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Posted: |
Apr 23, 2015 - 3:20 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Thor, as I go through the topics you listed, I'm thrilled to read them and yet also saddened that so many responders don't post at all anymore. Their profiles are still available, but we haven't heard from them for years. We've lost some good posters. I'd gush more, but the posters at the Offensive Titles thread have enough Nostalgia fodder, and I don't want to whip them into a further frenzy. 
(Now if we can just get Jim to make 1,600 more posts on this topic, our "replies" will equal the Offensive Titles topic. Now there is a significant statistic.  )
I also like revisiting those old threads, just to re-read them. You're right, so many people seem to have disappeared. I imagine some of them are still looking in but no longer have the desire to try to generate an interesting topic due to the perception that nobody's going to be bothered to reply anymore - even if they look at them in the first place.
I get the feeling that message boards of this type are dying out. The "old folks" (such as us, tee hee) will wallow in our nostalgia and read posts from 2002 thinking "those were the days", then go for a lie-down. The young whippersnapper breed will wonder why spend so much time on verbosity, when a thumbs-up icon will do. Who really communicates anymore? Look at families sitting around the dinner table. Everybody's on their mobiles, texting or playing stupid games. What happened to long, hand-written letters? Whole relationships used to be built on hundreds of those exchanges. But we're living too quickly now and have better things to do, such as send people we hardly know photos of our lunch.
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Posted: |
Apr 23, 2015 - 3:46 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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In fear of sounding older than I actually am, I think that's a fair point, Graham. I also think that is why the majority of threads these days deal with what I consider 'superficial' topics related to collecting, news, industry etc. There is a very clear change of discourse taking place in the mid 2000s, not long after Joan posted that 2002 thread.
My own attempts at starting 'old-fashioned threads' about general aesthetic issues etc. in the years since then have proven largely futile. Maybe 2-3 replies, if I'm lucky, and then it's gone. Same destiny for attempts by others. One way to adapt is to post less, which is what I have done. Whereas I used to click everything (I mean literally EVERYTHING) once upon a time, I now pick and choose maybe a handful of threads on the first page that I follow.
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If I needed one I'd have one, too. Same goes for a tablet. The necessity isn't there at this time. Of course, many people have been persuaded of a necessity even if one doesn't really exist. To each his own.
I know Howard L says to each his own here, but he also suggests that "the necessity" of a smart phone or tablet "doesn't really exist." I think we should tread carefully going down this road. One can easily question the necessity of a wide variety of technological tools and enhancements developed over the past 50 plus years. Soundtrack albums, for example, are considered by most, if considered at all, as a crazy useless luxury that isn't even worth listening to. So it's not so much a question of necessity for any of these things we do, as there is desire, interest, utility.
Myself, I love all these tools, and I love writing long posts too, so the one doesn't necessarily negate the other. (I write long posts on a desktop or a tablet, don't come here on my phone at all, as it isn't optimized for mobile.)
I think what we're seeing now on this board is an evolution to a release board, so that's what gets most attention, as people find they prefer social connections with friends, family, and strangers around a wider array of topics. The newer social media channels provide for this wider range of content/expression all in one place, rather than something very focused and narrowly niche-d like this board.
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Me too, Joan - I always check in here, even if there's not much to interest me on a given day.
(And I'm not a social media user personally, but in my work in public radio I've come to understand the role of social media a lot better, for our own work, for news organizations, and for non profits and artists.)
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I know Howard L says to each his own here, but he also suggests that "the necessity" of a smart phone or tablet "doesn't really exist."
Really? Reread what Howard L said, and this time note qualifiers such as "at this time" and "many" and "even if." Doesn't sound like such broad strokes to me!
So it's not so much a question of necessity for any of these things we do, as there is desire, interest, utility.
Bingo.
I simply based it on this statement from your post: "Of course, many people have been persuaded of a necessity even if one doesn't really exist." There are no qualifiers in that statement, that's a bald statement that many people have been persuaded by something that doesn't exist. "Even if" does not strike me as a qualifier so much as a way to soften the stance.
