I’ve had a social media connection app on my website for a long time… and it’s been non-functional for a long time too. I have tried 4 different ‘auto-post’ plug-ins so far and not a single one has worked as advertised. They are uniformly terrible.
This is one of the pitfalls so many creators run into. I am NOT a web developer. I am NOT a coder, programmer nor an IT professional. I have NO desire to be any of those things, and yet if I want my own content to be accessible I have to spend time working on things like this. The more I try to make things work here and they continue to fail, the more and more angry I get. I despise working with these things. If I were independently wealthy I would hire somebody. As the kids these days say, “Thanks, I hate it.”
Social media is still a thing. Failbook is hated, but is still the dominant platform for most people to connect on. There are a dozen others out there – but I just don’t have the time nor the energy to deal with them.
I suppose I’ll have to just commit to doing this the old fashioned way and post a link manually when I want to remind people that I do in fact still blog from time to time.
I once heard a very famous author state that he wanted nothing to do with the internet. He based this (I vaguely recall) on the idea that people would then be able to go back, digging into past comments or opinions he had posted from years ago, dragging them out and trying to judge them by some current standard. It was a prescient commentary from a science fiction author. We are now seeing what can happen when people go digging into the past, looking for any scrap of conversation made by (fill in person of choice) in years gone by. Once on the internet, out in public forever… I try to be mindful of this. Part of this past author’s comments were based around the idea that a person can learn, change and grow. The things that once were a passionate position may have been challenged and defeated. Education can happen. Changes in how a person lives, works, acts or presents themselves are common. This is true of anyone.
It’s also true that technology, truly successful technology, will find it’s way into your life. What was once edgy and new will move into the realm of the commonplace. Exceptional will become expected. Delivery methods of said technology will become streamlined and efficient. I place e-reader (Kindle specifically) in this category.
This amused me
I saw that cartoon and it made me wonder how my opinions on certain things have aged. So I went digging (I am in no way known or popular enough to have people trying to dig things up on me). I was fearful that when I went to look at my posted blog comments they would contain the sort of statements that seem outlandish or desperately funny (or worse).
I was most shocked to discover that it has been 10 years since I first wrote about the Kindle. I got my first e-reader back at the end of 2010. It was a stand alone device. I remember my own hesitance toward the device. I occasionally argued against them. I didn’t like certain aspects, but the convenience very quickly won out. In the decade since the stand alone device has merged into phones and tablet tech. The e-book is ubiquitous and somehow the paperback survives. If you have a deep seeded need for nostalgia, you can check out my original post HERE and then check out the follow up a few months later HERE. The second one would definitely be a different vibe today. I don’t think most people would have any issues letting somebody peruse their book collection, but I don’t know anyone that would unlock their device and just hand it over to a coworker to check out… but that’s a topic for another day I suspect.
What’s on your bookshelf right now? Is it virtual?
It’s been almost a decade since I moved off strictly paper and onto an e-reader platform. I’ve been writing about it for just as long – back when the Pretend Blog was a Live Journal page and not my own site (check it out if you’re into old news). I’ve long been considering what I want to have as part of a physical collection of things in my home and what I don’t have a desire to physically handle. There are some things that are inherently tactile, and those that are not. There are some that you’ll want to have a copy of, just to be sure you’ve always got access to that copy of it.
Books, and many other forms of entertainment media fall into this category. I’m going to tie books and movies and television together on this one as electronic media actually makes the same argument for a physical copy of something in each case. The most recent thing that has come up for debate is animation or films. Here in the digital age we (nominally) have access to all the media that has gone before. Remember a show from your childhood? Look it up and check it out. Want to watch an entire ‘season’ of a show without waiting? Binge it on Netflix. Have a tradition of watching something every year? Just flip on the TV and go! Right?
Well ~ that’s what’s gotten everyone’s attention right now. “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” will NOT be shown on network TV this year for the first time since 1966. That’s right – 54 years in a row and not this year. Television has been part of the American household for so many decades at this point that there are generations of people that have watched the same shows as part of their favorite holiday season. It is something they never miss.
They never miss until some massive corporation decides they want you to pay for it again and again rather than allowing the ‘payment’ to be in the form of watching advertising. Apple has decided they’re going to miss it this year. Sure, there’s some Byzantine way to give up some of your personal information and sign up for a “free” version of a service and watch the show on your computer – IF you can get the app to load right, if your internet is strong enough for streaming like that, if you have a device that allows more than one person at a time to watch comfortably, if you really feel like going through all that…
Not so much…
There’s this assumption that everyone is on board with paying for all these services and bending technology to their will in order to enjoy the chosen form of media. Then there’s the assumption that people will only want to see that when the company that has purchased the rights says it’s acceptable to see it. Then you will be able to see it, but only in the way or format that the company that purchased the rights deems acceptable. There are now content warnings in front of old movies. Smoking is listed under movie ratings now in case you don’t want your child to see that. They control and edit what version of the media you get to see.
It’s the way things are moving. I’m not entirely opposed to the way things are moving. I think there are a few things that border on the ludicrous, but the truly ridiculous generally resolves itself over time. What worries me is that people consider this loss of continuity in media to be the loss of their personal tradition. Wrapping up your tradition (happiness?) in something that belongs to others is dangerous.
It was Halloween season and we were down for good old scary movies. I wanted to show my daughter a great older movie the other day and was disappointed to discover that I didn’t actually own a copy. Fine, we’ll pull it up on a streaming service and watch it there. Only it’s now behind a pay wall. I can subscribe for an additional $5 per month OR I can buy a DVD copy off Amazon and have it shipped to me for about the same cost. There are times when owning a personal copy of something really matters. I don’t want to wait until some corporation decides it’s time to watch a movie. I want to allow our family traditions to grow and develop and continue without the influence of whatever is going on in the general media.
