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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2021 13:09:23 GMT -5
For example, my youngest son has zero idea how to use a phone book or even why they exist. He's never had to use one. Surely he has opened one up, seen a name with a number next to it and could figure it out from there? Surely he understands we didn't always have internet?
Here's a hand crank. Go start the car. Surely just looking a the crank and the automobile you could figure out how to start the car. Surely you understand we didn't always have automatic ignition in automobiles. Or a card catalog in a library. Or a hand operated washing machine. Or... It is easy to assume people know what we take for granted. It's not always so. As tech makes things obsolete, people never learn how to use them or acquire the context to figure them out. It is however an assumption, and something we take for granted, which we fail to understand when it is not the norm because of our experience bias. We forget that ignorance is the norm, and learned behavior is the exception. If the behavior is not learned, the norm of ignorance is in place. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 21, 2021 13:40:43 GMT -5
For example, my youngest son has zero idea how to use a phone book or even why they exist. He's never had to use one. Surely he has opened one up, seen a name with a number next to it and could figure it out from there? Surely he understands we didn't always have internet?
Of course he understands we haven't always had the internet. He also understands we didn't always have cars, but he's never hitched up a team and taken the buggy to town. But, to my knowledge he's never opened a phone book because he's never had to do so. I can't imagine there's been one in the house since maybe 2010 which is the last time there was a land line in the house. Could he open up a phone book and figure it out? Yeah. He's a chemistry major getting As and Bs. Does he have a reason to do so? No. Which doesn't change the fact that anything written 50 years ago is inherently dated.
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Post by kirby101 on Sept 21, 2021 13:41:14 GMT -5
I think there is a chasm of difference between a book that has names in alphabetical order followed by numbers and a complicated mechanical set up.
You should be able to figure out a phone book after two pages.
A dial phone however....
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 21, 2021 13:43:46 GMT -5
I think there is a chasm of difference between a book that has names in alphabetical order followed by numbers and a complicated mechanical set up. You should be able to figure out a phone book after two pages.
A dial phone however.... For Pete's Sake, it was an example. Yes, he can figure it out...but why does he need to? It's dated "technology."
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Post by impulse on Sept 21, 2021 14:24:38 GMT -5
You can look at a phone book, probably figure out how to use it and why it might exist, and still find it incredibly out of touch with your lived experience and not want to read about it. Baking utensils like a hand-cranked non-electric mixer set look totally anachronistic to me. I can see how they are used, but why on earth would I?
A comic book where a character burns a CD of music would be equally dated to someone born post-2000. CD burners were new hot cutting edge tech that are now relics of a bybone era and are dated.
It doesn't make them inherently bad, but they're not relatable to the generation that grew up with all digital everything.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Sept 21, 2021 14:36:34 GMT -5
I actually like the wordiness of older comics. It makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth. Nowadays with $4 comics that contain as much plot as 2 pages of a novel it feels that most stories are very under-written. It's one of the reasons I don't mind Bendis as much as other people. Sure he's very decompressed, but since there's so much dialogue I'm not going to finish in 2 minutes and wonder where the rest of the story is. Dialogue almost always creates beats in a way 'and they fight and they fight' doesn't.
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Post by tarkintino on Sept 21, 2021 14:59:05 GMT -5
It doesn't make them inherently bad, but they're not relatable to the generation that grew up with all digital everything. I did not have to grow up in the Old West to find the era-specific struggles relatable. Life and the continuing threads of creation are not sectioned off by generation, and if they are, its due to the conscious, myopic beliefs of the creators (e.g., like some behind many 1990s comics, who were all about what they thought were trendy hairstyles, slang and expressions, often at the expense of other types of people...and that crap got old in the same decade).
By no means was I around during the Mafia wars of the 1920s and 30s, did not exist at the time of Prohibition or speakeasies, yet films about those subjects and produced in that era are still entertaining and the character situations understandable. Art would have died centuries ago, if every new generation completely cut off art of/from the former as being "archaic", "old" or "not relatable."
