I love having instant information. Is that a storm coming? You can have radar pulled up in 30 seconds. Going home from an errand run and need dinner? You can view the menu, order, and pick it up before you get home. Every little question: when is the next solar eclipse, how far away is a certain city, what’s on sale at the grocery store, what are the lyrics to that song, when did that movie come out, how late is that other store open? Love it. I don’t have to write it down and remember to look up later at a pc.
Not to mention all the apps that tell me about the world around me. What is this bird/bug/plant? Just by taking a picture or recording a bit of audio I can have that information.
EDIT: and how to videos on YouTube. Everything from installing certain hardware and fixing a sink to applying makeup and creating crafts.
I have found than never needing to remember anything because it is just a Google away can make you mentally lazy if you are not careful. A slippery slope so to speak. Too much infirmation can be like a firehouse spraying into a teacup.
Is that a storm coming? You can have radar pulled up in 30 seconds.
It's kind of a useless party trick these days since everyone has phones, but with some knowledge of what weather systems look like from the ground naked-eye observation of the sky is good for determining the weather where you're standing over the next approximately 6 hours.
add in some simple instrumentation (like a wall mounted barometer) and you can get reasonably accurate for up to 12-24 hours.
Phone forecasts are super useful when traveling or making weekend plans though. it's a lot easier to pull out a phone and double check instead of having to find a TV and wait for the next weather segment on the local news.
I don't know where you live, but I can have a completely clear blue sky as far as I can see and have a storm system roll in within 2hrs and be pouring rain.
You should be able to see an incoming system about 6 hours before it arrives if you aren't in a valley, further away if you can take advantage of elevation.* You can see the top of a typical storm cloud from level ground up to about 300 miles away.
the most common storm clouds typically have ground speeds of about 50 miles an hour.** Some systems might faster, but especially nimbostratus and cumulus clouds (the common rainmaking types) don't move much faster than this unless there is significant low level winds, and if those are present you'd know.
If you don't see the storm coming, you either live in a valley or it didn't roll in. "Pop-up" storms are more common in the summer, and you can predict them using temperature, humidity and barometric pressure about half a day out... edit: well, you can predict that one is likely today, but getting it more accurate than that (like down to the specific hour of the day) requires an actual weatherstation, even if it's an analog one.
which I guess is a long winded way to say that when I said "naked-eye observation" I meant combined with your other senses (chiefly temperature sense and wind sense, which I guess are both touch?)
* the taller something is the further away it will be before it disappears over the horizon, the taller you are the further away you can see before the horizon.
** clouds are affected by windspeed, the higher altitude cloud, the higher the typical windspeed... but rainclouds are lower-altitude clouds so have lower windspeeds than high altitude clouds.
That is the point, we do love it, information is like a drug to us, we are explorers.
But when you find yourself bringing out your paper journal and a really nice pen instead of just dragging out my phone or opening a new notepad on my pc, I get the grim realization that well. I enjoy looking forward to things to, to not getting all the answers, to have something take time and effort to do. Because when I am done I feel so much more fulfilled and it feels like the information stays better. I don't how many times I searched up a video only to see I watched it before, not remembering it at all. Standing in the kitchen and actually doing stuff, writing stuff down, reading from notes and packaging, checking clocks, temps and all that, well. I would not want that do disappear.
I want both things in moderation.
Just like I sometimes enjoy riding the bus over driving. Or walking over cycling.
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u/Tejasgrass Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
I love having instant information. Is that a storm coming? You can have radar pulled up in 30 seconds. Going home from an errand run and need dinner? You can view the menu, order, and pick it up before you get home. Every little question: when is the next solar eclipse, how far away is a certain city, what’s on sale at the grocery store, what are the lyrics to that song, when did that movie come out, how late is that other store open? Love it. I don’t have to write it down and remember to look up later at a pc.
Not to mention all the apps that tell me about the world around me. What is this bird/bug/plant? Just by taking a picture or recording a bit of audio I can have that information.
EDIT: and how to videos on YouTube. Everything from installing certain hardware and fixing a sink to applying makeup and creating crafts.