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> No one is original anymore, not even you. Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bi

> No one is original anymore, not even you. Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk. I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via-consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by consuming a unique set can you truly be yourself" is a fascinating and materialist way of looking at the world. Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods. Elsewhere in this thread the word "serendipity" is used - this is a true observation in my opinion. The internet removes serendipity, replacing it with "you may also like". While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable.

nileshtrivedi 9y ago
> they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like" You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Not really, since libraries are not laid out randomly, and few electronic display experiences allow the kind of massively parallel visual scanning that humans are good at.
  - mattkrause 9y ago
    One of the great pleasures of working at a research university is walking through the stacks and seeing shelf after shelf of books on the odd and interesting topics—-and they’re all free for the taking. I’d easily put this in the top three reasons I stay in this job.
- pnathan 9y ago
  no. libraries are curated, organized, and structured to allow browsing. random does nothing of the above. meaning is a polyspectral space, and libraries are a lower-dimensional reduction of that to allow perusal through multiple bands of meaning. while the result may be arbitrary, it's within the bounds of the arc in the meaning-space. In addition, the curation of books means that arrant nonsense is culled (hello r/ooer), and highly niche bits of meaning are stored in appropriate places - usually residing in academic journals housed in university libraries.
  - gowld 9y ago
    Libraries are also tiny though. Subreddits also have curated lists of related subreddits in sidebar. /r/popular and /r/all give you a sample of posts from various subreddits (curated by users), which then link to related subs. Each sub itself is a browsable and sortable collection of related content.
    - pnathan 9y ago
      Yes, definitely. I would consider a subreddit to be something like a daily magazine, and the curated lists to be something like a collection of them. Libraries.... are not precisely tiny. Depends on the library. And a shocking amount of internet statements have a shockingly small entropy.....
- npsimons 9y ago
  > You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit? I consider clicking the random link on Reddit analogous to firing a gun into a bookstore, or randomly flipping channels on a TV: no discernment whatsoever, and very shallow, very often completely worthless results. 99% of the time I click random on Reddit, it comes up with complete garbage, IMHO, to the point I don't use it anymore. Meanwhile, the best subreddits I've come across have been "curated" by recommendations.
FussyZeus 9y ago
> Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods. This in spades. We spend so much time arguing the merits of our choice in cell phones, computers, living styles, organizations, cars, etc. seemingly forgetting that we are supposed to choose things, things aren't suppose to choose us. The Mad Man marketing people salivate every time an iPhone versus Android argument sparks, they spent decades trying to get consumers to be loyal enough to get into fistfights over brands of products.
cirgue 9y ago
> The internet removes serendipity It also removes the social context around the production of taste. Taste, in addition to being a set of personal preferences, is also a conscious and unconscious way of both signaling social status and creating empathy between people. This is largely absent in algorithm-facilitated media consumption. Facebook/spotify/whatever else is an intercessor between you and your group of friends and peers, removing the patterns of social interactions surrounding our formation of likes and dislikes and replacing them with an anonymized distillation of what other people enjoy. I don't think that's a good thing. There's a huge chunk of human interaction that's being elided here.
- pnathan 9y ago
  That's a great angle, actually. I'm not sure that I am sad about the status games being elided, but you're unquestionably right that taste is a product of social context and that - social context - is something incredibly important to being human. To remove it, is to take an important cog out of the system.
mc32 9y ago
>Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods While I agree with the first part, identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits. I would suggest that while better, even people who look back to a pre-consumerist lifestyle, are engaging in lifestyle (and thus identity) unless it's a completely unattached choice (again reclusive hermit). It reminds me of my High School anti-establishment, anti-in-crowd anti-jocks who in being all things-anti were a definable entity in itself with a prescribed set of attitudes and behavior -and music specially.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits Ah, but the reclusive hermit is a response to the society - an active rejection - such that the hermit is one of the lifestyles most consumed with society's affects! Similarly the "hipster" has a finely refined vane on popular culture. Calling a hermit/hipster disconnected from society It's like calling an antihistamine disconnected from pollen.
  - mc32 9y ago
    To me the hermit is different because the hermit is not looking for approval at all --the hermit is only looking to be by themselves and be of themselves. They don't care if they are admired, rejected, remembered or forgotten. Sadly even when they just want to be forgotten, Journalists looking for a story to tell hunt them down, sometimes[1]. Some people just want to be outside of it all. [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeless-by-choice-how-to-live-for-free-in-america/254118/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeles...
  - goatlover 9y ago
    If you leave society altogether, you’re not part of it any longer.
- pnathan 9y ago
  That is identity in material good selection - or the material good non-selection. I am suggesting that a, how do you say, Stoic? Zen? Tao? attitude about material goods is something to be desired. They are there, they are useful, they have a social context, but your identity is more than goods.
npsimons 9y ago
> Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods. I wouldn't be so gentle; I definitely think we are harmed by finding identity in material goods. It's destructive. As for originality, I would modify the goal: don't try to be original. Instead, aim to stretch your mind to think things it hasn't thought before. If you get so far that you do think something original, great! If you don't, at least you've expanded your horizons. > While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable. And I'm glad to see we've come to roughly the same conclusion, even if that makes us "not original." ;-)

nileshtrivedi 9y ago

> they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like" You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?

