9 ms·

Pause, We Can Go Back

67 points by Vigier 10y ago

Daddy_cat 10y ago
More tedious nostalgia for the glorious "time before phones",this time with vinyl as a pretentious garnish. Can we please stop thinking this idea is new or interesting?
- germinalphrase 10y ago
  Perhaps a more interesting question then is why does this tedious nostalgia persist? If our new tools are not providing for our needs then we should change them to do so.
  - corvos 10y ago
    not necessarily. Most of the people commenting here seem to agree the relentless march of technology is good and desirable. It's probably just old people that don't. I work part time at a drug store and people over 50 constantly make comments about "that new chip card" or "this computer age". I always pin it on lack of adaptability and then make a joke about it on r/lewronggeneration or something
  - svachalek 10y ago
    There are a few cases where we really are giving things up in the digital world. I've yet to see a digital control that holds a candle to the good old analog volume knob in terms of speed and precision of setting, for example. E-books are better than paper ones in many ways, but paper still has the advantage for sharing and certain aspects of navigation. On the other hand, one big "need" is simply for the familiar, and another is to be different from the crowd. Old timers will hold onto their vinyl because it brings back memories that cannot be replaced, while young hipsters will buy them because no one else their age is. Simply being modern prevents new audio technology from fulfilling either need.
rtpg 10y ago
I love my omni-devices a lot, but there is an anti-social angle to it that I wish I could get over. Nobody knows what you're doing on your iPad. You could be reading your e-mails, scrolling through twitter, or buying something on Amazon. But in a more casual environment (living room, with friends), you lose opportunities for spontaneous interactions. There's also a difficulty in sharing. You can't give the funny pages to someone. Hard to loan e-books sometimes. I think some of this is solved by TV screens. Long term, I bet we'll be "casting" our phones to screens a lot more often in social environments. But sometimes the limitation of physical goods is nice. Legos are funner than CAD software, most of the time.
- vosper 10y ago
  > You can't give the funny pages to someone. Take a screenshot, paste it into your WhatsApp chat group. Now you've shared it with your friends all around the world, for them to read at their pleasure. I agree with you on the ebooks, though.
- mojuba 10y ago
  For this same reason modern cinematography often resorts to older tech or no tech. Dialling someone's number on the mobile is not as dramatic as doing it on older bulkier phones. Scrolling something on the iPad is not the same as paging a real book. Then there's writing a real letter, not knowing someone's whereabouts as opposed to just calling their mobile, etc. etc. Tech is social in its own way but it seems to be bringing these massive anthropological changes. It will be interesting to see whether the come back of physical tech like vinyl is serious or it's just some of kind of a protest of the older generation.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Tech has ruined many classic ways of storytelling in cinema Nobody prints giant newspaper headlines anymore. Nobody holds a map upside-down. My bet is many more movies will be based in the 80s.
johnchristopher 10y ago
I'll play the Bourdieu card and simply say that it's all about the symbolic gains you get in your tribe by possessing those artefacts. Nothing new under the sun (I combo the Ecclesiastes card).
kozak 10y ago
Just noticed yesterday that vinyl records started being sold in my local supermarket, alongside a disappearing variety of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray discs. What an interesting twist of history.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Exception sells and the past is quite rare these days.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
alkonaut 10y ago
Just walked along the beach and saw an elderly couple sit on a bench, talking. Neither of them held a smartphone. Perhaps they don't even own one. It struck me that short of a revolution in this area, the number of times I'll do that with my wife will be easily counted. Obviously I wasn't like this 10 years ago. Conversation has become too slow and unrewarding for me to even engage in. Hell, even my favorite tv sports or a good movie is too slow and has too little instant reward to not use Twitter at the same time. I think a holiday island that banned all mobile broadband could actually use it as a selling point.
- imglorp 10y ago
  Done! http://www.docastaway.com/pages/adventuremode http://www.docastaway.com/pages/adventuremode
  - vosper 10y ago
    > docastawayers will stay overnight in different shelters that will consist of huts or even tents with modern camping equipment. Sounds real rough ;)
- girvo 10y ago
  I just spent four weeks in Cuba, where the only Internet is (expensive, slow) public wifi hotspots in extremely select places, and I had zero cell service either as my carrier had no roaming agreement. I got quite a bit of exploratory programming done, and read a lot of books (and explored Cuba itself of course! Made half a dozen friends, amazingly friendly people)
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    It has to be zero though, not "sparse" or "slow" as that just means I'll not see Cuba but instead see the inside of that lobby with WiFi :) That's how bad thus illness is. Unfortunately I think before I get a change to go the island will be blanketed in 4G (fortunately for them though... I think).
jasode 10y ago
I'm one of the people that this article (and book) romanticizing The Analog should appeal to but my overall experience with the digital revolution has been a net positive. This applies to both digital photography and digital music. I had a collection of vinyl records & cassettes growing up but I've gotten more enjoyment and revelations from listening to Foobar software accessing thousands of flac/mp3 files instantly on demand. I can jump from pop to classical to jazz without the tediousness of manipulating analog media. Digital has allowed me to appreciate music even more. The vast majority of articles of analog-vs-digital seem to favor analog and it downplays how digital can engage people in ways that analog can't replicate. As an example, the first time I heard the Star Wars soundtrack was on a reel-to-reel tape machine.[1] Analog nostalgia. However, with digital technology, a skilled person with a computer workstation can use virtual instruments to recreate the orchestral arrangement one instrument at a time.[2] The listener can then hear the gradual build up of how all the various parts interact and appreciate the music even more than the old analog tape. That demonstration is not economically possible with analog. Sure, one could make a 24-track analog tape of isolated parts but typical listeners will not have the money to own a 24-track player at home. Also, David Das in the video is experimenting with various combinations of articulations, tempo, and volume and that combinatorial explosion exceeds the capacity of 24 tracks. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+soundtrack+reel+reel+4+track&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+soundtrack+reel+re... [2] deep link showing adding an instrument and then a playback payoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYfbm3qHRLI&feature=youtu.be&t=23m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYfbm3qHRLI&feature=youtu.be...
