Film critic Roger Ebert wrote an essay called Clinging to the rearview mirror. He quotes Marshall McLuhan:
Most people…still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.
Ebert notes, among other things:
He doesn’t like video games, 3D movies, or reading books on the Kindle.
When he owned LPs, he “possessed something tangible. When I download an album from iTunes, I can listen to it, but I possess nothing I can touch.”
*”When I enter a theater and see a movie, I experience it differently than when I watch a video.”
These new things aren’t worse, or better; they are just different.
I too am an analog man. While I bought CDs, eventually, my first love is the LP.
I haven’t really played video games since the 1980s.
I HATE 3D movies and think they are a scam.
Video is definitely secondary to seeing a film in a theater.
I have a cellphone, but I don’t give out the number, because I don’t want to be available 24/7. I use it to call work or home when I’ll be late when I’m out of town, and for emergencies.
What new technologies have you embraced? For which do you decide, “I prefer the old-fashioned way?”?