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I disagree heavily with this. There's been a lot of improvement in the quality and variety of entertainment too over the years not just the technology used to d

by rtkwe 8y ago

I disagree heavily with this. There's been a lot of improvement in the quality and variety of entertainment too over the years not just the technology used to deliver them. If restricted to media from say mid century America post TV most people would be bored stiff by the material available. It's REALLY easy to wind up with a dismissive attitude towards the arts growing up and working in tech but never forget how much there's a feedback loop between artistic exploration and technological advances and how even a modern 'clean' design encodes a lot of artistic choice behind the scenes.

kevinskii 8y ago
One can both appreciate the arts and believe that taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing arts careers.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  > Creative outputs are zero sum.. > Efficiency upgrades for entertainment are tied to technology advancement (think the invention of TV, electronic audio devices, VR, video games), not creative output. I was largely reacting to these two lines though I also think if we're talking about large scale subsidization, ie a basic income or whatever it may become, saying we shouldn't subsidize something must mean it's significantly less valuable than other work. (Which since we're on HN generally means tech is pretty high up on the value list) But back to the meat of what I was responding to. I disagree that entertainment is zero sum, even if a creative work isn't consumed by a particular person directly it still goes into the cultural millieu and contributes to the texture of society where it can enrich indirectly. And the second line just reeked of dismissing the increased space for expression driven by new technologies in favor of looking at just the raw amount of consumption that can be done.
kazen44 8y ago
Also, art does not only have a function in terms of entertainment. Art is vital to human expression, and a very powerful tool to propose an idea or "mood". cities would be terrible without public art for example, they would be dull, gray concrete silos of empty existance.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Oh yeah there was a lot more I'd love to say about how arts quietly improve everyone's millieu even without active conscious consumption. But I figured I'd better edit myself and not go off on a long rambling rant about the pervasive dismissal of art and the siloing of society into useful and non useful work based principally on what value can be captured, commoditized and quantified in the US in particular.
underpand 8y ago
What improvement in quality? I'd argue that most improvment is due to increased efficiency of information retrieval, content creation and content delivery, all driven by technological advancement. I agree that diversity of entertainment options is important, but we're well past the saturation point even without subsidization.
- deleted 8y ago
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by rtkwe 8y ago

kevinskii 8y ago

One can both appreciate the arts and believe that taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing arts careers.

rtkwe 8y ago
> Creative outputs are zero sum.. > Efficiency upgrades for entertainment are tied to technology advancement (think the invention of TV, electronic audio devices, VR, video games), not creative output. I was largely reacting to these two lines though I also think if we're talking about large scale subsidization, ie a basic income or whatever it may become, saying we shouldn't subsidize something must mean it's significantly less valuable than other work. (Which since we're on HN generally means tech is pretty high up on the value list) But back to the meat of what I was responding to. I disagree that entertainment is zero sum, even if a creative work isn't consumed by a particular person directly it still goes into the cultural millieu and contributes to the texture of society where it can enrich indirectly. And the second line just reeked of dismissing the increased space for expression driven by new technologies in favor of looking at just the raw amount of consumption that can be done.

kazen44 8y ago

Also, art does not only have a function in terms of entertainment. Art is vital to human expression, and a very powerful tool to propose an idea or "mood". cities would be terrible without public art for example, they would be dull, gray concrete silos of empty existance.

rtkwe 8y ago
Oh yeah there was a lot more I'd love to say about how arts quietly improve everyone's millieu even without active conscious consumption. But I figured I'd better edit myself and not go off on a long rambling rant about the pervasive dismissal of art and the siloing of society into useful and non useful work based principally on what value can be captured, commoditized and quantified in the US in particular.

underpand 8y ago

What improvement in quality? I'd argue that most improvment is due to increased efficiency of information retrieval, content creation and content delivery, all driven by technological advancement. I agree that diversity of entertainment options is important, but we're well past the saturation point even without subsidization.

deleted 8y ago
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