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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

One of the biggest changes is that even in the 1990s in many places, you'd have minimal or no contact with anyone back home and probably even reasonably cut off from news. When I went on a few ~month long trips to Nepal around that time, you were just starting to see some terminals for email here and there towards the end of the decade. But you were pretty much cut off from most communications.

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>One of the biggest changes is that even in the 1990s in many places, you'd have minimal or no contact with anyone back home and probably even reasonably cut off from news.

But did you grab english language papers as you traveled? Or truly just stop getting western news?

(I agree going offline can be cool and good.)

Mostly there weren't English language newspapers. I guess I'd have found out about anything truly important on an international scale. But mostly no news. But then even at home most of my news was Time magazine once a week unless something was sufficiently important to reach me day to day.

I suppose you could have. Personally I wouldn’t check on the world back home at all, except to send the occasion postcard (or email when that became possible).

I’d learn about it all after getting home. Or sometimes not. I remember there being big movies that had come and gone while I was away that I only learned about years later.

It’s hard to imagine, watching the current crop spending every evening on their phones instead of talking to other travelers.

that is the main reason I don't use smart phone or internet WHENEVER I can. it improved my life a lot to live a humane being.

Yes, I wrote a letter to my mom and faxed it to her in the late 90s. Cheaper than a long conversation per minute.

Must be nice to live in country stable enough for you to able not to follow the news.

Not sure about your point. Trekking in Nepal in the 1990s, there wasn't an option to get the New York Times delivered to my tent every morning regardless of the stability of the country I lived in. And, indeed, backpacking in many locations even in the US, I wouldn't expect Internet access today.

Now I’m curious, where do you live? “News” are serving a very weird market, almost 100% about selling stories that satisfy the distorted attention span of demographic majorities who have no interest in going beyond the surface level of their groups model of consensus. It’s an omnidirectional intellectual wasteland, ignoring some pieces of economical (etc) analysis.

What do you have to be informed about a priori?

After years of dodging newspapers I got hooked on “news” in feb-mar 2020 due to Covid. Took about one month until I remembered that it’s a complete waste of time. I feel like the HN-audience has very little to gain from news directed at the general population.

Used to be Russia until early March.

Is there any real mainstream news in Russia? I'm lead to believe that all of the news there is government controlled propaganda.

There are independent media in Russian language (most not physically located in Russia), internet at large, social networks and VPNs to access those that are banned.

But if you were someone who "didn't follow the news" for the last 10 years, you would consume government's propaganda instead, and believe it. Which is my point.

Same here, got hooked to news during Covid and for a few months it was agony. Then I realized why I stopped reading news regularly in the first place.

That's a ridiculous comment. I don't follow the new here in the United States and do just fine. I don't watch TV, I don't visit news websites, I don't use twitter, reddit, or Facebook. But I still hear about important news thru everyday conversation. 99% of the "news" is useless unimportant filler.

> here in the United States

That's my point.

My parents come from a developing country which was underdeveloped in the '90s and we did not "follow" the news. Relevant bits of news were hawked by anyone and everyone (if there were any general strikes, curfews, etc) but otherwise we were just blissfully unaware. My family came from an urban area and it was probably a different situation in rural areas, but rural areas never had any of the events you needed to steer around from the news anyway, so I don't know if it was any different practically speaking.

Back in those times, that was often limited to places that hadn't been recently politically de-colonized.

Wow ... great article. Imagine calling Nat Geo and getting to actually talk to the photo editor. Or going someplace to enjoy navigating a culture without guides or signage or language or pocket tech. Real adventure.

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