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Post by impulse on Sept 21, 2021 15:04:11 GMT -5
There's an indeterminate fuzzy line somewhere between something being dated versus it being a period-piece. It's like how something goes from new to old to antique. It's not everything and it's not the same amount of time for each thing, but the phenomenon exists.
But there is a difference between a tale from another time and something that is just old now.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 21, 2021 15:09:05 GMT -5
There's an indeterminate fuzzy line somewhere between something being dated versus it being a period-piece. It's like how something goes from new to old to antique. It's not everything and it's not the same amount of time for each thing, but the phenomenon exists. But there is a difference between a tale from another time and something that is just old now. I agree; when I see the word "dated" as a derogative term, I think of something that tried really hard to be contemporary and hasn't aged well at all (like Stan Lee's "hip" dialogs from the '60s and '70s) rather than just references to scratched records, phone booths or TV antennae.
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Post by kirby101 on Sept 21, 2021 15:15:16 GMT -5
I grew up watching movies made decades before I was born. The idea that if something did not occur while you were alive, or lived with, is boring or not worthwhile is terribly limiting.
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Post by impulse on Sept 21, 2021 15:22:18 GMT -5
The idea that if something did not occur while you were alive, or lived with, is boring or not worthwhile is terribly limiting. That is not what anyone is saying, though, obviously. Some of the best and most popular stories are from other times and eras. I think RR hit the nail on the head. It's one thing if something is clearly from a different era, but quite another if something tries really hard to be popular, current, or "with it". It becomes more obvious when society actually takes a different turn and what tried to be hip is glaringly out of place. It also happens when something uses stuff that tends to be fads, e.g. hair styles, clothes, slang, then-current political climate, etc. It can also be hard to predict what is here to stay versus what is a fad, but it is what it is. I am sure the fad thing is more glaringly obvious with something like ongoing mainstream comics, too, where instead of taking place in a particular time, it's just a pervasive "current" ongoing thing, but what is current changes.
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Post by tartanphantom on Sept 21, 2021 15:52:23 GMT -5
Baking utensils like a hand-cranked non-electric mixer set look totally anachronistic to me. I can see how they are used, but why on earth would I?
It doesn't make them inherently bad, but they're not relatable to the generation that grew up with all digital everything.
"I mean, You try to get butter to melt at 15 degrees below zero..."
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Post by berkley on Sept 21, 2021 17:52:37 GMT -5
I grew up watching movies made decades before I was born. Yeah, I think most people in their 50s or so and older had that experience and I'm really grateful we did. But I think this changed in ther 1980s when videotapes and VCR machines became widespread. From then on, people could see new movies pretty much when they wanted, so there was less incentive for them to watch old ones on tv like our generation used to do when we were growing up. So I think after a certain point, young people didn't have that same exposure and thus didn't develop the same kind of open-mindedness towards older movies and tv shows.
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Post by profh0011 on Sept 21, 2021 18:26:46 GMT -5
A few weeks back, one of my home care clients asked me, "Don't you watch anything NEW?"
I've been buying (and ENJOYING THE HELL OUT OF) a number of SILENT films, several of which are from other countries.
I've also just gotten 3 films from the 1930s that also came from other countries, so, like the silents, I had to READ the subtitles on those, too.
One of them was one of the FUNNIEST films I've seen all year.
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Post by profh0011 on Sept 21, 2021 18:31:15 GMT -5
For example, my youngest son has zero idea how to use a phone book or even why they exist. He's never had to use one. His friends give them his number and he programs it in to his phone. On the rare occasion he feels he needs to call a business he Googles the number. The very concept is dated. One of my most prized posessions, which I've had since June 1970 and is STILL sitting on the shelf right here in my room, is my American Heritage DICTIONARY of the English Language.
I have to admit, I LOVE being able to look stuff up ONLINE. It's fast, it's easy, it's convenient, etc. etc. etc.
But every so often, certain definitions of words (or synonyms, etc.) don't come up easily online. I recall a few months ago I had the occasion to stand up, walk around the room, and grab my Dictionary. And, it amused me that while heading back to my chair, I said to the book, "AHH, MY OLD FRIEND!"
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