!@#$% Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 I was reading about Borders Bookstores liquidating tons of its inventory many people have suggested it's not only e-readers that killed their business, that they also followed a bad model, but it does bring to mind a question: at what point will people no longer give a fuck about stuff we have now and cannot live without? newspapers and books may always be around, who's to say for sure. but as readership declines and places shutter their doors, the effect is undeniable. will we live to see a world without books? what about hard copies of music? i remember people lamenting the demise of album cover art, suggesting that no way could a tiny jewel case replicate the format that inspired so much amazing art. clearly there is a lot less attention paid to special music packaging these days. will there come a day when people don't go to music stores anymore? hmm, this thread might go into obsolescence too.. we'll see how much interest it generates, but sometimes it's nice to talk about some shit in crossfire, and not just rant and opine. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAR Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 I think album covers changed when we moved to CD's. There were crazy booklets, posters, and enhanced CD's with music videos and games you could play on your computer. I doubt books will die completely, I for one cant read on a computer screen and when i tried a kindle I got really frustrated with all the damn blinking. I cant be the only one who loves the feel and smell of books and I would never want to have to think about if I can keep reading because my battery might be low. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decyferon Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 It is a very interesting subject. I remember when CDs came in and everyone was moaning about album art being such a fundamental part of the album experience and they kind of followed that with CDs and the huge booklets they produced, but I don't know with digital media I dont feel like I own it, or own anything of substance, and to be honest I have never paid for a digital download from a place like i-tunes. I can't remember the last time I went into a music store, probably to pick up a wii game for my son, but it was always hard finding good music because there arent really any good independent stores round here. But I do miss having a music collection that I can see and has value to me. I have never read a book on a computer or a kindle or anything like that, I just knowI wouldn't like it, I don't mind reading articles online or reading forums etc, but that is short bursts rather than a long invested affair. I love reading and actually sitting down with a book a smoke and a coffee and chilling for a few hours. I suppose something are just meant to be gone forever, once they are replaced by something better they are destined to go apart from small hardcore followers. Somethings will just be timeless though, I think books will be one of them, it is the same as art, I can view any piece of art in the world on my computer however it would never compare to seeing it in person. It is strange I have over 12gb of graf magazines on my harddrive and I never look at them, justthe scanned in pages and knowing it isnt the magazine in my hands bugs me, however I have no problem looking at graf on here or flickr, makes no sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted March 30, 2011 Author Share Posted March 30, 2011 i agree books should be timeless. hard to say if they will be or if one day it's something only rich people own. i can't help but think of the resources saved by reading my kindle (which was a gift and not something i ever would have gotten for myself, yet ended up loving it.) i still get instructional books in print, i just bought a buncha sewing and quilting books for example. plus cookbooks but then i saw that martha stewart introduced a kindle cookie book with a detailed pic of every cookie, something they said would have been prohibitively expensive to do in print. ... i love that the masses don't seem to be embracing blu ray i srsly am not ready to throw out my dvd's and shit (i know they play on bluray players) it's like a new technology is about to come out every ten years. we have a local music shop that is so dope, i have really tried to continue giving them business, but i haven't bought a cd since the new arcade fire came out. and it's not new no more. i used to buy dvd's there too but that's over as well. ........... the whole polaroid thing is interesting. they stopped making the film but that small band of dedicated followers seems dead fucking serious http://the-impossible-project.com/ i totally agree about the art thing. i started traveling to see great museums and art and was not disappointed i've thought i could make a career in photography if i could capture the essence of a painting on film Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 Certain kids are going to keep old media going. Where I live there's a mixtape club that trades cassettes, DJs and punks keeping vinyl alive, and infoshops here are archiving zines and small-run local papers. There's also a few people who do skill shares on how to run offset presses...obviously most of this comes out of the DIY scene. I'm an information junkie that's tech friendly, plus I move around a lot....keeping my media on hard drives has been both good (portable, high density) and bad (my music drive just went kaput and took out the past two months of acquisitions)....I think things are changing but nothing ever really goes away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted March 30, 2011 Author Share Posted March 30, 2011 8 track. cassettes VHS fuggit, phonograph. :haha: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KM4RT Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Interesting topic! People always seem to latch on to this as a negative thing. I like to view it in the context of innovation and improvement. For example the core of a book is information. We as a society continue to evolve, as such we evolve the ways we destribute information. We should embrace more efficient process, and basically welcome the demise of hard copy books. It is amazing that we have so much information available to us and so readily. Consider that before the printing press books were transcribed by hand. And only available to a tiny group of people. Likewise business has to adapt. The