ggg9990 9y ago
Not really, since libraries are not laid out randomly, and few electronic display experiences allow the kind of massively parallel visual scanning that humans are good at.
- mattkrause 9y ago
  One of the great pleasures of working at a research university is walking through the stacks and seeing shelf after shelf of books on the odd and interesting topics—-and they’re all free for the taking. I’d easily put this in the top three reasons I stay in this job.
pnathan 9y ago
no. libraries are curated, organized, and structured to allow browsing. random does nothing of the above. meaning is a polyspectral space, and libraries are a lower-dimensional reduction of that to allow perusal through multiple bands of meaning. while the result may be arbitrary, it's within the bounds of the arc in the meaning-space. In addition, the curation of books means that arrant nonsense is culled (hello r/ooer), and highly niche bits of meaning are stored in appropriate places - usually residing in academic journals housed in university libraries.
- gowld 9y ago
  Libraries are also tiny though. Subreddits also have curated lists of related subreddits in sidebar. /r/popular and /r/all give you a sample of posts from various subreddits (curated by users), which then link to related subs. Each sub itself is a browsable and sortable collection of related content.
  - pnathan 9y ago
    Yes, definitely. I would consider a subreddit to be something like a daily magazine, and the curated lists to be something like a collection of them. Libraries.... are not precisely tiny. Depends on the library. And a shocking amount of internet statements have a shockingly small entropy.....
npsimons 9y ago
> You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit? I consider clicking the random link on Reddit analogous to firing a gun into a bookstore, or randomly flipping channels on a TV: no discernment whatsoever, and very shallow, very often completely worthless results. 99% of the time I click random on Reddit, it comes up with complete garbage, IMHO, to the point I don't use it anymore. Meanwhile, the best subreddits I've come across have been "curated" by recommendations.

FussyZeus 9y ago

> Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods. This in spades. We spend so much time arguing the merits of our choice in cell phones, computers, living styles, organizations, cars, etc. seemingly forgetting that we are supposed to choose things, things aren't suppose to choose us. The Mad Man marketing people salivate every time an iPhone versus Android argument sparks, they spent decades trying to get consumers to be loyal enough to get into fistfights over brands of products.

cirgue 9y ago

> The internet removes serendipity It also removes the social context around the production of taste. Taste, in addition to being a set of personal preferences, is also a conscious and unconscious way of both signaling social status and creating empathy between people. This is largely absent in algorithm-facilitated media consumption. Facebook/spotify/whatever else is an intercessor between you and your group of friends and peers, removing the patterns of social interactions surrounding our formation of likes and dislikes and replacing them with an anonymized distillation of what other people enjoy. I don't think that's a good thing. There's a huge chunk of human interaction that's being elided here.

pnathan 9y ago
That's a great angle, actually. I'm not sure that I am sad about the status games being elided, but you're unquestionably right that taste is a product of social context and that - social context - is something incredibly important to being human. To remove it, is to take an important cog out of the system.

mc32 9y ago

>Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods While I agree with the first part, identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits. I would suggest that while better, even people who look back to a pre-consumerist lifestyle, are engaging in lifestyle (and thus identity) unless it's a completely unattached choice (again reclusive hermit). It reminds me of my High School anti-establishment, anti-in-crowd anti-jocks who in being all things-anti were a definable entity in itself with a prescribed set of attitudes and behavior -and music specially.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits Ah, but the reclusive hermit is a response to the society - an active rejection - such that the hermit is one of the lifestyles most consumed with society's affects! Similarly the "hipster" has a finely refined vane on popular culture. Calling a hermit/hipster disconnected from society It's like calling an antihistamine disconnected from pollen.
- mc32 9y ago
  To me the hermit is different because the hermit is not looking for approval at all --the hermit is only looking to be by themselves and be of themselves. They don't care if they are admired, rejected, remembered or forgotten. Sadly even when they just want to be forgotten, Journalists looking for a story to tell hunt them down, sometimes[1]. Some people just want to be outside of it all. [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeless-by-choice-how-to-live-for-free-in-america/254118/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeles...
- goatlover 9y ago
  If you leave society altogether, you’re not part of it any longer.
pnathan 9y ago
That is identity in material good selection - or the material good non-selection. I am suggesting that a, how do you say, Stoic? Zen? Tao? attitude about material goods is something to be desired. They are there, they are useful, they have a social context, but your identity is more than goods.

npsimons 9y ago

> Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods. I wouldn't be so gentle; I definitely think we are harmed by finding identity in material goods. It's destructive. As for originality, I would modify the goal: don't try to be original. Instead, aim to stretch your mind to think things it hasn't thought before. If you get so far that you do think something original, great! If you don't, at least you've expanded your horizons. > While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable. And I'm glad to see we've come to roughly the same conclusion, even if that makes us "not original." ;-)