- Touche 10y ago
  > I can jump from pop to classical to jazz without the tediousness of manipulating analog media. Digital has allowed me to appreciate music even more. Has it? You're jumping from one thing to another rather than just playing one thing, sitting back, and enjoying.
  - jasode 10y ago
    Yes it has! I used to listen to the entire 20-minute side of a vinyl or cassette. Now that I use software to play music (Foobar, and Winamp before that), I realized that I my old listening habit was a dictated by the physical analog format. That's actually not how I prefer to listen to music. I like to jump around from genre to genre and the convenience of digital technology revealed that preference to me. Reducing friction lets me listen to more music. Put a different way, a real-life radio station has to constrain itself to one genre. Because of the economics of advertisers/demographics, a media conglomerate can't create a radio station that plays pop+classical+jazz. However, with digital (Spotify or desktop Foobar), I can create my own "multi-genre radio station" for my listening pleasure.
vosper 10y ago
> What if Picasso had had Snapchat? What if Hemingway had spent half the afternoon writing Yelp reviews of his favorite bars? Is the author suggesting that great art and writing can no longer happen, because of Snapchat and Yelp? Because I'd argue that we've never lived in a time when it's been easier to create art, of all kinds, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of great literature being published, either. I find this endless bemoaning of the unrealness of "digital" quite tiresome.
- imgabe 10y ago
  Hemingway could have, if he wanted to, spent half the afternoon writing reviews of his favorite bars. You don't need Yelp for that. Just like Picasso could have spent his time taking pictures of food or whatever the author imagines people do with Snapchat. This all seems more like an excuse. "I could be Hemingway if only that dastardly Yelp weren't distracting me all the time!". Yelp isn't the one to blame here.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    Also, both Picasso and Hemingway spent lots of time socializing, especially with other artists. At the most distilled level, that's what people use all this new-fangled technology for.
    - throwawaycopy 10y ago
      Did you read the article? The author addresses and counters this notion that digital socializing brings us together. See, you've put all of your spiritual and ethical eggs in to your technologic worship so you are completely closed off to the notion that smartphones might actually be really horrible. You're basically just defending your own thinly veiled insecurities about how you give your own life meaning.
      - sanderjd 10y ago
        Woah, calm down - I was just expanding on the single comment I replied to. I'm an old fogey who isn't young or cool enough to have all my eggs in that basket. My eggs are far more in the sitting-around-reading-books-and-newspapers and hiking-in-the-mountains baskets. But I do think this hysteria is pretty overblown, as your comment demonstrates.
doctorpangloss 10y ago
> The reason [for board games' popularity], Sax suggests, has only a little to do with the games themselves, and more with the desire to do something with other people Sort of. One of the most important features of board games is that they're comfortable to play while drinking. Sax's example of Snakes and Lattes, after all, is actually a bar. The digital gives us an alternative to typical entertainment, food, drugs and alcohol.
doctorpangloss 10y ago
> Last year, in fact, the OECD reported that “students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes.” There's no universe where having less information available to students improves learning. Wikipedia for everyone is revolutionary! I doubt an OECD test can capture that. The problem OLPC faced is that the iPod touch was a more compelling device for children. Its bill of materials today is less than $100. And children use touch devices religiously. OLPC had no hope of delivering a competitor to iPhone on technological and business grounds. But the theory is probably sound.
- canadian_voter 10y ago
  There's no universe where having less information available to students improves learning. I think that's an oversimplification. I highly recommend The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. A quicker read is the article that inspired the book: Is Google Making Us Stupid?[0] He's not blindly or rapidly anti-tech. For example, he says: "The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." But he does recognize that there are drawbacks to how we engage with digital media: "When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-googl...
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    I have read novels since before the internet. I'm more likely to interpret and make connections about an article I discuss on HN than I am for any book I read (which I consume like popcorn).
derrickdirge 10y ago
Reading this article about escaping from oppressive technology, when the page turns off my music in order to try, and fail, to play an ad.
- corvos 10y ago
  haha but adblock got the rest of us covered
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    Does this work on mobile?
pessimizer 10y ago
This is a good time to sell your records. The heavy marketing of kitsch to millennials has driven the price up on anything redolent of "authenticity." I got $3K for mine. Started by only mostly taking the ones I thought were nice, but then noticed how much they were paying for the ones that were crap I paid 25 cents for at a Salvation Army. The rest of them followed shortly.
Animats 10y ago
The strange thing is seeing record players for vinyl that output to a USB port. Or even Bluetooth. Huh?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