demand is for more electronic information. Business has to change to supply that. It may or may not mean a complete demise, depending on the existence of a niche market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen X Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Weird, just this morning, I looked with new eyes at all the film I still have in my freezer and pondered this subject off and on until noon. I actually started thinking about the increasing rate at which technology seems to surpass itself. New things pop up to force obsolescence on the previous generation of devices at an insane rate and yet... We seem to have hit a wall with transportation, a car is a car, a bike is a bike. Where's my teleportation damn it! Even if it was only like 99% accurate I would still send stuff through on the theory that the molecules will probably reassemble correctly. I also read something about this the other day though I forget where. I recall it said that books are in forever and record stores were out. I don't know, I just assume books will always be and I read conflicting accounts on the death or lack thereof concerning vinyl records. I considered all of this while I removed 1 and installed 2 palm trees using only a shovel, rake and a wheelbarrow (big ups to whoever invented that thing!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decyferon Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 so far we are thinking of items, there are other things that can be obsolete, languages and skills. I was thinking the other day about things like court room stenographs and short hand, with the increased use of technology you can now record everything, so will these sort of skills start becoming obsolete? I think there is already a decline in short hand. Also with language I sometimes think we try to keep languages alive purely for the sake of it. I am English but live in Wales, they invest so much into teaching welsh when that could be channeled into much more productive things like spanish or mandarin or something actually useful. I know there are areas of wales that still speak Welsh but it is such a pointless language and I don't understand why they bother when the vast majority of welsh people I talk to don't know any welsh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted March 31, 2011 Author Share Posted March 31, 2011 haha citizen x, how true. where is my meal in a pill and my jetpack? while medicine figures out how to give everyone big boobs and bigger boners. i was reading about storage formats, and how they also become obsolete, and yes, it is cycling faster floppy disks? then they weren't floppy no more? sooner, or later, or even sooner, dvd's and all that shit will go the way of the birds too. i know harddrives are evolving (solid state?) though i don't know much about it. ......... decyfer, i learned about some calculus formulas that predict the rate of change of a language the shit was pretty amazing, thinking back on olde english it's not too much of a stretch, then considering how fast our own language changes (omg and lol are now in OED for example) if we traveled in time we prolly wouldn't be able to understand anyone (though of course, that's hypothetical, as time travel will never be possible) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pet Posted April 1, 2011 Share Posted April 1, 2011 Funny how a relative of mine working as an engineer said about five years ago that the "next big thing" would be SSDs. Couldn't had imagined such things but well, as moving parts and all kinds of mechanics is slowly removed from everything it seems logical. The change with the books is kinda about the function of the books I guess. If you have to choose between a 500-page dictionary and google with some other web dictionary then the latter one is probably faster and simply more comfortable. As the internet is mainly understood as a source of information it seems natural - books with information that tends to change keep getting outdated... Cheaper to use some reliable internet source. But at the same time storybooks (?) remain the same, people don't use them daily and still like the idea of a book. Film is used in movies, but not in everyday news reportage. Film gives a good look, but isn't considered remarkably different in quality when in daily, informational purposed use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abrasivesaint Posted April 2, 2011 Share Posted April 2, 2011 "they wont have to burn the books, when no one reads them anyway." i still buy CDs, i dont know anyone else who does that anymore, people say shit all the time when they see all the cds i have. still buy records, but a bunch of people still do that. im a firm believer in buying hard copies of music still (especially if you can buy it from the person or band themselves). same with books. i mean that Kindle kinda shit is cool and all, but i'd rather own the book. i got a ipod, but i only use that when im on bus/train/plane. other than that never. my buddy actually found a record store recently where he picked up 5 Springsteen records for 20 bucks, good score, gotta check that place out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!@#$% Posted April 2, 2011 Author Share Posted April 2, 2011 ^yeah, i've had a few people have strong reactions when they find out i still occasionally buy cd's. funny but i do like having the copy sometimes, as well as supporting the band (though i know, they make virtually no money off the cd sale) i literally just now heard on the news: they will no longer teach cursive writing in schools. wow, wouldn't have thought of that but i guess it makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
