Those were the days, my friends

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by niwell

I played a lot of Sim City as a kid - the original was fun but really got into it with Sim City 2000 where I would try and make things as realistic as possible. Even moreso with Sim City 3000. Of course you couldn't get all the way there (Sim City 4 with lots of fan made downloads was the closest) but I would try!

word. I spent thousands of hours playing SimCity 2000 (a fucking lot of time on this one), then SimCity 3000, then SimCity 4000.

And Civilization II,, III, IV...

[MolsonExport]

I wouldn't complain if Spielberg had made three more Indiana Jones movies, back when Harrison Ford could still pick idols up off the floor and Shia Labeef didn't exist.

Absofuckinglutely. I loved the old IJ movies with Harrison Ford. The one with Shita LaPoulet really sucked. Crystal skulls and nuclear refrigerators?

[MolsonExport]

God, I really miss going to record stores and spending hours just perusing through the back collection of whatever groups I was into at that time (firstly Disco and New Wave...yeah, I am that old; then Classical music, then the great 60s stuff like the Beatles/Stones/CSNY/Simon&Garfunkle, etc., then a big right turn into Punk Rock and Alternative, then a deep, deep dive into just about everything from the 1970s, from ABBA to Led Zeppelin (and I do mean everything in between),....

fuck, a lot of the albums of the late 1960s-1970s were really, really good. You'd put on the record, listen to the WHOLE SIDE, then turn it over, and do the same on the other side. I discovered so much great deep tracks doing this. There is no way that it is the same with iTunes and the new, garbage way of selling tunes mostly by the tracks.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by niwell

Full disclosure - I was a full bore Nu-metal fan in the mid to late 90s (as well as industrial and more goth-rock) and can still appreciate the genre / actively listen to some of the artists. There was a lot of garbage but people were actually creating a new type of music. Hell, I bought White Pony on vinyl fairly recently and listen to it fairly often.

Same. There was some laughably bad shit that came from that time but there were also respectable bands that have continued to evolve and make decent new music. On one end of the spectrum you have the shit like Limp Bizkit, but on the other is stuff like Slipknot that is still relevant and still produces good music. Metal has managed to spawn new bands that are interesting and different and have escaped the fate of pop music commercialization. Bands like Gojira which came about in the 00's.

Also indie music in the 00's was another massive scene when I was in college that was probably the last creative music to have been made post 90's. I'm not sure if I'm just out of touch now or if there are decent and creative new Indie type bands but as far as I've seen it either tries to copy their work or is all done on a computer.

Edit: probably the most enduring band that was my favourite from the 90's is Tool. It took them 12 years to release Fear Innoculum but it was worth it.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by biguc

I'm glad you mentioned Instagram. One of my tech friends recently tried to tell me how great the iphone has been for photography. We take better pictures now. Sure, on a technical level, it's easier to take photos that are in focus, and properly exposed, and well composed.

But automating the technical side of photography has left us with a surfeit of technically good but artistically pointless photography. It's just reduced the value of photography and made it harder for actual artists to thrive.

It's the democratization (killing) of art.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

God, I really miss going to record stores and spending hours just perusing through the back collection of whatever groups I was into at that time (firstly Disco and New Wave...yeah, I am that old; then Classical music, then the great 60s stuff like the Beatles/Stones/CSNY/Simon&Garfunkle, etc., then a big right turn into Punk Rock and Alternative, then a deep, deep dive into just about everything from the 1970s, from ABBA to Led Zeppelin (and I do mean everything in between),....

I don't know if anyone here knows or remembers, but Sam the Record Man's flagship Yonge St. store had an unsurpassed Classical section (adjacent to the outdoor chess tables on Gould). Voluminous selection, and the clerks who worked there were exhaustively knowledgable and passionate about the subject. If the obscurity you were seeking wasn't in the stacks, the clerk would say, "Oh, just a moment; I think we have that upstairs". And sure enough, he/she would emerge with the CD or record in hand. Something like that is a really lamentable loss.

[Airboy]

Originally Posted by Gresto

I don't know if anyone here knows or remembers, but Sam the Record Man's flagship Yonge St. store had an unsurpassed Classical section (adjacent to the outdoor chess tables on Gould). Voluminous selection, and the clerks who worked there were exhaustively knowledgable and passionate about the subject. If the obscurity you were seeking wasn't in the stacks, the clerk would say, "Oh, just a moment; I think we have that upstairs". And sure enough, he/she would emerge with the CD or record in hand. Something like that is a really lamentable loss.

