The world of the internet is mindboggling. Wiseacreing is what we do when we make use of stuff that we really don't understand, nor have any strong basis of understanding. The past is one of these regions of uncertainty, as is the future. When we discuss these regions we enter the world of wiseacreing because we have to speculate.
One of my passions is travelling through time by means of recorded history. Think what it will mean in the future to have so much recorded history of what is going on in our time. The time when we are alive is when it is all happening, but we can share the worlds of those that preceded us, if we take the time to read and research history. Obviously, much of it is unpleasant, downright horrible, but we can filter out the 'messy bits' to learn more about how to live in the now.
Part of our history is what happened to members of the Bloomsbury Group, the forerunners of the publishing company that brought us Rowling's Harry Potter. Members of the Bloomsbury group of the 1920's travelled to Fontainbleu Castle in France where they studied under a man called G. It was G who used the term wiseacreing with reference to much of what he heard coming from so-called experts or thinkers. Do you know who G was?
Often I do not link the reader to the best of links. Some load slowly. Others present downright disgusting material. And, still others seem off the mark. I apologize. One of my main aims is to bring the reader to realize that there are many points of view. It is not just that we benefit from reading things that we can disagree with, but we are shocked by what we read. This shocking of our sensibilities is a Gurdieffian method that helps us wake up out of our complacency. Without shocks we fall asleep and never really feel awake to the now.