But that's how it is with all writing - it's not just what you say, it's what you meant. And it's not just what I read, but what I read into it. If I'm wrong and you don't think what I thought you thought, so be it.
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Posted: |
Apr 24, 2015 - 3:40 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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I don't even have a smart phone!
If I needed one I'd have one, too. Same goes for a tablet. The necessity isn't there at this time. Of course, many people have been persuaded of a necessity even if one doesn't really exist. To each his own.
OK, I have a few minutes, we're going off-topic but hey, in the interest of accuracy and clearing up any possible misunderstandings before someone in this tavern needlessly throws a drink in someone else's kisser, let us parse the above response with elaboration straight from the horse's mouth:
The necessity isn't there at this time.
And it isn't, but it may be down the road that necessity (Finian's, anyone?) dictates I secure a smart phone and/or tablet. Marvelous pieces of technology IMHO. So's a laptop. But for now my home desktop suffices. As does my old-fashioned cell phone. Which supplements a landline, btw.
Of course, many people have been persuaded of a necessity even if one doesn't really exist.
Oh you might have me there, perhaps some might be considered less a pejorative/judgemental sounding than many. Certainly, if I had said all, however,...well, you know what they say about extremes and people who talk in them. Anyway, some if not many but certainly not all folks just gotta get that newest gadget because it's today! It's NOW thinking! What, you don't own a smart phone? tablet?? laptop??? DINOSAUR! LUDDITE! Oh, now tell me why you have one. The job requires it? Gotcha. Investments that swing on a moment's notice? Gotcha. Just gotta know the answer right away or you'll go crazy for the rest of the morning? Eh...OK.
Now, you have a university education, right? So why do you have to go to the phone to figure out a 20% tip, tell me that!
Indeed, marvelous inventions all. But some people are just plain tethered to 'em. I didn't say ALL, just some. It's just a simple everyday observation. I've seen them. But that's their choice. I do not condemn them. Nor do I claim sainthood for m'self. But I have also seen what tethering has done to interpersonal relationships. Some interpersonal relationships. And it ain't pretty.
Qualifiers. Did you know that the Bible (RSV/Revised Standard Version, among others) says there is no God? It does! See Psalms 10:4.
To each his own.
Wonderful soaper with an equally wonderful Victor Young score. Not a dry eye in the house at picture's end. Check it out!
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Howard, sometimes I think I end up responding to trends on the board rather than people or individual posts.
I see many instances here of a set of exchanges that go a certain way, with people on one side of some issue reinforcing a single view. Kind of like this: "The way I think is right and the only right way and people that don't agree with me are wrong or deluded or evil or stupid or....." This is particularly true about new technologies or tools replacing and modifying behavior - digital downloads for example.
As I saw a theme seeming to develop that I interpreted going that way on this thread, I had to jump in. The phrase about a necessity that doesn't exist set off some kind of alarm bell in my head, mostly because I think that people focus too much of the time on behaviors that we don't agree with (but that also don't affect or harm us in any way).
So I wasn't so much worried about whether you meant something global but that I had to stamp up and down with my own righteous indignation. "Oh, you don't think I need my smart phone, do you?! Well, I don't think you need a computer either to tell me so!"
The main point, to try to get back to the topic, is that it is fascinating that behavior is shaped by all of these technologies, including the early internet technologies that led to message boards like this. And that it's interesting that Joan's thread here has helped showcase just how much this message board has changed over the years. So that threads like the one you contributed to on the STTMP book are the rarest of the rare, and rarely start exchanges.
Of course I pick on that one because I want to read Preston Neal Jones' book on my kindle, and it's not available! Uh, oh, here goes the debate again.....
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I don't even have a smart phone!
Really? Even I, the 80s kid, have one. :-D
Not iphone though, just a Samsung smart phone.
What kind of phone do you have?
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