Hacker Read

saraid216 · 2013-12-01 13:48:39

Remember when people genuinely enjoyed riding horses?

steveBK123 | karma 10082 | avg karma 4.71 · | 2023-10-26 13:42:25

People used to have horses instead of cars, people still managed.

pdabbadabba | karma 4191 | avg karma 3.87 · | 2021-01-22 19:37:52+00:00

And, indeed, a lot of people still ride horses for fun. But it's fairly rare as a bona fide mode of transportation.

It sounds like others in this thread are predicting something similar for ICEs.

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lief79 | karma 577 | avg karma 2.75 · | 2023-09-27 13:22:00

Remember, horses were the common mode of transportation then.

zacharycohn | karma 3562 | avg karma 3.7 · | 2011-12-30 07:03:47+00:00

Do you remember before there were internal combustion engines? People used to ride horses everywhere! It'd take days to cross the state.

randomdata | karma 8455 | avg karma 1.21 · | 2012-08-14 22:41:54

People still ride horses and enjoy doing it, but I don't see anyone advocating using horses for their daily driver (the Amish excluded). Driving for pleasure doesn't have to go away.

marblar | karma 255 | avg karma 1.93 · | 2017-04-05 17:38:24+00:00

The horse was fairly popular with people who lacked drivers licenses. Maybe check back in a few millennia.

hayksaakian | karma 5338 | avg karma 2.43 · | 2014-02-23 09:55:29

The idea is that technology makes doing anything undesirable totally optional.

We made horses obsolete for transport, and now nobody HAS TO ride a horse (99%). You can do it for fun.

I would argue that today, most people who ride horses enjoy doing so, where the same could not be said for times before modern transportation.

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xyzzyz | karma 10696 | avg karma 2.87 · | 2018-07-20 23:02:38

Horse riding was much less popular than you think. What was much more popular was horse-powered carriages, which are much more convenient than riding, and also less dangerous. Horse riding was pretty much a hobby, a hobby of the rich at that. Try reading some books from the era. For example, in Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” there is a quite funny moment when Hamilton sons were going for dances, when two older brothers already took family buggies, the younger didn’t choose to ride on a horse, but did something quite different, which made his mother very unhappy.

rkagerer | karma 7961 | avg karma 3.04 · | 2018-01-10 17:29:16+00:00

I empathize but I think that attitude is an artifact of the age we grew up in. I'm sure equestrians felt the same way when those rackety automobile contraptions started zooming around.

deeg | karma 1284 | avg karma 5.28 · | 2018-02-16 20:22:54

That's romanticizing the past. Before cars horses (and the infrastructure to support them) caused massive environmental problems, people had all sorts of physical ailments from riding, and their corpses occasionally littered the streets.

codingdave | karma 18349 | avg karma 4.28 · | 2015-10-09 13:46:16

It has. Go visit Amish country. Or come out west where people still ride horses around the small towns.

Naritai | karma 767 | avg karma 3.12 · | 2018-07-10 02:00:49+00:00

Or people who really just prefer horses as a means of transportation. They can have their shows and their rallies, and the rest of us can get to work on the means of transportation that makes sense.

browningstreet | karma 4753 | avg karma 4.5 · | 2022-10-06 11:55:13

I disagree.

We don’t ride horses the way we did before because we now have transport and cars and trucks.

We still run and bike and gym. Sometimes to commute, and sometimes for fitness. Not everyone can be Usain Bolt, but the trails and tracks are full all week long.

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Mankrik | karma 10 | avg karma 0.77 · | 2018-11-28 10:42:44+00:00

But people could still ride horses when cars came about and they still can, the transition happened over decades. But this change is happening over a matter of years, the reasons for which are not utilitarian.

genter | karma 864 | avg karma 4.67 · | 2024-06-10 16:48:50

There's people alive today, that when they were born, horses were more common than cars.

olalonde | karma 25101 | avg karma 4.21 · | 2016-11-25 00:37:32

That was a poorly chosen example since interest in horseback riding has declined a lot, at least in relative terms, compared to the pre car days. Today, auto racing as a competitive sport is probably more popular too.

Personally, the fact that computers are better at chess than humans makes me less interested in the game so I'm a bit biased.

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aerovistae | karma 8386 | avg karma 5.23 · | 2016-07-21 01:35:59

I think you meant "when cars still shared the road with horses." Right? :)

rane | karma 459 | avg karma 2.25 · | 2013-05-12 20:30:13

Those people who still ride horses... They're really holding us back as a civilization.

nothrabannosir | karma 8958 | avg karma 5.56 · | 2018-01-10 18:02:17

I still feel that way about cars. Those horse riders were right.