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Well, I would have updated earlier today, but according to Seattle weather forecasters, I was shoveling my house out from neck-deep snow all afternoon. Except that I wasn't. Yes, that's right, every school district in a 50 mile radius closed shop for a cloud day.
So, I guess I have no excuse. Rats. However, I did have time to read this Slate article about the demise of print media, which includes the following body count of technologies and/or industries felled by the digital age:
• Bank tellers
• Typewriters
• Typesetting
• Carburetors
• Vacuum tubes
• Slide rules
• Disc jockeys
• Stockbrokers
• Telephone operators
• Yellow pages
• Repair guys
• Bookbinders
• Pimps (displaced by the cell phone and the Web)
• Cassette and reel-to-reel recorders
• VCRs
• Turntables
• Video stores
• Record stores
• Bookstores
• Recording industry
• Courier/messenger services
• Travel agencies
• Print and cinematic porn
• Porn actors
• Stenographers
• Wired telcos
• Drummers
• Toll collectors (slayed by the E-ZPass)
• Book publishing (especially reference works)
• Conventional-watch makers
• "Browse" shopping
• U.S. Postal Service
• Printing-press makers
• Film cameras
• Kodak (and other film-stock makers)
(Great, there goes one of my unwritten Strikethru rules, which is to never offer the possibility of "porn" ending up as a search term on the site). I'm kind of wanting to play Amazing Grace on the bagpipes after reading through this list. Are there any line items you dispute? (I'm stratching my head over "repair guys," myself. And *someone* is posing for all that internet porn). Are there any they left out?
Banning the Big Black Box
5 hours ago
16 comments:
I was listening to a podcast of a radio show from Portland, OR today & the host commented that just because a fluffy white snow flake had been spotted everyone had closed shop & gone home. I never lived in Seattle during this time of year, but I can imagine it similar to the breaking news reports so common in Portland when the "snow" actually falls. I miss that exaggerated concern about winter weather on the West Coast; of course I miss almost everything since I've been living on the far side of the continent where all the trees are in deep hibernation & it actually gets REALLY cold.
Anyway, I read the Slate article, thinking about the irony of reading a commentary about the decline & fall of the newspaper business on an online journal while considering my own cancellation of daily delivery of a local paper. Maybe I would feel a bit more sorry for newspaper reporters if they still typed their stories on cool typers like the guys did in that movie All the President's Men (I actually own versions used by both featured actors), because then there might be work like "repair guys" like myself in maintaining & restoring those typers.
I'm sure someone has drawn a connection between digital technology & the eclipse of the traditional novel, although I haven't read it. I think fiction just can't be composed on a computer in the same way. I just finished reading Philip Roth's latest novel & his narrator makes a point that people don't seem to separate fact from literature anymore, presuming if it's written down then it's true.
So, maybe novelists should be on that list.
Stockbrokers and pimps, huh? Well, THAT'S a shame.
I'm taking a few minutes to mourn the obsoletion of the disc jockey. There was a time when I spun a few records and rambled late at night, back when FM was edgy and I was cool.
"Grandma, did you really used to talk on the radio and play those big vinyl record things?"
"Yes, baby."
I can't speak for everything on the list, but in general I would say that there is nothing that digital technology has replaced that has not meant a diminishment in the aesthetic quality of life. The only thing that digital technology offers in compensation is convenience. Email is less satisfying than letters; CDs (and even moreso MP3 players) less pleasurable than LPs; composing at the computer is less rewarding than writing or typing. Of course, I use email; I love being able to listen to CDs in my car; and if it weren't for being able to write at a computer I would be unemployed. But that doesn't prevent me from mourning the fact that I feel my life is diminished by the disappearance of many older, analog technologies. We live under the tyranny of convenience, and I think the best we can say for it is that it is a benevolent dictatorship.
I'd say the pr0n industry is alive and well, judging by the pop-up and sidebar ads I frequently see in unexpected places.
The US Postal Service was still in existence, last I saw. If anything, Internet shopping ought to be creating *more* business for them. I don't particularly see FedEx, UPS, and the soon-to-be-defunct DHL obsoleting the USPS anytime soon.
