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I hear this, and I respect it, but I'll offer a different perspective: Media is transient, it's ephemera. We will remember the big names but forget the small t

I hear this, and I respect it, but I'll offer a different perspective: Media is transient, it's ephemera. We will remember the big names but forget the small things. There's more media being produced than I could consume in a lifetime, so if something disappears I can move on to the next thing. I find that experiencing media in the moment is part of the allure - this is something happening now and it's something I'm interested in now. That's not to say we shouldn't have archives and history, but letting go of my collection has been a huge weight off my back.

rektide 4y ago
I don't get this kind of callous, tough-love, blow-up-your-memories sell. There's nothing about any of this that looks like a ticking time bomb. Everything was fine until one day some part of the world around us unceremoniously disappeared, for no real ascertainable reason, in a way totally beyond most peoples control. This is shit. Unqualifiedly just shit. Good for you that you feel free & clear for casting off the past, but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have, for no real reason, self-destructed.
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  > but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have unceremoniously self-destructed. It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy?
  - rektide 4y ago
    > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. > Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy? In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty?
    - Kbelicius 4y ago
      > I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. It takes time. > In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty? It doesn't explode unexpectedly. It explodes in a way that the creator made it explode. So, yeah, it seems that you are the mean one here.
      - lmm 4y ago
        Very rarely is "exploding" part of the artistic intent. More likely it's something the auteur was never consulted on and the publisher didn't care enough to avoid.
      - rektide 4y ago
        Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. There's been a pretty fair & reasonable deal in computing for decades. Preservation is getting harder, worse, impossible. This is- pretty clearly to most of us- a loss.
        Kbelicius 4y ago
        > Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. As far as I can see the only think I'm saying here is that creators should be able to create things as they see fit. I did not say a word about consumers or what they should be doing. I would love to know what gives you the impression that I'm being cruel to consumers here. You did insult me first, why are you surprised that I would defend myself? You are even doing it in this post to.
        mrob 4y ago
  - josephg 4y ago
    > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. True. The Parthenon, the work of classical authors and philosophers. Michelangelo’s David. The work of musicians, artists, architects and authors from bygone eras. They all fade and disappear without the tireless effort of conservationists and historians everywhere. And thank goodness for their work. Its an indictment of our modern technology landscape how much tomorrow’s historians will be missing. Perfect digital copies are trivially easy to make, but that doesn’t seem to help. Is it possible to run old iOS apps? Play old Xbox or PlayStation games after Microsoft and Sony shut down their old online services? Install and run old copies of adobe products? See what GMail looked like when it launched? Or play earlier versions of multiplayer games like WoW or EverQuest? No. In a few years it will all be gone, rendered inoperable, “upgraded” or purged. The work of pirates, software crackers and emulators has kept some of what we had in the 90s alive. But so much software we have today has been intentionally artificially made to be ephemeral. Chess has survived for thousands of years. How long will DoTA, Diablo3 or Hearthstone be playable? These games will be lucky to survive a generation. What an inhumane way to treat a creator’s life’s work. What callous disregard we hold for the curiosity of tomorrow.
