D e f i n e I n s a n i t y . . .
Friday, February 15
So for all intents and purposes the writer's strike is over. Its a beautiful thing, though we've had to deal with a vast amount of crap to get here, the majority of new shows delayed/incomplete, returning shows stopped after only a few episodes. Grey's Anatomy had just over a month break, then finally 1 new episode and now its off air till fall, grr. Ugly Betty just disappeared. The light at the end of the tunnel is mainly for House and Lost, though House has already aired its canned 3 episodes for the season, they will be putting out a complete season post haste, meanwhile Lost had 7 episodes in the can, so the season will have little or no hang time for a few more episodes to be written/filmed.
Friday, January 18
Back on the topic of consumerism. Remember the model of the "house of the future" like 10 years ago? The one where everything is touch screens, automated, and interactive video?
Yea.. so now it seems that was really the model for shopping. There is this whole idea that there has been some quite phase shift from people benefiting from shopping online, and teenyboppers that send pix of their outfits to friends using the cell phones they are way too young to have... to doing all our shopping in SecondLife because its more convenient, and offering video chat in dressing rooms (who else sees alot of negative potential there?) to get your friends opinion via video iPod.
In my mind, it may improve ease of consumption, but in the end it is about the same ridiculous leap that was made when people thought ten years ago, that people today would all have touch screens on their fridge with internet access to order whatever groceries they were out of. If anything, because we are in such a depressed economy technological advance of that kind has lagged, so at one time it may have been possible, but in todays economical climate those kinds of revolutionary leaps that facilitate consumption just aren't going to happen. Its kind of an ironic vicious circle, our economy is destroyed because of the fact that consumerism peaks around unnecessary luxury items, and because of that we can't enact the change needed to produce revolutionary products and ideas because the economy isn't receptive to them, but in turn the only innovation is focused back on luxury items rather than useful things.
Yea.. so now it seems that was really the model for shopping. There is this whole idea that there has been some quite phase shift from people benefiting from shopping online, and teenyboppers that send pix of their outfits to friends using the cell phones they are way too young to have... to doing all our shopping in SecondLife because its more convenient, and offering video chat in dressing rooms (who else sees alot of negative potential there?) to get your friends opinion via video iPod.
In my mind, it may improve ease of consumption, but in the end it is about the same ridiculous leap that was made when people thought ten years ago, that people today would all have touch screens on their fridge with internet access to order whatever groceries they were out of. If anything, because we are in such a depressed economy technological advance of that kind has lagged, so at one time it may have been possible, but in todays economical climate those kinds of revolutionary leaps that facilitate consumption just aren't going to happen. Its kind of an ironic vicious circle, our economy is destroyed because of the fact that consumerism peaks around unnecessary luxury items, and because of that we can't enact the change needed to produce revolutionary products and ideas because the economy isn't receptive to them, but in turn the only innovation is focused back on luxury items rather than useful things.
