Sometimes the movies like to use $SCIENCE to bring forward someone from the past and see our world and be all surprised and stuff. It was almost its own genre in the 1980s. And they were always amazed at radios and cars and all the obvious things. But I also find it interesting at all the other things that they would find amazing and we don't even notice or know about, and as the article says, the sight of someone sitting on a park bench, reading a book, and their lips not moving would surprise quite a lot of our ancestors, to say nothing of a "normal person" doing it rather than a highly educated priest or obvious academic. We take it for granted, but as the article says, it's a relatively recent innovation. (On the timescale of "all of human civilization", anyhow.)
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Sometimes the movies like to use $SCIENCE to bring forward someone from the past and see our world and be all surprised and stuff. It was almost its own genre in the 1980s. And they were always amazed at radios and cars and all the obvious things. But I also find it interesting at all the other things that they would find amazing and we don't even notice or know about, and as the article says, the sight of someone sitting on a park bench, reading a book, and their lips not moving would surprise quite a lot of our ancestors, to say nothing of a "normal person" doing it rather than a highly educated priest or obvious academic. We take it for granted, but as the article says, it's a relatively recent innovation. (On the timescale of "all of human civilization", anyhow.)
Any more information on this? Honestly something that I have never considered before.
A counterpoint to the claim about the ancients reading aloud: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/29/featuresreviews...