67 points by Vigier 10y ago

More tedious nostalgia for the glorious "time before phones",this time with vinyl as a pretentious garnish. Can we please stop thinking this idea is new or interesting?

germinalphrase 10y ago
Perhaps a more interesting question then is why does this tedious nostalgia persist? If our new tools are not providing for our needs then we should change them to do so.
- corvos 10y ago
  not necessarily. Most of the people commenting here seem to agree the relentless march of technology is good and desirable. It's probably just old people that don't. I work part time at a drug store and people over 50 constantly make comments about "that new chip card" or "this computer age". I always pin it on lack of adaptability and then make a joke about it on r/lewronggeneration or something
- svachalek 10y ago
  There are a few cases where we really are giving things up in the digital world. I've yet to see a digital control that holds a candle to the good old analog volume knob in terms of speed and precision of setting, for example. E-books are better than paper ones in many ways, but paper still has the advantage for sharing and certain aspects of navigation. On the other hand, one big "need" is simply for the familiar, and another is to be different from the crowd. Old timers will hold onto their vinyl because it brings back memories that cannot be replaced, while young hipsters will buy them because no one else their age is. Simply being modern prevents new audio technology from fulfilling either need.

rtpg 10y ago

I love my omni-devices a lot, but there is an anti-social angle to it that I wish I could get over. Nobody knows what you're doing on your iPad. You could be reading your e-mails, scrolling through twitter, or buying something on Amazon. But in a more casual environment (living room, with friends), you lose opportunities for spontaneous interactions. There's also a difficulty in sharing. You can't give the funny pages to someone. Hard to loan e-books sometimes. I think some of this is solved by TV screens. Long term, I bet we'll be "casting" our phones to screens a lot more often in social environments. But sometimes the limitation of physical goods is nice. Legos are funner than CAD software, most of the time.