Spent a lot of time at Sams when I lived in TO and when I visited. The best part was browsing and finding a hidden treasure or a musician I had not heard of. My early version of searching for something new. Now its all digital. The staff were always a big help.

2 things that drove my music tastes for musical exploration were Sams and My brother working for a couple of record companies. My thirst for live music came from the later. Watching the move CBGB was fun, taking me back to some of my early finds.

[Acajack]

I loved the Sam's on Yonge as well.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by biguc

I'm glad you mentioned Instagram. One of my tech friends recently tried to tell me how great the iphone has been for photography. We take better pictures now. Sure, on a technical level, it's easier to take photos that are in focus, and properly exposed, and well composed.

But automating the technical side of photography has left us with a surfeit of technically good but artistically pointless photography. It's just reduced the value of photography and made it harder for actual artists to thrive.

I think the smartphone with camera has been great for historical documentation. The past decade or so has seen an immeasurable volume of photo-documentation being done on a voluntary level by most everybody in society. Step back a couple more decades if you want to include the digital camera, which again increased the volume of photographs taken greatly over the previous standard of silver-negative cameras.

If historians of the future will be able to mine facebook, instagram etc etc archives for all the photos taken since the advent of the smartphone/digital camera, they will be able to virtually research almost every aspect of society - the only problem will be too much material to draw from. An volume so massive that there will have to be some AI solution to sort through it, I'm sure.

I think the significance will be similar to comparing 1970s or 80s photographic documentation of society to that of the late nineteenth century. Maybe greater. Definitely greater.

I still feel that good art will come out of that technology, as it's still from the perspective of capturing a photographic composition that stirs an emotion inside of the viewer. Not everybody can/will do that. The main difference IMHO, is that it opens up opportunities to people who may have great artistic sense who wouldn't normally excel at the technical aspects of 'old-time' photography - i.e. no light meters, picking the best film speed/aperture/shutter speed, etc. and then hoping you captured the shot the way you envisioned it, but won't know until you develop the film...

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I think the smartphone with camera has been great for historical documentation. The past decade or so has seen an immeasurable volume of photo-documentation being done on a voluntary level by most everybody in society. Step back a couple more decades if you want to include the digital camera, which again increased the volume of photographs taken greatly over the previous standard of silver-negative cameras.

If historians of the future will be able to mine facebook, instagram etc etc archives for all the photos taken since the advent of the smartphone/digital camera, they will be able to virtually research almost every aspect of society - the only problem will be too much material to draw from. An volume so massive that there will have to be some AI solution to sort through it, I'm sure.

I think the significance will be similar to comparing 1970s or 80s photographic documentation of society to that of the late nineteenth century. Maybe greater. Definitely greater.

I still feel that good art will come out of that technology, as it's still from the perspective of capturing a photographic composition that stirs an emotion inside of the viewer. Not everybody can/will do that. The main difference IMHO, is that it opens up opportunities to people who may have great artistic sense who wouldn't normally excel at the technical aspects of 'old-time' photography - i.e. no light meters, picking the best film speed/aperture/shutter speed, etc. and then hoping you captured the shot the way you envisioned it, but won't know until you develop the film...

Agreed. There is more historical documentation than ever in history. I kind of wonder if it will be of any use in the future though. We are assuming that all of that data will be converted over time to future technology. What if we are like the Roman Empire before the fall and the Middle Ages are to follow?

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

God, I really miss going to record stores and spending hours just perusing through the back collection of whatever groups I was into at that time (firstly Disco and New Wave...yeah, I am that old; then Classical music, then the great 60s stuff like the Beatles/Stones/CSNY/Simon&Garfunkle, etc., then a big right turn into Punk Rock and Alternative, then a deep, deep dive into just about everything from the 1970s, from ABBA to Led Zeppelin (and I do mean everything in between),....

fuck, a lot of the albums of the late 1960s-1970s were really, really good. You'd put on the record, listen to the WHOLE SIDE, then turn it over, and do the same on the other side. I discovered so much great deep tracks doing this. There is no way that it is the same with iTunes and the new, garbage way of selling tunes mostly by the tracks.

