4 ms·

It used to be that when you visited someone’s place, you’d see their collection of books, or music, or movies, or games sitting on a shelf and it was a low-fric

by kd5bjo 7y ago

It used to be that when you visited someone’s place, you’d see their collection of books, or music, or movies, or games sitting on a shelf and it was a low-friction way to find something in common to talk about. Now that everyone’s collections are digital, it’s all “out of sight, out of mind” and nothing has really replaced that function.

avip 7y ago
Open their fridge.
- marci 7y ago
  Especially if you're close to one another, and they happen to say something like "There's nothing to eat".
- hueving 7y ago
  That's very invasive. I keep all of my underwear in there in the summer.
  - avip 7y ago
    There you go - something interesting to talk about.
Wistar 7y ago
Maybe there's a market for a bookshelf populated with (OLED? E-Paper?) digital label displays that mimic real book spines and upon which are displayed the titles from your digital book library. It can also have shelves with displays mimicking CD spines with the titles taken from your music library. It would serve no purpose beyond being a skeumorphic conversation starter and visual reminder of your media. Of course, it'd have an app that allowed the user to vary the logic used to choose the titles to be displayed by genre, chron, or some social purpose, i.e., I want to look smart or I want to impress a date, I don't want a political fight on Thanksgiving, etc.
- esrauch 7y ago
  I think even if this existed it would naturally become a vanity thing ("oh yes, I've read War and Peace") and not include Shades of Grey or whatever you're actually reading. Physical shelves already suffered from that a bit (people would use them to display books they were prod of), but it being a purely display and not necessary storage would do the rest.