5 ms·

Dunno man, those things you say were “horrible” before the advent of mobile phones, media players and gps (not even the internet; usable incarnations of those i

Dunno man, those things you say were “horrible” before the advent of mobile phones, media players and gps (not even the internet; usable incarnations of those inventions were entirely independent from the internet) - I was also there and it was _fine_.

pdonis 6mo ago
I never had the problems with tapes that the author describes--but I still preferred CDs when they came out, and I greatly prefer having my entire music library on a single USB stick that I can just plug into my car. I was able to find my way around okay with paper maps--but I still prefer having GPS in my phone. My issue with those passages is that the author is conflating "digital" or "computers are involved" with "Internet". They're not the same.
- loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
  I’m not saying the newer alternatives are not convenient! Just saying the old ones were OK; not the garment-rending disaster TFA purports them to be.
  - pdonis 6mo ago
    It would appear that they were a "garment-rending disaster" at least to some, like the author of the article.
- ajross 6mo ago
  > having my entire music library on a single USB stick Worth pointing out how this too is an example of somewhat mistaken value analysis based on libertarian ideals. The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. Which was one of the points of the linked article.
  - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
    >Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. lots of people perceive higher quality media as having value, in fact there are markets for those people, just not the largest market which values convenience more.
    - pdonis 6mo ago
      > the largest market which values convenience more To me, having my music library on an USB stick is convenience. I don't have to worry about whether my car or something in it has an Internet connection just to listen to music.
  - pdonis 6mo ago
    > The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Not in a free market (which is part of "libertarian ideals", or at least it's supposed to be). In a free market, there is no single "solution"--there are whatever solutions people are willing to pay more than they cost for. If you want your music in the cloud, and you pay for that, and I want my music locally, and I pay for that, that is the libertarian ideal. Trying to own the entire market and force your "solution" on everyone, just because you happen to have enough users to be able to get away with such bullying, at least for a time, is not a free market. But that's what the tech giants are trying to do. > Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. That the majority of the market does not, yes. But I don't think I'm even close to being the only person that doesn't want to depend on "the cloud" for everything I do.
    - danaris 6mo ago
      But in real life, any time you have "a free market", by the definition of "no or minimal regulations", you will inevitably end up with a very un-free market, by the definition of "lots of choice for the consumer, healthy competition". And far, far too many self-proclaimed libertarians think that any regulations that "encumber" the market take it farther away from being "free", when in fact, there are regulations that help and regulations that harm, and you have to be able to actually understand them and use human judgement, rather than thinking One Simple Rule can be applied in every situation without fail to achieve perfection.
wiseowise 6mo ago
Same. I’ll gladly take CDs and DVDs over modern streaming platforms. Before all of this streaming crap music and taste had weight. You find people with the same interests and you share physical medium. No corporation in the world had a power to stop me from giving my copy to another person. Now you either like and pay forever like a good cattle or you hide like a rat from the watchful copyright gods on torrents.
- tempaccount5050 6mo ago
  I've always thought that the hippie environmental types wanting data (music) stored as plastic was ironic. "I prefer my music to be made of petrochemicals and trees, the way it ought to be." I get it, but I still think it's funny.
  - spinningslate 6mo ago
    Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.
    - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
      No, store it on your computer/phone/iPod. But honestly data centers are probably very efficient for this. I'm not going to do the math, but storing data on flash and serving it to billions of people probably is efficient if I had to guess.
      - spinningslate 6mo ago
        I would like to see a full cost comparison. Centralised storage - replicated, distributed and maintained online as necessary - vs media that, once manufactured and distributed, essentially costs nothing to maintain. iPods/phones get replaced much more frequently than LPs/casettes/CDs. And that’s just the resource consumption comparison. There’s then the economic polarisation of wealth to the small handful of online music renters vs distributed ownership (of copies: the original work of art remains with the artist, at least in theory).
Tade0 6mo ago
I recall my tapes sounding ever so slightly worse after each playback. I also once left one too close to my CRT monitor, which erased all the high frequencies from the sound. Also over time friction would build up in the medium, causing the tape to occasionally resist being pulled so strongly that some sections would stretch and introduce a hard to ignore "wah" effect. Overall not my favourite means of storing information, like you said - it was fine. I've listened to a huge palette of mixes made by friends for friends and the social aspect of this is something I appreciated greatly.
- pocksuppet 6mo ago
  How did you feel about the ephemerality of knowing your tapes wouldn't last forever and you'd get new ones? I think computers have spoiled us for archiving. Back in the day, people didn't try to make things last forever. Right?
  - Anamon 6mo ago
    Reminds me of one of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite TV shows ever, The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Technically a children's show, but with such cool, philosophical layers. "What if you could only hear [your favourite song] once, and that was it?" Also very relevant to modern day concerts, with so many in the audience focusing more on recording their crappy phone videos than on appreciating the live moment.
igor47 6mo ago
Strong agree. That passage seems to me to be decrying the friction of the real world, whereas it's become increasingly clear to me just how valuable friction is in the world, and how inextricably tied the tech companies war on friction to the bad outcomes technology seems to engender.
- tclancy 6mo ago
  There's a great piece in the current New Yorker about that very thing: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/our-longing-for-inconvenience https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/our-longing-for-inco... "I have a CD player in my home, a VCR in a closet. But I’m also inclined to think about the work that older devices demand of a person compared with the frictionless present day, when we are told that any and all content is at our fingertips (a myth, but a myth that sells.) And I can’t help but think of the reality that there are many significantly larger and more consequential inconveniences that Americans, plainly, do not have the heart or stomach for. One example might be the inconvenience caused by a mass political uprising, one that risks the security, safety, and comfort of its participants. I have seen glimpses of people’s threshold for that level of friction. "
IshKebab 6mo ago
Fine... but it's still better now. I recently went on holiday to deepest darkest Wales where phone signal is intermittent. Trying to locate people and get messages to them was such a bloody pain. I remember thinking in 2003 "surely we should be able to book GP appointments online now", and a mere 20 years later we can (depending on where you live) finally do it. It's so much better. I would not go back, and I don't think anyone else would if it really came down to it, despite any virtuous anti-technology mantras they might pretend to believe.

