Neomania

[Gonnagle]

Dear Forum,

Neomania has been described as, the mania for all things shiny and new.

Roses thread, what have you bought that you wouldn't be without?

Interesting thread, lets start with Rhiannons ( so you can better understand where I am coming from ) wood burning stove, they have been around since day dot, it works, gives off heat and it can be used for cooking.

Shaker loves his books, me to, I see no appeal in these new electronic reading machines, holding a book is sort of reassuring to me, he also likes his music but doesn't mention how he plays his music, I would love to think he is a vinyl man vinyl is having a bit of renewal at the moment.

Berational mentions his bike, something else that has stood the test of time, more and more people are taking up cycling, for all sorts of reasons, climate change, health and economical reasons.

Then we have the flip side ( well for me ) iphones, hudl, kindle, new fangled inventions, mobile phones ( for me ) are a very poor cousin to the old fashioned landline as a means of communication.


In an uncertain world what things do you think will still be around in a hundred years time, do you think that newspapers will ever be a thing of the past, will public libraries be a thing of the past or maybe just somewhere where you log on, book shops are they doomed.

Gonnagle.

[jeremyp]

Then we have the flip side ( well for me ) iphones, hudl, kindle, new fangled inventions, mobile phones ( for me ) are a very poor cousin to the old fashioned landline as a means of communication.

In every practical aspect, a mobile phone is superior to a landline, so much so that I don't know why people bother with land lines anymore.

The reason for this "neomania" of yours is because new things are generally better than the old things they replace. If anything, you should be questioning why people still like old things.

I do like some old things but not because they are good, I like them  for nostalgic reasons or because they embody some clever bit of engineering that is not necessary in the digital age.

For instance, I like vinyl (as a medium for music reproduction, not as a covering on the roof of a Ford Cortina) but this is because the idea of extracting sound by pulling a needle down a record groove is deceptively simple, but the practicalities of doing it have led to some beautiful and elegant pieces of engineering.

On the other hand, try listening to your turntable on a train. Give me my iPhone any day.

[Outrider]

Personally, I like the juxtaposition of the two - http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/39-amazing-steampunk-computer-mods-200834

O.

[Udayana]

In every practical aspect, a mobile phone is superior to a landline, so much so that I don't know why people bother with land lines anymore.
...

Possibly because most of us are paying for the facility, irrespective of use?

[jeremyp]

Possibly because most of us are paying for the facility, irrespective of use?

I have a land line, but there isn't a working phone connected to it. The only reason I have a land line is to put a number in the box on forums that insist on a home phone number and my Internet package requires me to have one.

[Gordon]

To be honest I don't care for the complex mobile phones that do a gazillion things: I used to have a simple one that had actual keys but not any more. Apparently, according to my daughter, mine is 'straight forward' compared to hers but I preferred the old black one from a while back.

All I want a phone for is to speak to people (when I'm forced to, that is, and there is no alternative). I even find texting a hassle, since my inclination is to try to spell and punctuate properly which means changing the on-screen stuff - and even then I touch the wrong keys since they are too small. Then there is that thing that tries to guess what it is you are typing, so what I see isn't what I'm trying to type: I'm told I can turn this off but it seems to just turn itself on again just to annoy me, and then it makes strange noises now and then whenever it feels like it.

Of course, to make matters worse, I'm instructed by Mrs G and my daughters to 'always take my phone' when I go out in case they need to contact me, so they phone me when I riding a motorbike, or when the horses are approaching the final furlong, only to ask me where I am and what I'm doing: I'm 63 years old for crying out loud!

It is probably an age thing. 

[jeremyp]

To be honest I don't care for the complex mobile phones that do a gazillion things: I used to have a simple one that had actual keys but not any more.

Yes, I used to say the same thing, but the convenience of being able to access the Internet anywhere and things like Apple Pay and electronic ticketing have persuaded me otherwise.

All I want a phone for is to speak to people (when I'm forced to, that is, and there is no alternative). I even find texting a hassle, since my inclination is to try to spell and punctuate properly which means changing the on-screen stuff

There's no law that says you can't use proper spelling and punctuation in your texts. In fact, now that the interface does not consist of just a numeric keypad, there's no excuse not to.

