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| A 1956 encyclopaedia's view on the computer |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-06-08 23:07:13 |
| Two weeks ago, my grandmother passed away - the last grandparent I had left. As those of you with experience in dealing with deceased family members know, the funeral is only the start; the next part is taking care of the deceased's affairs, which includes going through all their belongings to determine what to do with them. I took care of my grandmother's extensive book collection, and while doing so, I hit something that fascinated me to no end: a six-volume Christian Encyclopaedia from 1956. In it, I found something I just had to share with OSNews. |
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| Beautiful story! |
| By Modafinil on 2012-06-08 23:32:09 |
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Thank you for this wonderful insight into history, it truly is an amazing story. Please also accept my condolences on the loss of your Grandmother. I myself have only one Grandparent left alive and she is 85 in a couple of weeks. I hope you don't mind me bringing my religion into this comment when I say inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi wa rajioon (To God alone do we belong and to Him shall we surely return). May your Grandma forever rest in eternal peace. Edited 2012-06-08 23:32 UTC |
 - Score: 6 |
| interesting look back |
| By jessesmith on 2012-06-09 01:25:20 |
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I am very sorry for your loss. This is an article I enjoyed a lot for the history in it. I too used to have a copy of Encyclopedias from about that time (my father's set). It was interesting to look through them and see things which had changed (space race, computers, maps) and things which had remained largely the same biology, chemistry, older history. If I may, I found the comments on science vs religion interesting, though I think I'm less surprised about the books having accurate scientific information. From what I'm seen fundamentalist dogma seems to be more wide spread and more aggressive now than it was 50 or 100 years ago. Back then I don't think there was nearly the perceived divide between faith and science that we have now. Thanks for an interesting and personal article. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Very fascinating |
| By jweinraub on 2012-06-09 02:46:19 |
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First, I send you my condolences. While I still have two grandmothers, my mom's father passed when she was only 6, so alas, I never met him. So my first death in family happened recently when my dad's father passed. It was difficult, and still difficult my dad's mother, and it has been over seven years (though they were married for 60 years). But I digress, I am very surprised how opened minded a 1950s religious encyclopedia would had been. I assume this was a Dutch original (opposed to a translation from somewhere else)? Perhaps the 50s for all their backwards thinking with gender roles, at least in the States, I wonder how different it would had been elsewhere. I daresay, the 1960s counter culture was completely and perhaps non existent in a lot of areas in the world. Thank you for sharing. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Requiescat in pace, Dr. van Riesen |
| By gus3 on 2012-06-09 03:09:04 |
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Thom, he may have had children, and perhaps even grandchildren. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to contact them and find out how dr. van Riesen found harmony between his faith and his long-range views on technology, and how well he communicated that harmony to his family. (And if you do find them, and they agree to talk to you about their father/grandfather, a follow-up here would be aces!) |
| - Score: 4 |
| Interesting |
| By error32 on 2012-06-09 03:45:45 |
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First of all, my sincere condolances. Second, is it possible for you to scan this and put it online somewhere? I am interested to read it in Dutch. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Sorry for the religious discussion |
| By 3rdalbum on 2012-06-09 04:40:35 |
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A quick disclaimer: I'm an ex-Christian, with a partner who is Christian. Mostly in America, but partly in other countries, are groups of people who I call "New Jews". They claim to be Catholics or Baptists or other sorts of Christians but they seem to completely miss the message. There's a passage in the New Testament where the character of Jesus basically says that he's wiping away all the laws and teachings of the past, and replacing them with one: "Love one another as the Lord loves you". All through the New Testament are references to God loving everybody, and being an object of love rather than an object of fear. The New Jews miss this entirely. They use God as an excuse to say "We're loved, and you are hated". They miss the sentiment that "Love one another" is the only rule, and instead they backtrack to the Old Testament's laws that no longer matter in the Christian world. That's why I call them New Jews - they believe in the existence of Christ, and call themselves Christians, but prefer to ignore his teachings in favour of the old Jewish teachings and rules. New Jews "fear God", Christians love God. New Jews say "God hates you because you are X", Christians say "God loves you no matter who you are". It's little surprise to me that your Christian Encyclopedia from 1950s Europe is so accepting of evolution. Christianity says that the Old Testament isn't necessarily the truth, or relevant, or important anymore. After the start of more enlightened times, but before the New Jews came along with their firebrand of extremism, Christians were quite accepting of science. Just to reiterate, though, I'm no longer a Christian (so don't start calling me that!) but I do have a Christian partner who I take to church. I see practical Christianity at work every week, basically. |
| - Score: 4 |
| Dankjewel! |
| By Lava_Croft on 2012-06-09 04:48:47 |
| Een fijne lees, zo op de zaterdagmorgen. Deze encyclopedie klinkt als mijn grootmoeder! |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Sorry for the religious discussion |
| By Fergy on 2012-06-09 05:32:12 |
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> There's a passage in the New Testament where the character of Jesus basically says that he's wiping away all the laws and teachings of the past, and replacing them with one: "Love one another as the Lord loves you". There is also a passage where Jesus says he didn't come to abolish any of the rules of the old testament. You can get anything from the bible if you want to. You should view it as an interesting book that shows a lot of how people throughout the ages thought about things. You should not treat it as an encyclopedia. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Sorry for the religious discussion |
| By 3rdalbum on 2012-06-09 05:42:14 |
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> You should view it as an interesting book that shows a lot of how people throughout the ages thought about things. You should not treat it as an encyclopedia. I assume when you say "you", you mean "people". I wanted to clarify yet again that I'm not a Christian, and therefore treat the Bible's contents as being an order of magnitude less reliable than Wikipedia :-) I don't remember the passage about "I haven't come to abolish the laws of the Old Testament". A bible reference would be handy for me if you have one available. And again sorry for starting a bit of a religious discussion on OSnews. To bring things back toward their correct topic, this encyclopedia entry has come at just the right time. I've been re-reading Steven Levy's book "Hackers", the opening part of which is set only a few years after that encyclopedia entry. In the book Hackers there is discussion about chess-playing programs, so it's really quite telling that Chess was singled-out as a very computer-solvable problem, even as some people were claiming that computers would never be able to beat adults. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Dankjewel! |
| By zima on 2012-06-09 06:11:11 |
| "This encyclopedia sounds like my grandmother!"? Yup, machine (Google) translation still has some room for improvement... ;p (I guess) |
| - Score: 2 |
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