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of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.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?”?
I definitely prefer the tangibility of books and the wide-screen experience of movies; but digital music is just fine with me, I surf the Internet more than I watch any scheduled and programed television and engage in on-line correspondence rather than writing letters, and although I don’t give out or often use my smart phone to talk, it is otherwise an indispensable tool, and texting has proven the ideal means of coordinating my family’s activities.
I still stick to real, printed on paper books. I’m usually enthusiastic about technology and I’ve checked out Kindle etc, but they just didn’t feel right
I like my downloaded music and my old CDs, but miss the sleeve covers of vinyl LPs which were sometimes more artistic than the tunes! And they usually printed the lyrics.
One piece of technology that sometimes disappoints is digital radio. The quality isn’t always what it should be no matter how much more superior the broadcasters claim it to be.
But why 3D tv? More to the point, why do they only come with one pair of special glasses>
I’m lean probably 70/30 towards tangible books, but e-readers are piquing my interest more and more. I embraced digital music simply because my turntable has been packed in a box for about 20 years. That…and space…I’m running out of space! I have absolutely no use for 3D movies/videos. Didn’t embrace it decades ago and still don’t. And, my cell phone and I have a love/hate relationship.