Re: Heat Death of the Internet

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

I've never ordered from a restaurant online, I expect it's a big
city thing (in Australia, at least). I just searched for a local
place that does pizzas some nights and they don't even have a
website (there's a Facebook page, of course). I went to a fish and
chip place in a city a few years ago that was cash-only.

 
Maybe. I do have a plan, at some point in my life, to move to a smaller
city. Not yet, but maybe once I do, I might experience the same thing with
a bit of luck. ;)

I wouldn't expect the situation to last forever, probably just a lag
behind the trend that's set in the big cities.

Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.

 
You do have a point about scratches. When it comes to CD:s I know an
audiophile who swears by them. Some love their LP:s, some their CD:s, and
I read that casettes are making a comeback.

Though more than any of those I listen to broadcast radio, and
that's the one old audio technology that the general public doesn't
seem to get nostalgic about. The distinction between broadcast
radio and internet radio is being deliberately blurred by
broadcasters, but why would I pay an ISP to get content that's on
the air for free?

To my ears (pun intended) it almost seems like it is no longer about the
audio, but instead some kind of nostalgic childhood feeling that
"overrides" the pure audio to persuade the person that _this is it_.

There was an accidentally insightful clip in a TV news report about
some vaguely-related music industry story that I saw a while ago
(again on broadcast TV, not the internet, somewhere between the ads
telling me to use the internet). A trendy-looking hipster type was
saying how he likes his vinyl because the music just sounds so much
clearer than on his ear phones! Presumably the ear phones are
Bluetooth ones connected to his phone, while I guess his record
player has at least normal speakers, and in a display of extreme
ignorance he attributes the difference in sound quality to the
playback medium rather than the speakers.

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