I think we are taking ourselves entirely
too seriously
I enjoy trilogies as much as the next
person, but Dan and R. A., you both need to lighten up.
Dan, you have just spent three weeks going
into copious detail about how people change, and R. A., you just spent three
weeks talking about how if we want to be writer’s, which not many people want
to do, we have to only write when we’re feeling inspired. I’m gonna be honest,
neither of you have much mass market appeal.
As such, I’m going to usurp the theme of
the week, and demand that next week we have to talk about favorite kind of
cheese, why it is our favorite kind, and what our favorite way to use it is.
As for this week, I’m going to jump onto
the serious bandwagon, and talk about a divide that I’ve been noticing lately.
There is a serious divide, and usually it happens between older people and
younger people, though of course there are numerous exceptions. This divide is
about people who want to live in the past, or simply keep living in the present,
and people who want to move into the future.
This first group I define by saying that
they try to make what we currently have work, or even replace it with things
from the past. Now the present is made up by a collection of things from our
past, and these things range in age from a few weeks to several decades.
Broadly speaking, things that are more modern that replace things from the past
are vast improvements (CDs over Vinyl records for example,) and people tend to
just go along with these things, partly because it doesn’t cost them much. But
when it comes to more culturally integrated, sentimental things like
newspapers, and tv broadcasting, and filmmaking (Yes Dan, I’m stepping on your
toes a little,) there are a wealth of people who stubbornly refuse to change
their ways. People like Rupert Murdoch are regularly fighting the internet and
its ability to deliver news fast and in good quality because he wants to
maintain his newspaper empire. TV broadcasters (again Rupert Murdoch and News
Corp. (Fox)) have been stepping in to fight the internet because they want
people to watch news and television shows on their tvs. Think about the
Australian NBN debarcle. It is a plan to replace Australia’s century old copper
wiring that was originally designed only for phone calls, but now supports
Australia’s internet, with modern Fibre Optics which is a superior technology
in every way. Many people are stepping in the way because they don’t want to
(or don’t think people can) adapt to this much higher quality infrastructure. These
people want to make the Australia of right now, and like I said, right now is
comprised of things from between a few weeks, to over a century ago, work.
One doesn’t have to think very far for how
all of these people could benefit from embracing new technologies. TV
broadcasters for example could shut down their broadcast technology and simply
use the internet to deliver tv to the people (and it would be more reliable and
higher quality,) but they don’t want to do this, so they are standing in the
way. Rupert Murdoch and his news empire could use this internet to deliver
lightning fast, up to date news across the country, and this would actually
cause more people to use their service, and they would sink less money into
printing newspapers and using their broadcast equipment, basically a triple win
for them. But no, they live in the present, which is really the past, so they
are going to fight this huge benefit to their own company to the bitter end.
You might say it’s a case of money, but
that is exactly the same mindset. Spending money now, so you won’t have to
spend money again for a long time afterwards, and be able to reap the benefits
for even longer. People would rather spend as little as possible now, and keep
spending as little as possible for a long time afterwards, even though this
might end up costing them far more in the long run, than spend a lot now. Living
in the present, which is the past.
There has recently been a resurgence of
vinyl record sales. They were revolutionary for their time, allowing people to
hear the music they loved whenever they wanted from the comfort of their own
homes. It is pretty terrible technology, especially by todays incredibly clean,
high range sound. Records have no high end sound, and don’t even think about
low end, and they also have a tinny, boxy sound to them. When CDs first came
out, people have the identical reaction to the NBN. CDs required new technology
to play (CD players, an infrastructure basically) and people didn’t want to pay
for that. So they declared that CDs would never match the quality, or have the
same wholesome feeling that Vinyl records did. This last sentence was of course
a complete lie, with no factual backing, and said simply because people didn’t
want to pay for the new infrastructure, to use this far superior technology.
Well, we all know what happened there. CDs
did eventually because the standard audio delivery format, with their clean,
crisp, broad range, two channel, high bit rate, 2+ hours of music storage. And
aren’t we all glad that that happened?
Join me in two weeks as I continue this
discussion, because next week is cheese week.
Andrew Lyons away…
Andrew Lyons.
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