I have a decent sized record collection that I haven’t listened to in years because I don’t have a good enough space to put the record player (which takes up a lot of space by virtue of needing to open the lid)… so I wasn’t able to enjoy a lot of my music at all until other technology made it more easily available.
Also because records wear out and get scratched and get dirty and all kinds of other things, my enjoyment of certain albums degraded as the album did. Scratch makes an album skip? Unless you buy a new one, you can no longer enjoy that song at all.
I like to listen to music while I move around the house. Many things that I do are now more enjoyable because I can do them while listening to music. I can’t drag my record player around with me, and even a cassette player was usually too cumbersome to be worth the trouble, and even then there was a limit to how much of your collection you could tote around with you. My mp3 player on the other hand gives me a lot more enjoyment because I can listen to a lot more music, simply because of the increased opportunities of places and situations where I can have my music with me. And I generally listen to smaller playlists over and over for a long time and then do a new one, so I get the same type of exposure that you get from listening to an album over and over.
Kinda, yeah. My taste in music is oftentimes really mood-oriented. I have albums by bands that I love, but in certain moods I wouldn’t be able to even stand them. What my ipod does for me is that whenever I’m hit by a certain mood, it can be met because my whole collection is at my fingertips. By having the right music available at the right time, it greatly increases my appreciation and enjoyment of the songs in question.
You can get a $50 radio with an iPod dock and now you can listen to your iPod on speakers anywhere you go. If the radio has a remote control you can sit back on your couch and pick the artist or album or individual song you want to hear, on demand.
I can also stream music through my Playstation3 or Tivo.
More options = more flexibility and more enjoyment.
I love that I can vaguely remember a song from 20 years ago, just one line really, and within 30 minutes I have the full song playing on my pc. now that’s amazing…
This makes my paying $200 for an external zip drive I barely used and 5 zip disks (100 Meg capacity, woohoo!; and oh yeah, $25/piece) seem like quite a bad investment back in 2000, lol.
Back on topic: Princhester, the advent of digital photography has been a godsend for me, and my skills have greatly improved thanks to all the reasons you cited.
Google. Wikipedia. Best research tools ever. Anything you want to know about, just a few clicks away. I can remember when merely double-checking the spelling of a word required you to look it up in a book, let alone finding out more about Babylonian mythology.
Sometimes, however, too much information can be a bad thing. Last year, I fell in love with a song from a Trapeze demo, and went on a mission to find a properly recorded version of the song, which was only released on a limited edition, out of print CD. I imagined myself on a quest, just like with so many rare, obscure songs in the past, which could take months or even years to find – well, two days later, I found the CD on a torrent. Which was nice, but…the journey was a somewhat of a letdown.
I can let a modern car with electronically-controlled spark and ignition sit for days in any weather, turn the key without touching the accelerator in any way, and the car will start.
QUOTE]
Some of us don’t turn a key anymore. We just need it on our person for the car to unlock for us and start.
: and dozens of people all over the world can see it.