My sentiment on the subject is similar. There was so much to discover by looking past the radio hits and diving right into the album tracks. Sometimes the best tracks wouldn't "stick" until after listening to the entire album several times, and by then the best tracks would have ingrained themselves into your subconscious and you would catch yourself randomly humming them days later.

I'm always trying to keep myself in check, to make sure I'm not judging newer music from the perspective of some old person whose tastes were set in their youth. Maybe I am, but I'm just not seeing the depth out there these days, nor the musicianship, at least on such a mass level. But I might just be getting old.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I'm always trying to keep myself in check, to make sure I'm not judging newer music from the perspective of some old person whose tastes were set in their youth. Maybe I am, but I'm just not seeing the depth out there these days, nor the musicianship, at least on such a mass level. But I might just be getting old.

We're all just getting old. There's more music and options now than ever before.

This entire convo can be summed up by the usual 'your favourite music is whatever you liked when you were 12'.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Agreed. There is more historical documentation than ever in history. I kind of wonder if it will be of any use in the future though. We are assuming that all of that data will be converted over time to future technology. What if we are like the Roman Empire before the fall and the Middle Ages are to follow?

Ha... I often find myself wondering the same. An older computer tech that I know (used to be our go-to guy at work) has a theory that historical documentation, from the perspective of future civilizations looking back at us, will stop at the paper age, as all the digital "stuff" that we have been collecting will not stand the test of time, due to deteriorating storage media or some large EMP event or similar unforeseen anomaly.

I suspect that there will be some method of accessing old data types in the future, if it is seen as being important, the question is, I suppose, what will be there to access.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Agreed. There is more historical documentation than ever in history. I kind of wonder if it will be of any use in the future though. We are assuming that all of that data will be converted over time to future technology. What if we are like the Roman Empire before the fall and the Middle Ages are to follow?

Some have argued that a lot of things will be lost simply because the medium we use that can contain so much material was never really designed to do long term storage. A properly preserved book may last centuries, there are photographs and film reels more than a century old. Even magnetic tapes last a good long time, phonographs even longer. How long does flash memory retain its integrity? Or will we lose the ability to read those files? It is hard to find legacy computers and software for a lot of things.

It also makes one wonder what’s worth saving. How many ‘duck face’ selfies were taken versus the timeless photos that actually captured a moment? Wading through a box of old photos might be a bit of work, but gigabytes of random garbage photos are all the easier to click ‘delete’ on, especially when sheer volume of crap makes finding the gems all the more needle in a sewage plant, to mangle a phrase.

Or that our personal data was never our own. How many websites disappeared into the ether, taking their contents along with them. How many severs wiped of ones and zeros and turned into electronic waste? For all Kodak’s flaws, they were our moments, not Apple’s, Facebook’s or Google’s.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by JHikka

We're all just getting old. There's more music and options now than ever before.

This entire convo can be summed up by the usual 'your favourite music is whatever you liked when you were 12'.

To some extent, but I don't really think it's that simple. I view appreciation of music as a journey and feel my tastes have evolved somewhat over the years. i find myself dissecting it more than I ever did in the past to the point of picking out vocal tracks or instruments and trying to understand what they were doing.

My journey has taken me from what i liked when I was twelve and opened up a whole world of amazing art, each bit taking me to a different place. Whether it's chronologically forward or backward in the catalogue, each has its own bit of joy to convey. Could be rock, folk, motown, jazz, classical, funk, disco, blues, swing, '80s brand of alternative, punk, grunge (rock with grubby clothes), early rap/hip-hop... it all has something to offer and I try to appreciate its stand-alone merits without influence.

Where I find my 'oldness' is coming into play is that I am less willing to give mindless formula music a chance, whether it's a worn-out social comment being rapped over music that another band actually performed three or four decades ago, cheesy bubblegum music sung by some seventies teen idol, mindless constant-thump beat dance music of the nineties, music that seems to exist for no other reason than to excite the bank of subwoofers in the trunk of a fart-canned Honda Civic, etc etc.

The older I get, the more discerning I get - I just crave some kind of substance, something that came from the heart and mind of an artist who felt they had something to offer over and above simple revenue generation for the company that owns the publishing rights. And therein lies my struggle - am I discerning based on my personal preferences and my life experience, or am I actually discerning based on some kind of objective quality... and does it really matter?