So I’ll be ordering a copy of ‘great pumpkin’ on DVD to be sure we can watch it when we want. I’ll get a copy of the movie that’s good enough to stick in my memory for 15+ years. I’ll be sure that when I want to watch something, read something, listen to something that I’ve got a copy here. Most of these things will still be digital, but they’ll be here when the time is right.
The longer I go, the more I accept that I enjoy doing many things on my own. I am clearly headed directly to the land of curmudgeon ~ however there can be something said for a shared experience. Having the musical Hamilton released on a streaming service lately brought that into focus for me. During these trying days of “shelter in place” and “social distance” to avoid the plague those shared experiences can be difficult to find. To enable that, some people have turned to technology. What did we do for Hamilton? A Watch Party.
You can’t have your friends over to watch a movie any more. So? Jump on your streaming service of choice and have a watch party… except.
I like the concept of the watch party for certain circumstances. Those circumstances are remarkably similar to when I’d actually like to go and see a movie with somebody… that is to say not very often. A watch party exacerbates the one thing I really hate about watching a movie with others. You’re listening intently in the middle of a deep and moving scene and the person next you says, “Wait. I thought she didn’t like that guy…” or “I think I missed something. What’s he doing that for?”.
Rage.
Just watch the movie. Nobody knows because we haven’t seen it before. Shut up and pay attention. Stop distracting me from my experience. NO, I don’t want to chat about it now, I’ll wait until the end thank you.
Now – If I’ve seen the movie in question before and we’d like to all watch it together to talk about various parts of the film, that’s fine. If it’s a goofy comedy and you’re tipping a couple of adult beverages back on a Saturday night and you want to share that with some friends, excellent plan.
Technology then becomes the barrier.
Are you all on the same streaming service? Are you all in the same region? Yes – services like Netflix change what they have to offer by region. Are you in the same time zone? My daughter is communicating with some students in other countries and they’re off our time by 6 hours. When can we all actually do this? Schedules are still a real thing, even if you can’t go out to do certain activities anymore. Technology is the main barrier here. What platform will you use for watching? Are you all on Discord? Oh, wait, I thought we were doing this through the Chrome app… But what about Facebook? Wait – I run my streaming service through a Roku, how does that work? I don’t want to sit at my computer screen when I have a large TV in a room with a comfy recliner. There are lots of folks out there making this work, but it is very dependent on shared tech and preferred method of consuming media. I suspect this shared preference will not be something that happens to me much as we go forward.
I am not opposed to the concept of the watch party. I don’t suspect I’ll find myself participating in many. I like to view a film and talk about it later, perhaps watching it again for a more nuanced view. Enjoy the entertainment for what it is. Get drawn in by a good story. Go along for the ride… tweet about it when you’re done. Your phone won’t miss you and ‘yousuckland’… I mean twitter, will be there when you’ve got time.
In the end, you could also try reading a good book and joining a group to chat about that. Those don’t seem to have changed as much as the movie going society.
When I put out my mini biography for
different publications part of that bio says, “author, artist, fan,
usually in that order”. There’s something about knocking together
words and attempting to tell a story that really works for me. I love
a good story. Thing is, my first love has always been creating art.
Art is by no means easy. Over the
course of my life I’ve heard a lot of people talk art down saying
things like, “my kid can splash paint around…” or “he just
crapped on canvas”. Art is subjective in the purest sense. Things
that I love, other people hate. Things I revile have been held up as
master works. It’s all still art. Some of it sells, some of it
languishes, some of it is created purely for the sake of making art –
never meant to be sold or reviewed but simply enjoyed by the creator
and those the creator chooses to share with.
I have attempted to create art for many years with varying levels of success. Some digital pieces live here on my web site (and should be updated). Some digital pieces go to the cover art for Watch The Skies (and many should be forgotten). Some pieces live in my sketch books and in my storage area only for me to reference. I am, on a good day, an amateur artist. On a good day. Most days I’m a savagely poor hack, an imitation of what an artist should be. I keep doing it because it was my first love, but for a very long time I have known the frustration of not being able to take the vision in my head and put it forward in a medium that conveys the right look or feel to others. It is frustrating, but I still take a swing at it regularly. You can’t get better if you don’t work at something.
In my professional life I mix the very
technical with the artistic on a daily basis. I interpret the designs
of napkin sketches and transform them into the reality of the built
environment. I use various computer programs to create what does not
exist and show it to others. It has taken more than two decades, but
I am finally reaching a point where I think the computer programs and
the knowledge I have of the built environment have reached a point
where I can actually create something truly artistic. I hope, after
much more practice to create something memorable.
As it turns out I am not the only person to be interested in this combining of art and technology. I have been meaning to get around to viewing a film called ‘Tim’s Vermeer’ for quite a while. Now that I have had the opportunity to see the film I would highly recommend digging up a copy of this someplace and taking a look if you’re interested in art or technology at all. The subject of the film became obsessed (there is no other word for what he did) with the look and make up of Vermeer‘s paintings. He contended there was some kind of technological aid this most famous of painters used. In order to gather as much proof as he possibly could, he attempted to reconstruct the method for creating a painting he thought was how Vermeer worked. It’s fascinating because when we think of technology we tend to tie the concept specifically with the ultra modern. This experiment is all conducted using methods that would have been available when Vermeer was working – around the year 1650. I was amazed to see the result and the rediscovery of technological innovation after more than 350 years.
If you’re at all interested in seeing what I’m talking about, the trailer for the film is here. As is frequently the case I found inspiration in this study of art. I’m off to attempt to create more art.
