Explaining 2015 to someone from 1915

Speaking of trends, I wonder what a time traveler from the past would make of various historically-inspired fiction/fashion/lifestyle trends, like steampunk (completely wrong era for this thread, I know, but it was the first example to come to mind). Would they find such things interesting, amusing, or inaccurate, or would they perhaps find comfort in something a bit more familiar? I keep thinking of the TV version of Ichabod Crane waking up in the modern day, and befriending people at a historical reenactment afterward.

 
That highly depends on a person who is visiting modern times. I believe intellectual person would accept and understand new technology, trends (at least the ones which are not incredibly stupid), music and style. I also believe there was enough stupid stuff in 1915, just most of it died out and is long forgotten. Same would happen after many years, dumb trends getting replaced with different dumb trends, the only difference is that now we have internet to carry on the information about everything.

 
I wonder how easy it would be for someone from 2115 to explain the future to us, would we be amazed at the technological advancement? Equally we would we be disappointed and shocked in a further deterioration of treatment of the human race? Whatever the situation would be 100 years in to the future i don't think the information would be hard to grasp as we are a generation used to massive change and shocking events in the world.

I hope the dream of world peace can be realised within the next 100 years, but sadly i doubt that will be a reality, every generation will have it's warmongers. My other hopes would be for an end to hunger and poverty and a solution to climate change, however in order to achieve any of these dreams we need to eradicate greed and selfishness as much as possible from the human race. I think this will take longer than 100 years unfortunately. I think we will reach a peak of technological advancement in the next 20 years so i don't feel there will be much to amaze us in those terms in 2115.

 
A rather interesting question. I think that nurses from 100 years ago would be amazed and dissapointed at the way the majority of people live. There are a lot of people who's live was swarmed over by technology which they're using to socialize. I think that's the biggest difference. People from 100 years ago obviously didn't knew what today's technology is. I think that the invention of internet has radically changed the way we live. Having all those "useful" gadgets is like a two sided medal. It can be useful but most of us (including me) didn't set healthy boundaries on the usage. I would simply describe this world to the nurses as a major dissapointment but that's just my opinion.

 
Maybe I would start the discussion with something that already existed at that time like cars,ships and planes. Also I would mention the fact that we went on the moon in the 60's. It would still hard to explaon the internet toug.

 
Maybe I would start the discussion with something that already existed at that time like cars,ships and planes. Also I would mention the fact that we went on the moon in the 60's. It would still hard to explaon the internet toug.
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You could talk about the phone and extend that to the internet. Even though today many use wifi to connect a computer or cell to the internet, the internet is still "wired" like the phone was.25 January 1915: The first transcontinental (coast-to-coast) telephone call (3600 miles), with Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco receiving a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York City, facilitated by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier.[23]

21 October 1915: First transmission of speech across the Atlantic Ocean by radiotelephone from Arlington, VA to Paris, France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone

 
You could talk about the phone and extend that to the internet. Even though today many use wifi to connect a computer or cell to the internet, the internet is still "wired" like the phone was.25 January 1915: The first transcontinental (coast-to-coast) telephone call (3600 miles), with Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco receiving a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Dey Street in New York City, facilitated by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier.[23]21 October 1915: First transmission of speech across the Atlantic Ocean by radiotelephone from Arlington, VA to Paris, France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone
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Actually I think that outside the scientific's entourage nobody would have known this kind of experiment unless the person we are talking to is in science and techonology. In the latter case then yes, you can start by making a comparison between the phone and the internet.

 
In 1912 there were 8.7 million telephones in american homes or businesses, and more being added daily.

As I pointed out.

25 January 1915: The first transcontinental (coast-to-coast) telephone call (3600 miles),

I imagine people read the news papers in 1915 and this news would have been widely dispersed in the public community... not just the scientific community.

 
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