. I'm not a historian... When the British "found" NZ & Australia They pretty much turned Australia into a prison and they used NZ as their private playground. They came in and populated the islands (New Zealand's north & south islands) with animals to hunt... like foxes and birds. They died and the hunting was poor. For round 2 of their hunting playground they populated the island with indigenous plants from home (the UK) so that the birds and foxes would have a good place to live/hide... and so that the hunting would be better. The animals flourished and so did the plants. The foreign (British) plants took over everything. The plants and trees killed off some local/native NZ plants and cross bred with others. This completely changed the islands. Certain cross-breeding of plants and newly introduced plants caused the wood grains to twist or knot making the wood unusable for timber (homes/logs) and extremely hard to work with (using hand tools).
Getting back on topic... The Maori are the locals, like the Native Americans are to us. Historically they are seafaring people and made things like dugout canoes, boats and the like from tree trunks. When you go to museums in New Zealand its amazing to see how drastically their tools changed over the years. Now, knowing a little bit about axes and chopping tools its like night and day... You can literally see the change in their tools over the years as the British populated (screwed over) the islands. They did one of the islands first so you can see that the same people just a few miles apart were changing and modifying everything from eating utensils to hand tools, to accommodate the changes in local vegetation while the other island still had the same tools they were using for generations.
I'm sure there were marketing gimmicks and scams all over but for the most part people (especially back then) only had time to make the most efficient tool for the little bubble they lived in... which is part of what makes life so diverse and interesting today.
That's my contribution. Flame me if you want