pdonis 6mo ago

I never had the problems with tapes that the author describes--but I still preferred CDs when they came out, and I greatly prefer having my entire music library on a single USB stick that I can just plug into my car. I was able to find my way around okay with paper maps--but I still prefer having GPS in my phone. My issue with those passages is that the author is conflating "digital" or "computers are involved" with "Internet". They're not the same.

loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
I’m not saying the newer alternatives are not convenient! Just saying the old ones were OK; not the garment-rending disaster TFA purports them to be.
- pdonis 6mo ago
  It would appear that they were a "garment-rending disaster" at least to some, like the author of the article.
ajross 6mo ago
> having my entire music library on a single USB stick Worth pointing out how this too is an example of somewhat mistaken value analysis based on libertarian ideals. The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. Which was one of the points of the linked article.
- bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
  >Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. lots of people perceive higher quality media as having value, in fact there are markets for those people, just not the largest market which values convenience more.
  - pdonis 6mo ago
    > the largest market which values convenience more To me, having my music library on an USB stick is convenience. I don't have to worry about whether my car or something in it has an Internet connection just to listen to music.
- pdonis 6mo ago
  > The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Not in a free market (which is part of "libertarian ideals", or at least it's supposed to be). In a free market, there is no single "solution"--there are whatever solutions people are willing to pay more than they cost for. If you want your music in the cloud, and you pay for that, and I want my music locally, and I pay for that, that is the libertarian ideal. Trying to own the entire market and force your "solution" on everyone, just because you happen to have enough users to be able to get away with such bullying, at least for a time, is not a free market. But that's what the tech giants are trying to do. > Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. That the majority of the market does not, yes. But I don't think I'm even close to being the only person that doesn't want to depend on "the cloud" for everything I do.
  - danaris 6mo ago
    But in real life, any time you have "a free market", by the definition of "no or minimal regulations", you will inevitably end up with a very un-free market, by the definition of "lots of choice for the consumer, healthy competition". And far, far too many self-proclaimed libertarians think that any regulations that "encumber" the market take it farther away from being "free", when in fact, there are regulations that help and regulations that harm, and you have to be able to actually understand them and use human judgement, rather than thinking One Simple Rule can be applied in every situation without fail to achieve perfection.