vosper 10y ago
> You can't give the funny pages to someone. Take a screenshot, paste it into your WhatsApp chat group. Now you've shared it with your friends all around the world, for them to read at their pleasure. I agree with you on the ebooks, though.
mojuba 10y ago
For this same reason modern cinematography often resorts to older tech or no tech. Dialling someone's number on the mobile is not as dramatic as doing it on older bulkier phones. Scrolling something on the iPad is not the same as paging a real book. Then there's writing a real letter, not knowing someone's whereabouts as opposed to just calling their mobile, etc. etc. Tech is social in its own way but it seems to be bringing these massive anthropological changes. It will be interesting to see whether the come back of physical tech like vinyl is serious or it's just some of kind of a protest of the older generation.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Tech has ruined many classic ways of storytelling in cinema Nobody prints giant newspaper headlines anymore. Nobody holds a map upside-down. My bet is many more movies will be based in the 80s.

johnchristopher 10y ago

I'll play the Bourdieu card and simply say that it's all about the symbolic gains you get in your tribe by possessing those artefacts. Nothing new under the sun (I combo the Ecclesiastes card).

kozak 10y ago

Just noticed yesterday that vinyl records started being sold in my local supermarket, alongside a disappearing variety of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray discs. What an interesting twist of history.

agumonkey 10y ago
Exception sells and the past is quite rare these days.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

alkonaut 10y ago

Just walked along the beach and saw an elderly couple sit on a bench, talking. Neither of them held a smartphone. Perhaps they don't even own one. It struck me that short of a revolution in this area, the number of times I'll do that with my wife will be easily counted. Obviously I wasn't like this 10 years ago. Conversation has become too slow and unrewarding for me to even engage in. Hell, even my favorite tv sports or a good movie is too slow and has too little instant reward to not use Twitter at the same time. I think a holiday island that banned all mobile broadband could actually use it as a selling point.

imglorp 10y ago
Done! http://www.docastaway.com/pages/adventuremode http://www.docastaway.com/pages/adventuremode
- vosper 10y ago
  > docastawayers will stay overnight in different shelters that will consist of huts or even tents with modern camping equipment. Sounds real rough ;)
girvo 10y ago
I just spent four weeks in Cuba, where the only Internet is (expensive, slow) public wifi hotspots in extremely select places, and I had zero cell service either as my carrier had no roaming agreement. I got quite a bit of exploratory programming done, and read a lot of books (and explored Cuba itself of course! Made half a dozen friends, amazingly friendly people)
- alkonaut 10y ago
  It has to be zero though, not "sparse" or "slow" as that just means I'll not see Cuba but instead see the inside of that lobby with WiFi :) That's how bad thus illness is. Unfortunately I think before I get a change to go the island will be blanketed in 4G (fortunately for them though... I think).

jasode 10y ago

I'm one of the people that this article (and book) romanticizing The Analog should appeal to but my overall experience with the digital revolution has been a net positive. This applies to both digital photography and digital music. I had a collection of vinyl records & cassettes growing up but I've gotten more enjoyment and revelations from listening to Foobar software accessing thousands of flac/mp3 files instantly on demand. I can jump from pop to classical to jazz without the tediousness of manipulating analog media. Digital has allowed me to appreciate music even more. The vast majority of articles of analog-vs-digital seem to favor analog and it downplays how digital can engage people in ways that analog can't replicate. As an example, the first time I heard the Star Wars soundtrack was on a reel-to-reel tape machine.[1] Analog nostalgia. However, with digital technology, a skilled person with a computer workstation can use virtual instruments to recreate the orchestral arrangement one instrument at a time.[2] The listener can then hear the gradual build up of how all the various parts interact and appreciate the music even more than the old analog tape. That demonstration is not economically possible with analog. Sure, one could make a 24-track analog tape of isolated parts but typical listeners will not have the money to own a 24-track player at home. Also, David Das in the video is experimenting with various combinations of articulations, tempo, and volume and that combinatorial explosion exceeds the capacity of 24 tracks. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+soundtrack+reel+reel+4+track&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+soundtrack+reel+re... [2] deep link showing adding an instrument and then a playback payoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYfbm3qHRLI&feature=youtu.be&t=23m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYfbm3qHRLI&feature=youtu.be...

