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Whats everyone reading?

Started by Paul faplad Finch, 30 March, 2009, 10:04:36 PM

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TordelBack

Quote from: Mikey on 08 February, 2010, 04:23:20 PM
Fair enough - not much change from the late 20th C, but jeebus! it's a extremely different from when I was a nipper in the '70s & 80's.

Aye, but  that's over 30+ years, and really a lot of consumer technology.  On a bigger scale, how different was Europe in 1890 and 1925?  (from Bismarck to Mein Kampf, or Van Gogh to Television, on the way taking in Duke Ellington, women's suffrage, flappers, and a World War), I'm not disputing huge technological change or geometric changes in computing cost/power ratios, but surely the changes in people's lives over that period were far greater than the arrival of the Internet and mobile phones 1975-2010?  It's the argument that we folk of the 21st are more exposed to change, more able to deal with it, and less liable to 'future shock' than our 19th/20th C ancestors - I don't buy it.

Mikey

Quote from: TordelBack on 08 February, 2010, 04:44:52 PM
It's the argument that we folk of the 21st are more exposed to change, more able to deal with it, and less liable to 'future shock' than our 19th/20th C ancestors - I don't buy it.

I'm with you there. As I understand it, the point about an increase in pace is that the new thing now comes along before you're used to the old one - future shock. As an aside, I think I'm now offically 'getting on'; I can't work out how to get my video to work  :-\

History isn't my strong suit, but the changes you're talking about didn't take off so immediately did they? Or if they did, did they come into everyone's life with equal rapidity?

M.  
To tell the truth, you can all get screwed.

Kerrin

Quote from: Bolt-01 on 08 February, 2010, 11:03:42 AM
Having 'finally' finished slogging through EMPYRION (which I found to be in real need of a good editing!)

It did drag on a bit, didn't it. I just recently reread "Hyperion" but baulked at tackling "Empyrion" again. 

I'm reading "A Clash of Kings" at the moment, thanks to the squaxx who recommended this series, great fun. And by the bed is also "Fafrd and the Gray Mouser" GN with Mike Mignola on pencils. I'm going to have to read the novels after I've finished it, there's some brilliantly dry byplay in the dialogue.

House of Usher

Quote from: Mikey on 08 February, 2010, 05:00:39 PM
As I understand it, the point about an increase in pace is that the new thing now comes along before you're used to the old one

Well, I don't get used to anything, nor do I really 'buy into' anything new. I don't have time to absorb new consumer crap as it comes along: I tend to leapfrog onto whatever is about to become obsolete once it gets down to the £20-100 price bracket. Having an unattractive consumer profile makes me pretty much immune to 'future shock.' So does being chimeric and adaptable from a skills point of view: I never have the right skills set to have a proper career or earn decent money, but I'm sufficiently skilled, qualified and adaptable never to have to worry about being out of work for long, so future shock doesn't come rushing round the corner leaving me suddenly obsolete.

Quote from: TordelBack on 08 February, 2010, 04:44:52 PM
On a bigger scale, how different was Europe in 1890 and 1925?  (from Bismarck to Mein Kampf, or Van Gogh to Television, on the way taking in Duke Ellington, women's suffrage, flappers, and a World War

Surprised TordelBack's list ommitted the motorcar, but I suppose you can't have everything.  :)
STRIKE !!!

TordelBack

Quote from: House of Usher on 08 February, 2010, 08:40:12 PM
Surprised TordelBack's list ommitted the motorcar, but I suppose you can't have everything.  :)

I considered it, but cars in prototypical form were chugging around in the 1880's, and actually in production in 1890 - and I figured if I was going stretch a point to give TV a 1925 birthday (the year of Logie Baird's first successful transmission) it wasn't fair to also be pretending cars were a post-1890 innovation.   Which compromise actually speaks to Mikey's point - how widespread and simultaneous were these kinds of changes?  It's a good question, and maybe a real difference with today's situation.  

House of Usher

#980
Quote from: TordelBack on 08 February, 2010, 09:42:09 PM
cars in prototypical form were chugging around in the 1880's, and actually in production in 1890

E.M. Forster was still bemoaning the dramatic change the motorcar had made to life as late as 1910, though. And he was born in 1879, so would barely have known 10 years before their existence.
STRIKE !!!

TordelBack

#981
Quote from: House of Usher on 08 February, 2010, 10:12:01 PM
E.M. Forster was still bemoaning the dramatic change the motorcar had made to life as late as 1910, though.

No question, it was a huge change in the 1890-1925 period - and far more relevant than my conceit that TV had impinged on people's lives by 1925, when really it hadn't (just yet).  

I suppose my real objection here is a deep-seated dislike of arguments that assert the superior abilities or capacities of contemporary peoples - it's one end of the road that starts with giants building megalithic tombs and aliens building the pyramids.  Folk in the past were different from people in the present in the lives they led and the ways they viewed the world, but they were just as canny, and just as intellectually flexible (of course also just as cruel, stupid and gullible).  I'm arguing that numerous rapid changes are nothing new, and well within the capacities of people of all eras to absorb and deal with.

I'm also wildly off-topic.

JOE SOAP

Didn't neanderthals have bigger brains and bodies?, they didn't last long.

TordelBack

Quote from: Garageman on 08 February, 2010, 10:25:52 PM
Didn't neanderthals have bigger brains and bodies?, they didn't last long.

I refuse to rise to your bait, Garageman!







(A minimum of 100,000 years is quite a long time)

Cthulouis

They had shorter, stockier bodies, its presumed to be a surface area thing.

At Christmas I got into an argument with a guy who claimed Leonardo Da Vinci was born "ahead of his time". The fact that I was pissed out of my head prevented me from 1) walking away, and 2) providing an articulate argument against his point.

I woke up the next morning knowing that I, 1) must have seemed a it of a tw*t, and 2) that I was bloody well right.

JOE SOAP

Quote from: TordelBack on 08 February, 2010, 10:29:20 PM


I refuse to rise to your bait, Garageman!







(A minimum of 100,000 years is quite a long time)


Puny Sapien.

House of Usher

Why did I read that as 'Leonardo diCaprio'?  ::)

I'm now imagining the sprout-faced boy actor, born into his proper epoch, going to school in a bacofoil space-suit and eating rehydrated food in pill form for dinner, prepared by a robot. In 'The Jetsons.'
STRIKE !!!

JOE SOAP

Quote from: House of Usher on 08 February, 2010, 10:55:30 PM
Why did I read that as 'Leonardo diCaprio'?  ::)




cos you're light on your feet.

Mikey

Quote from: Garageman on 08 February, 2010, 10:25:52 PM
Didn't neanderthals have bigger brains and bodies?, they didn't last long.

But they had wee wangers. Died of shame when Cro-Mikey Man showed up.Ask Tordelback, he knows.

M.
To tell the truth, you can all get screwed.

IAMTHESYSTEM

The Spy who came in from the cold-John Le Carre. Got the new Stephen King Under the dome in hardback. Looking forward to that one having seen Salem's Lot again on the Horror Channel.
"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."

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