..romero.. Posted April 3, 2011 Share Posted April 3, 2011 i didnt know buying cd's was so unpopular...i get all my music from the cd's then put it on my ipod..i like cd's better,the way the songs flow into eachother and whatnot..just getting one song off a whole album is like watching one scene in a movie..i would use cd's more often but its just easier to carry around the ipod than to carry around the cd player and a bunc of cd's haha... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greyghost Posted April 3, 2011 Share Posted April 3, 2011 the arcade fire: i used to write letters, i used to sign my name.... aw man, i really hope mail/handwritten letters/postcards/etc. never become too obsolete. i really love writing//getting snail mail and such, especially when its unexpected and from someone far away & theres a cool stamp. we'll prolly always need the post for packages tho. film:: they also discontinued kodachrome film. was what used to use for slides/portfolio, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abrasivesaint Posted April 3, 2011 Share Posted April 3, 2011 i used to write shitloads of letters to my grandmother when i was young, she loved it. i was actually gonna write a series of letters and mail them to friends, just to hear the WTF you send me a letter for? next time i ran into them. romero, i seriously know maybe.. 5 peopel? who stil buy cds. everyone else just downloads music and shit. also... CASH, GREENBACKS, DOUGH. how many people you know stil use cash in most situations? almost every single person i know uses their cards when we go to bars/restaraunts/coffe shops/whereever. im a cash person, love cash, fuck plastic. trying to pay a bill with like 10 people at a restaraunt when ever single one of them has a card is a pain the BALLS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen X Posted June 8, 2011 Share Posted June 8, 2011 Forgive the lateness of my reply, after these several years I'm sure you know I've got a long memory but a short attention span. At any rate, as I recall, it was mere days after we'd coresponded when I read an article (I think on Cracked.com) about universal symbols that are obsolete to the point of meaninglessness. One of the symbols they pointed out was the 'save icon' in the shape of a 3.5" floppy. I meant to post back here about it but had a 'senior modment' instead and forgot about it until the other day. My brother is moving so we're packing stuff up, no hurry as his current house is still on the market and the new house just got the cabinets delivered yesterday. Anyway, I was cleaning and packing up the office w/ my 9yr old nephew and I moved some books that have obviously been there WAY too long and found a pile of 3.5's behind it. My nephew was boggled. He made a face like his ears were gonna fart when I told him they were computer discs. He just kinda looked at a stack of CD's, looked back at me and we moved on. Later, after dinner, we were all just lounging and he came into the room w/ one of the discs and said "Uncle Smart told me these were for the computer, is that right"? Like I lied to him... granted, I do like to tell him lies but usually I turn mundane stuff into... well, more interesting mundane stuff. Like the brain scooper or the ear bobber in the 'random kitchen devices' drawer. Anyway, until he illustrated the point to me I guess I hadn't taken the article I'd read to heart. He showed us the disc and my 6yr old nephew said "that means 'save'". The one was physically holding a disc and the other saw it merely as an icon. Neither truly conceived of it as a storage device. The whole episode made me think of that article and in turn this thread... so here we are. Kids today know this means 'save' but they don't know what the hell it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 What's funny is that until fairly recently you couldn't update your BIOS or install certain drivers (i.e., SATA drivers on XP) without a floppy drive...and they've been getting slowly phased out since around 2004, so unless you had a USB 3.5" drive handy (which I do) you were stuck. Digital media can be a real pain in the ass as far as being a reliable means of archival....when you're dealing with old storage formats (SCSI, consumer-level tape drives, older media cards, floppies) and outdated/proprietary file extensions, we seem to be making it harder to archive accessible information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KM4RT Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Kids today know this means 'save' but they don't know what the hell it is. Yes. But why should that matter or be important? In years time there'll be a different icon, a different storage medium. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ginger Bread Man Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 What's funny is that until fairly recently you couldn't update your BIOS or install certain drivers (i.e., SATA drivers on XP) without a floppy drive...and they've been getting slowly phased out since around 2004, so unless you had a USB 3.5" drive handy (which I do) you were stuck. Digital media can be a real pain in the ass as far as being a reliable means of archival....when you're dealing with old storage formats (SCSI, consumer-level tape drives, older media cards, floppies) and outdated/proprietary file extensions, we seem to be making it harder to archive accessible information. I feel that this is indeed the intention by those who disiminate technology to the masses (giant servers) as the ultimate goal is to no longer have a "need" to store your own data, let alone own a hard drive. Googles aim is to "allow" You to store info permanently on their servers so that you dont save anything to your drive. Also they are developing an online software platform where end user doesn't "need" to have a particular program installed for it's already been perfected on the servers. Definitely we are making it easier to destroy and not archive. There are rock artifacts (pottery, written tablets)which date at least 3k years and are still in great shape considering the exposure to natural elements. Id like to see an iomega drive working after 15 years with no maintenance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ipod90 Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 Cool thread, I believe that paper novels will someday only be in the hands of the wealthy. Especially old ones. Have you guys noticed the amount of dumb-downed utter crap on the shelves these days? Its unbelievable. Apart from graff mags/books I haven't purchased a brand new novel for ages. Technology is a huge double edged sword for me. The world is changing so rapidly its difficult to predict anything anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McLovin Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 mp3 players are starting to go out of style too, soon there will be internet type microchips that you could plug right into your skull to watch tv and listen to music. there will be and uprising of people against it like that bruce willace movie surogate. its gonna be nuts.. just my thoery. my grand children are going to ask me what a music or book store is? like dylan once said "times they are a changing" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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