I’m a person who opposes pointless progress. I think inventions and new technology should be created out of a genuine need. Inventions and technology created for other reasons must have a hell of a good application, or they’re useless.
I think CD falls into the latter category.
People, it’s albums! We’ve had them since the 19th century! It’s not revolutionary! We’ve had eight-tracks for decades and turntables for more years than I can count. It’s nothing new. What does CD give us that we didn’t have already?
Usually, the answer is sound quality. Well, to quote a neophile I know, “you don’t know how bad quality your old sound system had until you hear a new one”. If I don’t know, it doesn’t hurt me. I don’t think anybody sat in front of their record player and said “God I wish the sound had higher fidelity”.
And then we have the entire cult around it. CD clubs, CD magazines, CD, CD, CD. All for a form of entertainment that’s been around for decades and decades. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing special. Why the obsession? Player pianos didn’t have this kind of obsession when they came.
Because people fall for this and so happily pump their money into other people’s pockets for the privilege of being able to do something they could already do much cheaper, I am going to have to get a CD player sooner or later and buy a bunch of CD albums just to be able to hear the records I already own. One day my turntable will die and there will be no more LPs to buy and no-one to repair my old one, and there goes my record collection. I’m pissed.
Even here, where the average intelligence is presumably considerably higher than that of Joe Heatseeker, CDs are mentioned in every other Cafe Society thread. “I wonder when they’ll release the complete Phantom Menace soundtrack CD.” “I bought the new Foo Fighters CD.” By the way, why bother mentioning the “CD” part?
So, CD lovers, what’s the deal? Seriously.
-CoffeeGuy