wiseowise 6mo ago

Same. I’ll gladly take CDs and DVDs over modern streaming platforms. Before all of this streaming crap music and taste had weight. You find people with the same interests and you share physical medium. No corporation in the world had a power to stop me from giving my copy to another person. Now you either like and pay forever like a good cattle or you hide like a rat from the watchful copyright gods on torrents.

tempaccount5050 6mo ago
I've always thought that the hippie environmental types wanting data (music) stored as plastic was ironic. "I prefer my music to be made of petrochemicals and trees, the way it ought to be." I get it, but I still think it's funny.
- spinningslate 6mo ago
  Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.
  - tempaccount5050 6mo ago
    No, store it on your computer/phone/iPod. But honestly data centers are probably very efficient for this. I'm not going to do the math, but storing data on flash and serving it to billions of people probably is efficient if I had to guess.
    - spinningslate 6mo ago
      I would like to see a full cost comparison. Centralised storage - replicated, distributed and maintained online as necessary - vs media that, once manufactured and distributed, essentially costs nothing to maintain. iPods/phones get replaced much more frequently than LPs/casettes/CDs. And that’s just the resource consumption comparison. There’s then the economic polarisation of wealth to the small handful of online music renters vs distributed ownership (of copies: the original work of art remains with the artist, at least in theory).

Tade0 6mo ago

I recall my tapes sounding ever so slightly worse after each playback. I also once left one too close to my CRT monitor, which erased all the high frequencies from the sound. Also over time friction would build up in the medium, causing the tape to occasionally resist being pulled so strongly that some sections would stretch and introduce a hard to ignore "wah" effect. Overall not my favourite means of storing information, like you said - it was fine. I've listened to a huge palette of mixes made by friends for friends and the social aspect of this is something I appreciated greatly.

pocksuppet 6mo ago
How did you feel about the ephemerality of knowing your tapes wouldn't last forever and you'd get new ones? I think computers have spoiled us for archiving. Back in the day, people didn't try to make things last forever. Right?
- Anamon 6mo ago
  Reminds me of one of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite TV shows ever, The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Technically a children's show, but with such cool, philosophical layers. "What if you could only hear [your favourite song] once, and that was it?" Also very relevant to modern day concerts, with so many in the audience focusing more on recording their crappy phone videos than on appreciating the live moment.

igor47 6mo ago

Strong agree. That passage seems to me to be decrying the friction of the real world, whereas it's become increasingly clear to me just how valuable friction is in the world, and how inextricably tied the tech companies war on friction to the bad outcomes technology seems to engender.

tclancy 6mo ago
There's a great piece in the current New Yorker about that very thing: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/our-longing-for-inconvenience https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/our-longing-for-inco... "I have a CD player in my home, a VCR in a closet. But I’m also inclined to think about the work that older devices demand of a person compared with the frictionless present day, when we are told that any and all content is at our fingertips (a myth, but a myth that sells.) And I can’t help but think of the reality that there are many significantly larger and more consequential inconveniences that Americans, plainly, do not have the heart or stomach for. One example might be the inconvenience caused by a mass political uprising, one that risks the security, safety, and comfort of its participants. I have seen glimpses of people’s threshold for that level of friction. "

IshKebab 6mo ago

Fine... but it's still better now. I recently went on holiday to deepest darkest Wales where phone signal is intermittent. Trying to locate people and get messages to them was such a bloody pain. I remember thinking in 2003 "surely we should be able to book GP appointments online now", and a mere 20 years later we can (depending on where you live) finally do it. It's so much better. I would not go back, and I don't think anyone else would if it really came down to it, despite any virtuous anti-technology mantras they might pretend to believe.