All of the listed industries are still in existence, though some have become more specialized or had to adapt away from their traditional ways.
Here at the hospital where I work, pneumatic tubes are still used to shuttle patient records from place to place, often between entire buildings. Once in a while I'll be down in the tunnels and hear a container go rattling by overhead or behind the walls. It gives me a little smile that the system--which was first installed in the 1920s--is still the most efficient way of getting records from one place to another. The move is on to entirely digitize the patient process, but there will always be paper records, from the ones the patients themselves bring from other hospitals to the century's worth stored in our archives.
Incidentally, today's word verification code happens to be the name of the town I live in, minus the leading "R".
The one thing about this list is that I am sure in their time, many of these industries also had a similar impact on existing trades.
I am sure the camera impacted traditional artists who would paint or draw scenes so others could see them. And the record player (or any recording of music) changed the way songs were passed on an learned. I am sure that even the typewriter displaced many scribes and caligraphers (is that a real word?).
Perhaps the thing that makes it seem more apocalyptic is that instead of separate devices to do all of these basic human things (communication, art, culture, learning, etc.) they are now being consolidated into one place: the computer (cellphone?).
While that consolidation does simplify some things, it makes it easier to get distracted.
Speaking of distracted, I am going to rant about email right now (seems appropriate - perhaps "stationary manufacturers" should be added to the list). When I first started using email, I did it more like letter writing. Longer emails spaced further apart. But somewhere along the way, they have gotten shorter and more frequent. And I am starting to feel like everyone just sort of expects lots of email all of the time (mine is up nearly all my waking hours on the computer and now cell phone). But I think quality is getting lost to quantity. It seems like one of those things that is hard to break out of.
And one last thought: the act of writing. Unlike many others who frequent this blog, I am not a "writer". But it seems like more and more ordinary people like myself are getting thrust into that role by posting comments on other's blogs. Sure, new voices are being heard, but surely this ic contributing to the decline of overall quality on the internet? This blog is not a good example, but I am sure you have all read other websites and the comments/reviews are crude and obnoxious. It just seems like sometimes you have to spend a lot of time wading through crap to get to the good stuff.
On a positive note, Seattle finally got its snow and it is a beautiful winter wonderland at the moment...
Interesting article. Much of the pressure of planned obsolescence is driven by marketing. If a tool is still usable, why discard it?
I might add that, along with manual typewriters, I write longhand via fountain pen, have two (yes, 2) rotary dial telephones in my house, both of which work (one is made of Bakelite, the dial escution label is from a hotel in Mexico) and I maintain a B/W silver gelatin chemical darkroom. Oh, and VCRs. I still have a S-VHS editing VCR setup, with which I still do all-analog home movie editing. And a cassette-tape based 4-track portastudio for audio work. They're all good; they're tools.
~Joe
Just the photography field's sway into "digital imaging" alone has claimed casualties among:
retouchers
photographers
darkroom technicians
film processors
photo-finishers
camera operators
photo equipment repairers
photo chemists
paste-up artists
I'm a living witness of this profession and life that once was, but am young enough to have had to switch careers.
But I still turn off lights reflexively before entering a room!
Let me say up front that I haven't read the article, but it should be noted that with the "demise" of analog tech amongst the general population there is often an explosion of growth at the high end of these technologies.
There will always be book collectors and bookstores and small, high quality presses. There will always be fine pen collectors paying more and more for pens. The best vinyl records and turntables in history are being produced right now. Vacuum tubes are used in high end amplifiers costing tens of thousands of dollars. Many (if not most) art photographers use film cameras. And mechanical watches are alive and well amongst a significant minority.
I don't know whether the continued improvement in quality of these analog technologies at the high end is worth the trade-off, but it is what we have bought. I think most people old enough to have used analog devices are largely convinced of their superiority, though there are indisputable advantages to digital, most notably convenience (we *are* having this possibly global discussion with unprecedented ease in the VIRTUAL world).