    - turtledove 4y ago
      How many buildings contemporary to the Parthenon still exist? How many of Michelangelo's contemporaries still exist? Some games will last forever, some will not.
      - josephg 4y ago
        Will any video games which require online services outlive the services which they depend on? Or any web services, like Notion or Google Docs? The way we’re going, I’d be surprised if modern games last 25 years; let alone 2500.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Not, statistically, on a meaningful time scale. All my data will probably one day be gone... But I have enough backups and replicas and remote repos that it's unlikely to happen before my own death.
  - paskozdilar 4y ago
    > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Yeah, but on what timescale? Saying it's justified for software to break as soon as the company dies because it would be destroyed on it's own anyway is like saying "we all die anyway so we might as well be slaughtered".
- turtledove 4y ago
  It's not meant to be callous, it's meant to be accepting of the impermanence of all things. Nothing lasts forever, my attitude is more about being ok with that.
atoav 4y ago
While I understand the sentiment, as someone with both an unusual music and film taste, doing what you think I should do would probably mean a lot of what I like would be lost forever, and it would be a shame. Medianis ephemeral, but art very often not so much. If someone decided to throw the works of Bach or Beethoven away we would have truly lost something for example. Of course not everything is art to everybody, not everything has value to everybody but there are things truely worth of preserving — and often for other reasons than we ontuitively would think.
andrewflnr 4y ago
That's good for you, if you can pull it off. It's unreasonable to expect others to do the same. And as a technological justification for something that ostensibly exists to serve users, it would be inexcusable.
bakugo 4y ago
You consider media to be something that is "consumed" once and then forgotten about, like food. That's fine, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but please don't imply that others should think the same way or that it in any way justifies situations like these. New media doesn't just replace old media unless you see it as nothing but a mindless waste of time.
- turtledove 4y ago
  My dude, I literally said I respect other's opinions, then shared my perspective. I literally did the opposite of suggesting others just think the way I do. And new media can replace old media, and still be a mindful, thoughtful experience. Impermanence does not mean mindless.
genewitch 4y ago
<pats NAS and DVD and blu-ray backups of every movie and TV show i've ever bought> This bad boy right here!
paskozdilar 4y ago
I agree with your perspective. However, I don't think it justifies the artificial loss that happens with renting software. There is no logical reason why would a program stop working on my computer if my computer has not changed. Software on my computer must not depend on any third-party-anything. Of course, that computer will break one day, and the software will stop working on it eventually. But it will happen when it is natural to happen - not when some CEO decides to pull the plug.
imtringued 4y ago
Most of it is crap though. The amount of high quality media is actually lacking. A lot of good mobile games are just ports from a different platform. If you were to wipe all mobile games every five years the overall quality would go down.
hnlmorg 4y ago
I think that's only fair if you have paid for the content in a way that is intended to be transient (like a theatre show, concert, etc). But when you pay for content in a way that is intended to be frequently played back (like a CD, book or computer game) then I think there is a fair expectation that content is persistent. This whole shift to "you license content, not own it" is a modern trend that has left many feeling cheated because it gives the illusion of persistence while giving the service providers complete control to remove your access at any time they wish.

