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When I was growing up my father had dubbed copies of Star Trek: The Original Series. I watched every fuzzy episode dozens of times. Eventually enjoying TNG/DS9/
by staunch 16y ago
When I was growing up my father had dubbed copies of Star Trek: The Original Series. I watched every fuzzy episode dozens of times. Eventually enjoying TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise as well. One of biggest hopes in life was to own every single episode of each Star Trek series on VHS so I could enjoy them at will. The boxed VHS sets were always way too expensive for me then.
It's strange to think back because now I have all of them sitting on a tiny little corner of a 1TB drive.
I still often watch them to this day while I program. I'll go through a dozen episodes (playing on a second monitor) in a day.
Kids growing up today have it so damn good.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt of course remains to be seen whether it's actually good. Perhaps I'm looking at things through rose-colored glasses, but things like having to look in the dictionary to learn about things and words (and I wanted to learn about a LOT of words), hunting snails for nickels, working as a stableboy... it's usually said these days with a mocking tone, but I have become at least a bit of a believer in the old, "it builds character".
- subsection1h 16y ago> things like having to look in the dictionary to learn about things and words Do you think that using a print dictionary builds character better than using Onelook.com? 19,089,129 words in 1062 dictionaries indexed: http://www.onelook.com/?d=all_gen http://www.onelook.com/?d=all_gen
- vorg 16y agoPerhaps sliverstorm was talking about availability of information. Growing up in the 1970's, there was only the public library, 2 TV channels, and 2 daily newspapers. In the eighties, there was the university library, which had a lot more but the best books were always borrowed, and desk copies only. And only so many bought books were within budget. Recently, I spent a couple months at my Mum's country house without a car or internet at home, bringing only a stack of newly bought nonfiction books with me. The only entertainment was the intro cable TV package, excluding the movies and sports. I got more out of those books than I had since before the internet and wikipedia etc became widespread. It brought back memories of earlier times, when there was LESS knowledge at my fingertips than I knew what to do with, instead of FAR MORE knowledge.
- dhughes 16y agoDefinitely reading any book is in a way like meditation, you get more out of it than googling some facts on some random website.
- sliverstorm 16y agoThe dictionary offered two things: 1) I'd find lots of other cool words as I searched for the one I wanted 2) I had to work to get the answer. Sure, it wasn't a LOT of work, but I had to invest something to get something. Searching a word online requires practically no investment. Which is not to say I don't use online dictionaries, Wikipedia, Google "define:", etc.
- michaelchisari 16y ago1) Accidental discovery is a major virtue of the internet. 2) But you didn't have to walk fifteen miles to a small library to do it. The generation you grew up in had a major barrier to entry removed, but the effort and time was shifted elsewhere. The same thing is happening to this generation.
- sstrudeau 16y agoI had an interesting debate with some friends after sharing this Tom Waits quote: "This is what's wrong with the world. Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now." Via http://www.bnox.be/2009/11/tom-waits-and-deficit-of-wonder.html http://www.bnox.be/2009/11/tom-waits-and-deficit-of-wonder.h... I tend to agree that there can be some value in the gap between wondering about something and actually finding out (or never finding out). Letting your mind chew on a question means you have an opportunity to imagine your own answer or your own story. When you tighten that gap those creative mental wonderings get clipped short. I don't think he is saying a world where you can never look things up in 5 seconds is preferrable, but noting the effect this has on the underappreciated benefits of wonder.
- noonespecial 16y agoAhh yes, but wondering something, running to the computer and finding out that its very likely that nobody else knows either is a rare pleasure unavailable in times past.
- albemuth 16y agoNot when that thing nobody knows is how to compile that damn library in your specific environment :(
- noonespecial 16y agoBut when I finally figure it out, I get the elation of knowing a tiny thing that no one else knows... and then going and posting it on stackoverflow.
- hollerith 16y ago>wondering something, running to the computer and finding out that its very likely that nobody else knows either is a rare pleasure What is not rare is finding out that nobody else knows only after wading through 100s of web pages by people who think they know but do not.
- cstuder 16y agoWhen I was growing up, a friend of mine actually had to pay a guy in the US to tape all the episodes and mail over the VHS tapes to us in Europe. (German TV showed the shows years later, cut out a couple of minutes to fit their schedule, dubbed over with mediocre voice actors and randomly ordered and dropped episodes without any recognizable pattern.) We've beaten geo-blocking and regional licensing over 15 years ago and it's getting easier by the minute. Truly great times we live in.
- Vivtek 16y agoOh God, the German dubs (and the Hungarian ones for that matter) are truly atrocious.
- noonespecial 16y agoTotally did that. My friend in the US would fill an 8 hour tape, disassemble the tape and send just the one tape spool to me in Germany. I'd reassemble the tape, load it into the precious NTSC player and Trek my brains out.