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> Is it sad that so much of our lives is defined by consumption of media and staring at screens Oh, come on. A Youtube video is culture just like ancient Greek

> Is it sad that so much of our lives is defined by consumption of media and staring at screens Oh, come on. A Youtube video is culture just like ancient Greek plays are culture, or Sumerian cuneiform tablets. There is an overconsumption problem, but even if it wasn't there, that'd still be the culture that we'd want to at least archive.

silicon2401 5y ago
I disagree entirely. This quote explains my view better than I could word it: > The term culture industry (German: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.[1] Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.[1] The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry
- romwell 5y ago
  Sure, the output of the culture industry can be compared to the output of any other industry. That's why it needs to be preserved, especially if it's harmful. We keep museums not only to be wowed by amazing artifacts, but also to know our past, what life was like. And for the same reason, everything from Hitler's radio broadcasts to doge memes is worth preserving. See my other response in the thread.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    I think I agree and disagree with you. I agree with the value of preservation, as a hobbyist collector and archivist myself. However I agree with the notion that all culture and aspects of a particular culture are of equal worth. If I had to choose in a house fire, I'd take a hard drive full of my favorite youtube videos and movies, and leave behind the hard drive full of mobile game advertisements and mid level marketing media. Would you do the same, or would you actually have a hard time choosing?
    - crtasm 5y ago
      Preservation generally involves not being a single copy in a house that might be on fire in a thought experiment.
      - shukantpal 5y ago
        That’s irrelevant to the posed question.
        crtasm 5y ago
        The posed question is ridiculous.
        romwell 5y ago
        You have to appreciate it, though, given that one of the posts on the front page of HN today is... ...old videogame advertisements[1] The irony is just so, so beautiful. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28692049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28692049
    - romwell 5y ago
      > notion that all culture and aspects of a particular culture are of equal worth I never made such a claim. The problem is that everyone has their opinion on what needs to be preserved. I might not care at all about what you have on your hard drive, and vice versa. Archive and libraries aren't Eternal and Forever Storage. Future archivist might as well prune them (as they do). However, at the current time we don't have enough data to decide which things are worth preserving, and which are not.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  I don't want to litigate what culture is or isn't but surely being more connected to nature is not going to solve any of the listed problems?
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Like anything else this is just my opinion, but I do think being more connected to nature would improve our lives vs what's now being normalized: working in an office all day, commuting, and staring at various screens in your free time. I believe the modern lifestyle contributes a lot to the chronic stress, anxiety, etc that are so common nowadays. This is quantitative, to an extent: spending time in nature has a measurable and positive impact on your well-being: > Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3 Culture includes lifestyle and activities, which is why I made that particular point about nature.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      I'm sorry but I find self reported data about wellbeing hard to believe in most cases. There is such a cultural pressure to associate nature with wellbeing that I find myself being very wary of such reporting.
eecc 5y ago
Well, most of it is just trash that won’t make anyone less rich if lost. It’s like putting a script of Antigone and a sex advertising graffiti in Pompeii on the same level.
- romwell 5y ago
  Sex-advertising graffiti in Pompeii are still valuable cultural artifacts that let us know what life in Pompeii was like. There are two orthogonal reasons for culture to be preserved: * there are things that will be valuable to future generations to build upon and enrich them * someone in the future would ask, what was life like in 2020, and without the "trash" culture, the answer will be very much off the mark Trash or not trash, this is what we have. This is why archive.org is important, this is why preserving Usenet archives is important, and why I'm happy that many geocities websites were archived before Yahoo axed them.
  - eecc 5y ago
    Indeed, but there’s this concept called “forgetfulness”. We can’t afford to hoard everything, eventually things get lost in time and it’s ok. We will die and so will our own footprints disappear. Something - perhaps the most relevant and actively preserved, or frequent and therefore merely because of statistics - will survive. But we need to entertain the option of letting go
    - romwell 5y ago
      Sure, we don't need to preserve every single piece of scrap in our collective memory. But archiving doesn't do that either. There are many more silent films archived than either of us have watched, for example. Then sure, not everything needs to be archived. I believe there's a reasonable, subjective threshold of what you'd need to keep to get an idea of a person living in the time period. Letting go and keeping are not incompatible ideas.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  This is a bit gatekeep-y. Who defines what is trash and not significant. There are 7 billion people on earth, do you think the same things need to be equally relevant to everyone? Something you might find trash can have enormous impact on someone else's life. One of my favorite entertainment products is pro wrestling, many, many people consider it trash. Should it be thrown out?