In the end, I conclude that it doesn't really matter, as I like what I like and get joy from whatever speaks to me. It's really only in discussions like these do I really venture to dissect my musical journey and try to parse it out in something that's the equivalent of creating an Excel table to describe art...

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Some have argued that a lot of things will be lost simply because the medium we use that can contain so much material was never really designed to do long term storage. A properly preserved book may last centuries, there are photographs and film reels more than a century old. Even magnetic tapes last a good long time, phonographs even longer. How long does flash memory retain its integrity? Or will we lose the ability to read those files? It is hard to find legacy computers and software for a lot of things.

It also makes one wonder what’s worth saving. How many ‘duck face’ selfies were taken versus the timeless photos that actually captured a moment? Wading through a box of old photos might be a bit of work, but gigabytes of random garbage photos are all the easier to click ‘delete’ on, especially when sheer volume of crap makes finding the gems all the more needle in a sewage plant, to mangle a phrase.

Or that our personal data was never our own. How many websites disappeared into the ether, taking their contents along with them. How many severs wiped of ones and zeros and turned into electronic waste? For all Kodak’s flaws, they were our moments, not Apple’s, Facebook’s or Google’s.

Ha! Well said!

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by JHikka

We're all just getting old. There's more music and options now than ever before.

This entire convo can be summed up by the usual 'your favourite music is whatever you liked when you were 12'.

Maybe, but I am curious if the fragmentation of music/TV/media can ever sort of be undone. Or was it simply a product of a time and era, and the modern trade of ‘getting more what you want’ meant you would have to give up feeling like you were part of a shared thing, even if that thing was kind of generic.

[someone123]

Probably the more immediate issue will be the opposite of this, archived encrypted data (e.g. Chinese dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic) that will be easily cracked in future years. Though it becomes less and less valuable over time. I'm sure there will be some juicy 40 year old data in there somewhere (keys for ancient government servers still storing private records etc.).

[rofina]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

God, I really miss going to record stores and spending hours just perusing through the back collection of whatever groups I was into at that time (firstly Disco and New Wave...yeah, I am that old; then Classical music, then the great 60s stuff like the Beatles/Stones/CSNY/Simon&Garfunkle, etc., then a big right turn into Punk Rock and Alternative, then a deep, deep dive into just about everything from the 1970s, from ABBA to Led Zeppelin (and I do mean everything in between),....

fuck, a lot of the albums of the late 1960s-1970s were really, really good. You'd put on the record, listen to the WHOLE SIDE, then turn it over, and do the same on the other side. I discovered so much great deep tracks doing this. There is no way that it is the same with iTunes and the new, garbage way of selling tunes mostly by the tracks.

Yes!

Spent entire weekends browsing and listening to music at Zulu on West 4th in Vancouver.

Amazing process of discovery through conversation too. Finding music I knew nothing about.

Magical experience.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

To some extent, but I don't really think it's that simple. I view appreciation of music as a journey and feel my tastes have evolved somewhat over the years. i find myself dissecting it more than I ever did in the past to the point of picking out vocal tracks or instruments and trying to understand what they were doing.

Absolutely. I'm fortunate enough that i've had an account tracking what i've listened to online since 2005, so i've been able to look back and see what i've been listening to in different periods or months of my life, first tracking with Windows Media Player and now with Spotify. It's very handy!

Originally Posted by thewave46

Maybe, but I am curious if the fragmentation of music/TV/media can ever sort of be undone. Or was it simply a product of a time and era, and the modern trade of ‘getting more what you want’ meant you would have to give up feeling like you were part of a shared thing, even if that thing was kind of generic.

Probably more of the latter, but there are still plenty of things these days that can be considered more of a shared thing than others. Shows like Squid Game or Succession are watched by millions and it's easy to find people that also watch them out in public. Game of Thrones was definitely cultural (if regrettable by the end). If anything, the internet has made it easier to connect with other fans of things, so if i'm watching the newest Star Wars series it's much easier for me to discuss and brainstorm with people online over plot points or details.

It's an easy argument to make that we're in the golden age of TV/streaming/video production and creation. The sheer number of things being made these days and their breadth is incredible.