rektide 4y ago

I don't get this kind of callous, tough-love, blow-up-your-memories sell. There's nothing about any of this that looks like a ticking time bomb. Everything was fine until one day some part of the world around us unceremoniously disappeared, for no real ascertainable reason, in a way totally beyond most peoples control. This is shit. Unqualifiedly just shit. Good for you that you feel free & clear for casting off the past, but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have, for no real reason, self-destructed.

Kbelicius 4y ago
> but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have unceremoniously self-destructed. It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy?
- rektide 4y ago
  > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. > Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy? In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty?
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    > I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. It takes time. > In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty? It doesn't explode unexpectedly. It explodes in a way that the creator made it explode. So, yeah, it seems that you are the mean one here.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Very rarely is "exploding" part of the artistic intent. More likely it's something the auteur was never consulted on and the publisher didn't care enough to avoid.
    - rektide 4y ago
      Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. There's been a pretty fair & reasonable deal in computing for decades. Preservation is getting harder, worse, impossible. This is- pretty clearly to most of us- a loss.
      - Kbelicius 4y ago
        > Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. As far as I can see the only think I'm saying here is that creators should be able to create things as they see fit. I did not say a word about consumers or what they should be doing. I would love to know what gives you the impression that I'm being cruel to consumers here. You did insult me first, why are you surprised that I would defend myself? You are even doing it in this post to.
        mrob 4y ago
- josephg 4y ago
  > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. True. The Parthenon, the work of classical authors and philosophers. Michelangelo’s David. The work of musicians, artists, architects and authors from bygone eras. They all fade and disappear without the tireless effort of conservationists and historians everywhere. And thank goodness for their work. Its an indictment of our modern technology landscape how much tomorrow’s historians will be missing. Perfect digital copies are trivially easy to make, but that doesn’t seem to help. Is it possible to run old iOS apps? Play old Xbox or PlayStation games after Microsoft and Sony shut down their old online services? Install and run old copies of adobe products? See what GMail looked like when it launched? Or play earlier versions of multiplayer games like WoW or EverQuest? No. In a few years it will all be gone, rendered inoperable, “upgraded” or purged. The work of pirates, software crackers and emulators has kept some of what we had in the 90s alive. But so much software we have today has been intentionally artificially made to be ephemeral. Chess has survived for thousands of years. How long will DoTA, Diablo3 or Hearthstone be playable? These games will be lucky to survive a generation. What an inhumane way to treat a creator’s life’s work. What callous disregard we hold for the curiosity of tomorrow.
  - turtledove 4y ago
    How many buildings contemporary to the Parthenon still exist? How many of Michelangelo's contemporaries still exist? Some games will last forever, some will not.
    - josephg 4y ago
      Will any video games which require online services outlive the services which they depend on? Or any web services, like Notion or Google Docs? The way we’re going, I’d be surprised if modern games last 25 years; let alone 2500.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Not, statistically, on a meaningful time scale. All my data will probably one day be gone... But I have enough backups and replicas and remote repos that it's unlikely to happen before my own death.
- paskozdilar 4y ago
  > It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Yeah, but on what timescale? Saying it's justified for software to break as soon as the company dies because it would be destroyed on it's own anyway is like saying "we all die anyway so we might as well be slaughtered".
turtledove 4y ago
It's not meant to be callous, it's meant to be accepting of the impermanence of all things. Nothing lasts forever, my attitude is more about being ok with that.

atoav 4y ago

While I understand the sentiment, as someone with both an unusual music and film taste, doing what you think I should do would probably mean a lot of what I like would be lost forever, and it would be a shame. Medianis ephemeral, but art very often not so much. If someone decided to throw the works of Bach or Beethoven away we would have truly lost something for example. Of course not everything is art to everybody, not everything has value to everybody but there are things truely worth of preserving — and often for other reasons than we ontuitively would think.

andrewflnr 4y ago

That's good for you, if you can pull it off. It's unreasonable to expect others to do the same. And as a technological justification for something that ostensibly exists to serve users, it would be inexcusable.

bakugo 4y ago

You consider media to be something that is "consumed" once and then forgotten about, like food. That's fine, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but please don't imply that others should think the same way or that it in any way justifies situations like these. New media doesn't just replace old media unless you see it as nothing but a mindless waste of time.

turtledove 4y ago
My dude, I literally said I respect other's opinions, then shared my perspective. I literally did the opposite of suggesting others just think the way I do. And new media can replace old media, and still be a mindful, thoughtful experience. Impermanence does not mean mindless.

genewitch 4y ago

<pats NAS and DVD and blu-ray backups of every movie and TV show i've ever bought> This bad boy right here!

paskozdilar 4y ago

I agree with your perspective. However, I don't think it justifies the artificial loss that happens with renting software. There is no logical reason why would a program stop working on my computer if my computer has not changed. Software on my computer must not depend on any third-party-anything. Of course, that computer will break one day, and the software will stop working on it eventually. But it will happen when it is natural to happen - not when some CEO decides to pull the plug.

imtringued 4y ago

Most of it is crap though. The amount of high quality media is actually lacking. A lot of good mobile games are just ports from a different platform. If you were to wipe all mobile games every five years the overall quality would go down.

hnlmorg 4y ago

I think that's only fair if you have paid for the content in a way that is intended to be transient (like a theatre show, concert, etc). But when you pay for content in a way that is intended to be frequently played back (like a CD, book or computer game) then I think there is a fair expectation that content is persistent. This whole shift to "you license content, not own it" is a modern trend that has left many feeling cheated because it gives the illusion of persistence while giving the service providers complete control to remove your access at any time they wish.