6 ms·

I disagree; I think it's as much a personal preference as it was in the past. I don't deny that things are not built to be repaired nowadays, but that doesn't m

by csydas 9y ago

I disagree; I think it's as much a personal preference as it was in the past. I don't deny that things are not built to be repaired nowadays, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the past was good about self repair. Stuff could be repaired but much of what we collect and hoard isn't that, it's trinkets and decorations. My grandmother, for example, had several rooms in her basement dedicated to Christmas decorations, neverminding the rest of the household items and junk she had collected. It took a few months to clear it because my mother and Aunt wouldnt just give it away. My mother wasn't quite as bad, but she used to have her own mountain of decorations until I got her to agree to let me get rid of about 75% of it. It's still taking up about 12 or so large plastic storage bins, but it's way less than it had been. Nowadays we do want durable items even if we are more at leisure to replace them. I am very happy that most of the easy to fail components in my MacBook Air are replaceable (I/O board, fan, battery, SSD) and would love it if other parts were too. Working on computers for as long as I have I know people like to get what they can out of a computer; the number who just go buy a new one when it dies isnt as high as you'd think. Same with other items like phones, cars, etc.

pm90 9y ago
Ah, this makes sense. Maybe its a generational thing but I notice my parents do love their trinkets/mementos. They are avid travelers and try to get something from wherever they visit. When I visit new places, my memory of the place is mostly: photos on instagram and facebook.
- hndamien 9y ago
  We also value space and time differently because it is so damn expensive. The things you own, own you in many ways, so reducing them increases living space, and time which are both in short supply.
- prawn 9y ago
  Trinkets mean storage or displaying and dusting. Current generations are already going through a stage of ditching video, CD and DVD storage, and potentially book shelves too.
- jedberg 9y ago
  When my wife and I travel, we try to buy a magnet that is representative of the place. It's small enough that it isn't an issue, and it's nice to look at the refrigerator and remember all the places we've been.
- Raffers 9y ago
  Being apart of the generation that you would expect to mostly share memories via insta or FB, I actually can't stand the idea...it's mostly my friends who do this & tag me in the the photo's. I'm very much in the memento way of things, doesn't have to be related & for me at least it can be quite literally anything. I won't grab something for each place I go to but rather something that can define the whole trip. That's done, more subconsciously. Normally it's a wrist band (I tend to go to more festivals than day's out/traditional holidays) but I'll pick up anything, that last break I took was down to Cornwall & have picked up the smallest of pebbles but it's very particular to the geology in the area. Which to me say's a lot about the whole trip & the time it took place.
Angostura 9y ago
I grew up in the 70s in the U.K. and I always laughed at the way that at Christmas my grandparents (and parents on occasion) would save string from parcels and fold up particularly nice wrapping paper from presents they received. Of course, now I realise jus how close the Second World War was. If the war had finished in 1997, with rationing continuing until 2007, I too might be loathe to throw things away.
- adwww 9y ago
  My MIL has not left the 70s and still does this. You can watch the discomfort on her face when she watches my 4yr old girl destroy good wrapping paper, or even rip open an envelope instead of saving it for re-use.
  - wink 9y ago
    I save all the padded envelopes and never get to reuse them because apparently I don't send enough random stuff. And I was born in the 80s and there's no obvious reason. But I draw a line at normal paper :)
    - Angostura 9y ago
      Ah yes. The stack of padded envelopes. I have those too :(
- gozur88 9y ago
  Hahaha. My mother still does that. She has boxes full of neatly folded used gift wrapping paper. She also used to wash ziploc bags for reuse.
vog 9y ago
Moreover, we see the same thing today with digital items. (Well, to be honest, we already saw this 20 years ago with digital items.) There, it is just not so visible because disk space is ever increasing as well as getting cheaper. In the days of Napster, people collected gigabytes of music just to have it - at some point this was more minutes than they could ever listen to in a life span. Few people actually care to collect that stuff in order to make it accessible to more people. For example, the people at archive.org, as well as many libraries, are doing a great job. But the majority of collectors collect only for their own, usually with an unwieldy directory structures and meaningless file names (track1, track2, ...). They won't ever find anything they search for. It's often faster to search & buy those via Internet. Same with movies. It is even worse with personal photographs and videos. The same way some people have loads of paper photographs around, other have disks full of digital photographs. 200+ photographs per day of vacation are not uncommon. Who will ever look at those? Reducing those to the "best" 10-20 items already feels like an imposition to most. Reducing those further to 1 photograph to summarize the vacation is considered extremist by most. And even then, they will just mark the best photos, but won't delete anything except for the most blurred garbage photos. Even more strangely, some people do feel the urge to clean up their mess, but as with physical items, deleting loads of digital items takes a lot of time for them. This is the next round of absurdity: They would rather spend a weekend (or full week) on finishing their photo/video archive than to go out for another trip. Maybe we need a "digital item" version of Paul Graham's classic "stuff" article? http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html
- mattmanser 9y ago
  You'd be surprised how little music "gigabytes" is. 8 years ago my friend once decided to listen to every song in his music library in order, only took him 2 months. I have thousands of albums in my google play account, go through spurts of adding more, and constantly listen to the whole collection on shuffle. It shows how many times each song has been listened to, it's rare for me to ever see a song without at least one play.
  - vog 9y ago
    Good point for music, but if you add podcasts, youtube clips, movies and serials to this list, you quickly have mutiple terabytes that you can't ever consume in a healthy way. (And playing it on a TV screen in the background while doing computer/tablet/smartphone stuff is not what I would consider "healthy" consumption, because then it is more a source of noise than anything else. You can't really enjoy it and miss most of the movie.)