Of course, to make matters worse, I'm instructed by Mrs G and my daughters to 'always take my phone' when I go out in case they need to contact me, so they phone me when I riding a motorbike, or when the horses are approaching the final furlong, only to ask me where I am and what I'm doing: I'm 63 years old for crying out loud!

It's not compulsory to answer your phone.

[Outrider]

To be honest I don't care for the complex mobile phones that do a gazillion things: I used to have a simple one that had actual keys but not any more. Apparently, according to my daughter, mine is 'straight forward' compared to hers but I preferred the old black one from a while back.

All I want a phone for is to speak to people (when I'm forced to, that is, and there is no alternative).

Ironically, that's the one thing my mobile phone does that I don't want it to do - I can't stand speaking to people on the phone. Text, iMessage, various apps that run on it, the camera/video capacity... all fantastic.

Of course, to make matters worse, I'm instructed by Mrs G and my daughters to 'always take my phone' when I go out in case they need to contact me, so they phone me when I riding a motorbike, or when the horses are approaching the final furlong, only to ask me where I am and what I'm doing: I'm 63 years old for crying out loud!

It is probably an age thing.

I don't think so. I'm 42 and Mrs O. is insistent that I take my phone - "What if the car breaks down?", as though that inevitably resulted in instantaneous death for anyone whose car failed on them prior to 2003...

O.

[jeremyp]

I don't think so. I'm 42 and Mrs O. is insistent that I take my phone - "What if the car breaks down?", as though that inevitably resulted in instantaneous death for anyone whose car failed on them prior to 2003...

Before the mobile phone you had a reasonable chance of finding an operational telephone box within walking distance.

[Gordon]

It's not compulsory to answer your phone.

Sadly, Jeremy, aside from my claiming I'm motorcycling, any failure to answer prompts the Spanish Inquisition to ask questions about why I didn't answer: so if the bike is in the garage there is no hiding place.

[jeremyp]

Before the mobile phone you had a reasonable chance of finding an operational telephone box within walking distance.

Not that cars ever really break down anymore, another example of the new being better than the old.

[jeremyp]

Sadly, Jeremy, aside from my claiming I'm motorcycling, any failure to answer prompts the Spanish Inquisition to ask questions about why I didn't answer: so if the bike is in the garage there is no hiding place.

Have the phone answer automatically with a prerecorded message "Hello, dear... oh, wait, the battery is about to run out GTG, sorry"

[Shaker]

Shaker loves his books, me to, I see no appeal in these new electronic reading machines, holding a book is sort of reassuring to me, he also likes his music but doesn't mention how he plays his music, I would love to think he is a vinyl man vinyl is having a bit of renewal at the moment.

I have hundreds upon hundreds of CDs and some vinyl - in the latter case I've some immensely precious vinyl (I'm thinking especially of some Hendrix and some John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) simply not to be had in any other format. To this day I still prefer a CD over an mp3, the bare product, because for all their limitations a CD is essentially a scaled-down vinyl LP. Vinyl devotees love the fact that an album can have amazing cover artwork - many of them modern classics - and in some cases can have extra information such as the lyrics to songs, stream-of-consciousness ramblings by the artist, photographs ... I have some in-their-day expensive and irreplaceable CD box sets containing so much written information that it constitutes in effect a small(ish) book. Downloading an mp3 gives you the skeleton - the music itself - but I like flesh on the bones, personally.

As for books:

I've used a Kindle (belonging to others) and they're all right I suppose - I have the Kindle app on my phone for very occasional use. I can see how electronic devices can be immensely useful on holiday, for example, where you can take one small, slim electronic device away with umpteen books on it rather than a heavy and cumbersome caseful of books.

But they're not really for me. I'm unregenerately old-fashioned about this; a book is a physical, tactile beauty (at their best); the downsides - price; that they take up space - don't really wash with me. Given my tastes, the overwhelming majority of my books are bought pre-loved through the usual suspect and a great many of them cost very little indeed and often no more than a penny. I'm in the position of ideally needing to move house to another, bigger home to house all the books (rather than have so many of them in cardboard boxes stuck anywhere and everywhere) and am very glad to be so.