silicon2401 5y ago

I disagree entirely. This quote explains my view better than I could word it: > The term culture industry (German: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.[1] Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.[1] The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry

romwell 5y ago
Sure, the output of the culture industry can be compared to the output of any other industry. That's why it needs to be preserved, especially if it's harmful. We keep museums not only to be wowed by amazing artifacts, but also to know our past, what life was like. And for the same reason, everything from Hitler's radio broadcasts to doge memes is worth preserving. See my other response in the thread.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  I think I agree and disagree with you. I agree with the value of preservation, as a hobbyist collector and archivist myself. However I agree with the notion that all culture and aspects of a particular culture are of equal worth. If I had to choose in a house fire, I'd take a hard drive full of my favorite youtube videos and movies, and leave behind the hard drive full of mobile game advertisements and mid level marketing media. Would you do the same, or would you actually have a hard time choosing?
  - crtasm 5y ago
    Preservation generally involves not being a single copy in a house that might be on fire in a thought experiment.
    - shukantpal 5y ago
      That’s irrelevant to the posed question.
      - crtasm 5y ago
        The posed question is ridiculous.
        romwell 5y ago
        You have to appreciate it, though, given that one of the posts on the front page of HN today is... ...old videogame advertisements[1] The irony is just so, so beautiful. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28692049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28692049
  - romwell 5y ago
    > notion that all culture and aspects of a particular culture are of equal worth I never made such a claim. The problem is that everyone has their opinion on what needs to be preserved. I might not care at all about what you have on your hard drive, and vice versa. Archive and libraries aren't Eternal and Forever Storage. Future archivist might as well prune them (as they do). However, at the current time we don't have enough data to decide which things are worth preserving, and which are not.
newswasboring 5y ago
I don't want to litigate what culture is or isn't but surely being more connected to nature is not going to solve any of the listed problems?
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Like anything else this is just my opinion, but I do think being more connected to nature would improve our lives vs what's now being normalized: working in an office all day, commuting, and staring at various screens in your free time. I believe the modern lifestyle contributes a lot to the chronic stress, anxiety, etc that are so common nowadays. This is quantitative, to an extent: spending time in nature has a measurable and positive impact on your well-being: > Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3 Culture includes lifestyle and activities, which is why I made that particular point about nature.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    I'm sorry but I find self reported data about wellbeing hard to believe in most cases. There is such a cultural pressure to associate nature with wellbeing that I find myself being very wary of such reporting.

eecc 5y ago

Well, most of it is just trash that won’t make anyone less rich if lost. It’s like putting a script of Antigone and a sex advertising graffiti in Pompeii on the same level.

romwell 5y ago
Sex-advertising graffiti in Pompeii are still valuable cultural artifacts that let us know what life in Pompeii was like. There are two orthogonal reasons for culture to be preserved: * there are things that will be valuable to future generations to build upon and enrich them * someone in the future would ask, what was life like in 2020, and without the "trash" culture, the answer will be very much off the mark Trash or not trash, this is what we have. This is why archive.org is important, this is why preserving Usenet archives is important, and why I'm happy that many geocities websites were archived before Yahoo axed them.
- eecc 5y ago
  Indeed, but there’s this concept called “forgetfulness”. We can’t afford to hoard everything, eventually things get lost in time and it’s ok. We will die and so will our own footprints disappear. Something - perhaps the most relevant and actively preserved, or frequent and therefore merely because of statistics - will survive. But we need to entertain the option of letting go
  - romwell 5y ago
    Sure, we don't need to preserve every single piece of scrap in our collective memory. But archiving doesn't do that either. There are many more silent films archived than either of us have watched, for example. Then sure, not everything needs to be archived. I believe there's a reasonable, subjective threshold of what you'd need to keep to get an idea of a person living in the time period. Letting go and keeping are not incompatible ideas.
newswasboring 5y ago
This is a bit gatekeep-y. Who defines what is trash and not significant. There are 7 billion people on earth, do you think the same things need to be equally relevant to everyone? Something you might find trash can have enormous impact on someone else's life. One of my favorite entertainment products is pro wrestling, many, many people consider it trash. Should it be thrown out?