Touche 10y ago
> I can jump from pop to classical to jazz without the tediousness of manipulating analog media. Digital has allowed me to appreciate music even more. Has it? You're jumping from one thing to another rather than just playing one thing, sitting back, and enjoying.
- jasode 10y ago
  Yes it has! I used to listen to the entire 20-minute side of a vinyl or cassette. Now that I use software to play music (Foobar, and Winamp before that), I realized that I my old listening habit was a dictated by the physical analog format. That's actually not how I prefer to listen to music. I like to jump around from genre to genre and the convenience of digital technology revealed that preference to me. Reducing friction lets me listen to more music. Put a different way, a real-life radio station has to constrain itself to one genre. Because of the economics of advertisers/demographics, a media conglomerate can't create a radio station that plays pop+classical+jazz. However, with digital (Spotify or desktop Foobar), I can create my own "multi-genre radio station" for my listening pleasure.

vosper 10y ago

> What if Picasso had had Snapchat? What if Hemingway had spent half the afternoon writing Yelp reviews of his favorite bars? Is the author suggesting that great art and writing can no longer happen, because of Snapchat and Yelp? Because I'd argue that we've never lived in a time when it's been easier to create art, of all kinds, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of great literature being published, either. I find this endless bemoaning of the unrealness of "digital" quite tiresome.

imgabe 10y ago
Hemingway could have, if he wanted to, spent half the afternoon writing reviews of his favorite bars. You don't need Yelp for that. Just like Picasso could have spent his time taking pictures of food or whatever the author imagines people do with Snapchat. This all seems more like an excuse. "I could be Hemingway if only that dastardly Yelp weren't distracting me all the time!". Yelp isn't the one to blame here.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  Also, both Picasso and Hemingway spent lots of time socializing, especially with other artists. At the most distilled level, that's what people use all this new-fangled technology for.
  - throwawaycopy 10y ago
    Did you read the article? The author addresses and counters this notion that digital socializing brings us together. See, you've put all of your spiritual and ethical eggs in to your technologic worship so you are completely closed off to the notion that smartphones might actually be really horrible. You're basically just defending your own thinly veiled insecurities about how you give your own life meaning.
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      Woah, calm down - I was just expanding on the single comment I replied to. I'm an old fogey who isn't young or cool enough to have all my eggs in that basket. My eggs are far more in the sitting-around-reading-books-and-newspapers and hiking-in-the-mountains baskets. But I do think this hysteria is pretty overblown, as your comment demonstrates.

doctorpangloss 10y ago

> The reason [for board games' popularity], Sax suggests, has only a little to do with the games themselves, and more with the desire to do something with other people Sort of. One of the most important features of board games is that they're comfortable to play while drinking. Sax's example of Snakes and Lattes, after all, is actually a bar. The digital gives us an alternative to typical entertainment, food, drugs and alcohol.

doctorpangloss 10y ago

> Last year, in fact, the OECD reported that “students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes.” There's no universe where having less information available to students improves learning. Wikipedia for everyone is revolutionary! I doubt an OECD test can capture that. The problem OLPC faced is that the iPod touch was a more compelling device for children. Its bill of materials today is less than $100. And children use touch devices religiously. OLPC had no hope of delivering a competitor to iPhone on technological and business grounds. But the theory is probably sound.

canadian_voter 10y ago
There's no universe where having less information available to students improves learning. I think that's an oversimplification. I highly recommend The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. A quicker read is the article that inspired the book: Is Google Making Us Stupid?[0] He's not blindly or rapidly anti-tech. For example, he says: "The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." But he does recognize that there are drawbacks to how we engage with digital media: "When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-googl...
- aidenn0 10y ago
  I have read novels since before the internet. I'm more likely to interpret and make connections about an article I discuss on HN than I am for any book I read (which I consume like popcorn).

derrickdirge 10y ago

Reading this article about escaping from oppressive technology, when the page turns off my music in order to try, and fail, to play an ad.

corvos 10y ago
haha but adblock got the rest of us covered
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Does this work on mobile?

pessimizer 10y ago

This is a good time to sell your records. The heavy marketing of kitsch to millennials has driven the price up on anything redolent of "authenticity." I got $3K for mine. Started by only mostly taking the ones I thought were nice, but then noticed how much they were paying for the ones that were crap I paid 25 cents for at a Salvation Army. The rest of them followed shortly.

Animats 10y ago

The strange thing is seeing record players for vinyl that output to a USB port. Or even Bluetooth. Huh?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]