A houseful of books - or not - is indicative of a person's interests and by extension their character. I have a (to many no doubt bad) habit that if I visit somebody I've never met before and see a well-stocked bookcase in their home, I tend to be drawn as though by magnetic forces toward the books when I'm supposed to be making small talk.

A human being can doubtless exist on water and a range of pills containing all the vitamins and minerals that good health requires alone; but the senses that add so much to the experience of eating rather than bare nutrition - sight; smell; sound; touch; taste - would remain unsatisfied. Electronic music and electronic reading are bald, utilitarian nutrition - they do the necessary job and no more; real books and real music on the other hand are real food and proper eating. A good book is a sensory experience in the whole sense of the word that no gadget can ever replicate. Good paper is beautiful; good binding is beautiful; new or old, books can smell interesting, look beautiful and feel wonderful. Electronic reading devices have their uses for those who are interested, but I'm not, really. Nobody will ever press a flower inside the non-existent pages of a Kindle or have a lover write a hand-written message inside one. The beauty of entire afternoons in new places (or old places) haunting musty old second-hand bookshops filled floor to ceiling and wall to wall with old and pre-loved books, stumbling across hand-written inscriptions and comments from fifty or even a hundred years ago ... no thanks, Kindle and your cohorts. You're not for me

[Gordon]

A really lovely post that is, Shaker: I can almost smell the mustiness of the bookshop!

[Rhiannon]

Agreed, Gordon. 

[Nearly Sane]

Elsewhere was just discussing Tristram Shandy, not sure how that would begin to work as an ebook. The medium is the message in that case.

[Rhiannon]

My laptop doesn't really work well and I can't get on my iPad as much as I'd like. No smartphone, no internet. Both my iPad and my phone keep me connected and enable me to forge new connections. It's opened up worlds to me that I would never have encountered otherwise. I'm not going to knock it. 

[jeremyp]

I have hundreds upon hundreds of CDs and some vinyl - in the latter case I've some immensely precious vinyl (I'm thinking especially of some Hendrix and some John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) simply not to be had in any other format. To this day I still prefer a CD over an mp3, the bare product, because for all their limitations a CD is essentially a scaled-down vinyl LP. Vinyl devotees love the fact that an album can have amazing cover artwork - many of them modern classics - and in some cases can have extra information such as the lyrics to songs, stream-of-consciousness ramblings by the artist, photographs ... I have some in-their-day expensive and irreplaceable CD box sets containing so much written information that it constitutes in effect a small(ish) book. Downloading an mp3 gives you the skeleton - the music itself - but I like flesh on the bones, personally.

As for books:

I've used a Kindle (belonging to others) and they're all right I suppose - I have the Kindle app on my phone for very occasional use. I can see how electronic devices can be immensely useful on holiday, for example, where you can take one small, slim electronic device away with umpteen books on it rather than a heavy and cumbersome caseful of books.

But they're not really for me. I'm unregenerately old-fashioned about this; a book is a physical, tactile beauty (at their best); the downsides - price; that they take up space - don't really wash with me. Given my tastes, the overwhelming majority of my books are bought pre-loved through the usual suspect and a great many of them cost very little indeed and often no more than a penny. I'm in the position of ideally needing to move house to another, bigger home to house all the books (rather than have so many of them in cardboard boxes stuck anywhere and everywhere) and am very glad to be so.

A houseful of books - or not - is indicative of a person's interests and by extension their character. I have a (to many no doubt bad) habit that if I visit somebody I've never met before and see a well-stocked bookcase in their home, I tend to be drawn as though by magnetic forces toward the books when I'm supposed to be making small talk.

A human being can doubtless exist on water and a range of pills containing all the vitamins and minerals that good health requires alone; but the senses that add so much to the experience of eating rather than bare nutrition - sight; smell; sound; touch; taste - would remain unsatisfied. Electronic music and electronic reading are bald, utilitarian nutrition - they do the necessary job and no more; real books and real music on the other hand are real food and proper eating. A good book is a sensory experience in the whole sense of the word that no gadget can ever replicate. Good paper is beautiful; good binding is beautiful; new or old, books can smell interesting, look beautiful and feel wonderful. Electronic reading devices have their uses for those who are interested, but I'm not, really. Nobody will ever press a flower inside the non-existent pages of a Kindle or have a lover write a hand-written message inside one. The beauty of entire afternoons in new places (or old places) haunting musty old second-hand bookshops filled floor to ceiling and wall to wall with old and pre-loved books, stumbling across hand-written inscriptions and comments from fifty or even a hundred years ago ... no thanks, Kindle and your cohorts. You're not for me

Hmm, for me, the essence of a book is the words written in it. Everything else is nostalgic ephemera. There were probably people claiming that the new fangled wood pulp didn't have the texture and smell of proper parchment or that arranging the pages in codex form interrupted the flow that you get from reading a proper scroll.