by csydas 9y ago

pm90 9y ago

Ah, this makes sense. Maybe its a generational thing but I notice my parents do love their trinkets/mementos. They are avid travelers and try to get something from wherever they visit. When I visit new places, my memory of the place is mostly: photos on instagram and facebook.

hndamien 9y ago
We also value space and time differently because it is so damn expensive. The things you own, own you in many ways, so reducing them increases living space, and time which are both in short supply.
prawn 9y ago
Trinkets mean storage or displaying and dusting. Current generations are already going through a stage of ditching video, CD and DVD storage, and potentially book shelves too.
jedberg 9y ago
When my wife and I travel, we try to buy a magnet that is representative of the place. It's small enough that it isn't an issue, and it's nice to look at the refrigerator and remember all the places we've been.
Raffers 9y ago
Being apart of the generation that you would expect to mostly share memories via insta or FB, I actually can't stand the idea...it's mostly my friends who do this & tag me in the the photo's. I'm very much in the memento way of things, doesn't have to be related & for me at least it can be quite literally anything. I won't grab something for each place I go to but rather something that can define the whole trip. That's done, more subconsciously. Normally it's a wrist band (I tend to go to more festivals than day's out/traditional holidays) but I'll pick up anything, that last break I took was down to Cornwall & have picked up the smallest of pebbles but it's very particular to the geology in the area. Which to me say's a lot about the whole trip & the time it took place.

Angostura 9y ago

I grew up in the 70s in the U.K. and I always laughed at the way that at Christmas my grandparents (and parents on occasion) would save string from parcels and fold up particularly nice wrapping paper from presents they received. Of course, now I realise jus how close the Second World War was. If the war had finished in 1997, with rationing continuing until 2007, I too might be loathe to throw things away.

adwww 9y ago
My MIL has not left the 70s and still does this. You can watch the discomfort on her face when she watches my 4yr old girl destroy good wrapping paper, or even rip open an envelope instead of saving it for re-use.
- wink 9y ago
  I save all the padded envelopes and never get to reuse them because apparently I don't send enough random stuff. And I was born in the 80s and there's no obvious reason. But I draw a line at normal paper :)
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Ah yes. The stack of padded envelopes. I have those too :(
gozur88 9y ago
Hahaha. My mother still does that. She has boxes full of neatly folded used gift wrapping paper. She also used to wash ziploc bags for reuse.

vog 9y ago

Moreover, we see the same thing today with digital items. (Well, to be honest, we already saw this 20 years ago with digital items.) There, it is just not so visible because disk space is ever increasing as well as getting cheaper. In the days of Napster, people collected gigabytes of music just to have it - at some point this was more minutes than they could ever listen to in a life span. Few people actually care to collect that stuff in order to make it accessible to more people. For example, the people at archive.org, as well as many libraries, are doing a great job. But the majority of collectors collect only for their own, usually with an unwieldy directory structures and meaningless file names (track1, track2, ...). They won't ever find anything they search for. It's often faster to search & buy those via Internet. Same with movies. It is even worse with personal photographs and videos. The same way some people have loads of paper photographs around, other have disks full of digital photographs. 200+ photographs per day of vacation are not uncommon. Who will ever look at those? Reducing those to the "best" 10-20 items already feels like an imposition to most. Reducing those further to 1 photograph to summarize the vacation is considered extremist by most. And even then, they will just mark the best photos, but won't delete anything except for the most blurred garbage photos. Even more strangely, some people do feel the urge to clean up their mess, but as with physical items, deleting loads of digital items takes a lot of time for them. This is the next round of absurdity: They would rather spend a weekend (or full week) on finishing their photo/video archive than to go out for another trip. Maybe we need a "digital item" version of Paul Graham's classic "stuff" article? http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html

mattmanser 9y ago
You'd be surprised how little music "gigabytes" is. 8 years ago my friend once decided to listen to every song in his music library in order, only took him 2 months. I have thousands of albums in my google play account, go through spurts of adding more, and constantly listen to the whole collection on shuffle. It shows how many times each song has been listened to, it's rare for me to ever see a song without at least one play.
- vog 9y ago
  Good point for music, but if you add podcasts, youtube clips, movies and serials to this list, you quickly have mutiple terabytes that you can't ever consume in a healthy way. (And playing it on a TV screen in the background while doing computer/tablet/smartphone stuff is not what I would consider "healthy" consumption, because then it is more a source of noise than anything else. You can't really enjoy it and miss most of the movie.)