Nine times out of ten human beings will opt for convenience and economy over quality and expense. But there will always remain a passionate minority that champions the real, the palpable, the crafted technologies, if only because they are more pleasing to the eye, the ear and the soul.
Aaron, novelists may well be on that list, if the cell-phone fiction trend becomes mainstream (well, outside of Japan, where it is already so).
I love the thought of pneumatic tubes racing through the walls of an old building.
And rotary phones! I keep meaning to chase one down. I miss that sound.
Nup-- my thought on e-mail is this-- soon, it will be overtaken by real-time communications, so there is no anonymous delay to hide behind. Colleagues will be able to track you by GPS and video around the clock. There's my dystopian thought for the day.
Wait, Monda, tell us more about the stint as a DJ!
I was nervous reading that list that my profession would be listed (print graphic design). Somehow it still exists, though we all thought the web would swallow up print by now.
I still love reading the newspaper, though I've heard most of the critical news by the time I get a paper. It's a different experience than reading the news on the computer. To me it seems more relaxing. It's like comparing apples and oranges.
Another one for the list: I don't know what the heck it's called, but I remember going to a bank with my mom when I was a kid, and at the drive-up window there was this cannister where you stuck your money in, shoved the cannister in a cubby in the wall, and with a big whoosh, it sucked it into the building and on into your bank account somehow. Those were cool.
Dori (huh, same name as my wife, but different spelling), those bank things are a form of the pneumatic tubes I was talking about.
Today's word verification code: poutoids. Sounds like something you'd visit a pharmacist about.
Seattle is full of wimps, plain and simple. I had between 2-3 feet of snow to deal with. Dug out most of my drive before the guy with the plow showed up. (And yes, I was very happy to see him take down the 3 ft berm at the top of the road and go over the work I'd done on the drive.) The trees are still full of snow and it's solid snow the 10 miles down to the highway. Just once, I'd like to see it keep people from coming up to "play" in the woods. I saw that the day they had the blizzard warning. They shut down both highways in the Gorge, so I do hope they managed to get home somehow ;)
I have always agreed heartily with Steveareno's position that technology, for the most part, decreases our quality of life and our connection to one another.
But I have had a recent experience that has put a tiny crack in that perspective.
I video chatted for the first time with my 89-year-old grandma who lives 3,000 miles away and who, like many elder members of our society who have lost a spouse, is often lonely. We talk on the phone regularly and write letters back and forth, but nothing has compared to the pleasure she got from having a conversation face to face. It was beautiful.
So I remain faithful to my pen and paper, my typewriter, my moleskine, but I am slowly opening up to the wonders of technology (in moderation).
Thanks for the wonderful blog and all the thoughtful comments.
I don't know about turntables. I think they're making a sort of comeback. I have been able to buy two turntables brand new without any problem in the last two years. A company called Numark still makes them, and in fact, they include a feature that allows you to record your lp's digitally.
I am not so sure about bookstores, either. Admittedly, independent bookshops are vanishing, but the big stores like Barnes and Noble seem to be thriving. When I was a bookish adolescent in the late 1970's, I really did think that bookshops were becoming extinct. Perhaps some of you recall how bad it was, when the only new bookshops were places like Waldens or Daltons, and they sold almost more paperweights than they did books. In comparison, a place like B+N, with its huge selection and even foreign language sections, seems like paradise. In the 70's, you had to go to more specialized bookshops to find, say, Ezra Pound or Pessoa, and your town needed to be near enough to a major city or college. At Waldens, Shakespeare and Frost and Rod McKuen were the full poetry section. Oh, yes, I forgot---they also carried Jonathan Livingston Seagull. So, lament as we may the spread of chain stores, mainstream bookshops are actually not as bad as they used to be. In Germany, especially Berlin, bookshops are doing quite well, too. Not only do they sell vast selections of books in multiple languages, as well as all genres of music (imagine whole floors, each devoted to a different style: jazz, classical, spoken word...it boggles the mind...) but they also function as cultural centers where people meet to talk and write. I won't even get into their stationery sections or you'll all go berserk...
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