There's a couple of areas where I kind of agree with you. I like the packaging you get with proper LP records and I love browsing bookshops but for me these are separate activities to listening to the music or reading the book. A friend of mine who buys a lot of vinyl tells me that you often get a coupon included with the record so you can download an mp3 of the same album. I'd like to see something equivalent for books so I can have the benefit of the physical object and the convenience of the electronic object.

However, if I had to choose between listening to my music on the train and having some nice album art I go for listening to my music on the train because in the end it's the music that matters.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Shaker,

Perfect, just perfect ( say it in a Pa Larkin voice  )

Dear Jeremyp,

Not that cars ever really break down anymore, another example of the new being better than the old.

Within a mile radius of me there is about 20 car mechanic businesses and they are all doing brisk business, give me an old triumph herald anyday instead of these new fangled cars which practically drive themselves.

I wonder, in a hundred years from now will car fanatics  want to collect the latest ford fiesta

Gonnagle.

[jeremyp]

Dear Shaker,

Perfect, just perfect ( say it in a Pa Larkin voice  )

Dear Jeremyp,

Within a mile radius of me there is about 20 car mechanic businesses and they are all doing brisk business, give me an old triumph herald anyday instead of these new fangled cars which practically drive themselves.

These car mechanic businesses are more for the Triumph Heralds than the modern cars.

I

[Sriram]

Hi Gonnagle,

I think the problem is not with specific gadgets. Some old ones are good...some new ones are good. Everything new does not catch on. Everything old is not thrown away. Some of them are modified and reinvented.

The real problem is with change. I know change is inevitable....but the pace of change in recent decades has been phenomenal and the fact that many of us born in the 1950's (and earlier) can actually keep up, is remarkable.  The changes we have seen from our childhood days to now should be driving people mad....but fortunately it isn't (in most cases).

Adjusting to these changes within such short time spans is what creates the stress.....though most of us manage very well.

Besides the technology and gadgets...its adjusting to the change in values, beliefs and knowledge during the last 6 decades that can be even more stressful.

Many youngsters don't know what we have been through. 

Cheers.

Sriram

[floo]

Whilst I am not sentimental about objects and will bung them out when I consider them past their sell by date, I think some of the latest technology is too smart for its own good. For instance, I think we managed fine without mobile phones, which I dislike, I only carry mine when I am driving. It is always switched off and no one, not even my kids, has the number. I have no wish to be in contact 24/7.

The latest crazy nonsense, in my not so humble opinion, is driverless cars, YE GODS! If the technology is anything like that of Sat Navs, which can lead people astray BIG TIME, heaven help us!

[Hope]

I do like some old things but not because they are good, I like them  for nostalgic reasons or because they embody some clever bit of engineering that is not necessary in the digital age.

For instance, I like vinyl (as a medium for music reproduction, not as a covering on the roof of a Ford Cortina) but this is because the idea of extracting sound by pulling a needle down a record groove is deceptively simple, but the practicalities of doing it have led to some beautiful and elegant pieces of engineering.

On the other hand, try listening to your turntable on a train. Give me my iPhone any day.

Vinyl is a good example where I think practicality and quality compete.  Music from CDs and the like is often the poor relation in this respect, as it lacks the extremes of tone, which isn't so true of vinyl.

[Hope]

Everything old is not thrown away. Some of them are modified and reinvented.

Tools With A Mission is a good example of this.  We have had tools that are already nigh on 100 years old come through the workshop, perhaps a tad rusty; but a bit of cleaning and TLC makes them as good as new.  The steel is better quality than most 'ordinary' modern ones; they often don't need electricity which can be useful even here in the UK; etc.

[Udayana]

lol .. good troll Hope!

(vinyl vs CD)