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The Internet and WWW may be seen as to be de-evolving from open standards, open access, and user ability to participate, create, and learn. Video was 60% of do

The Internet and WWW may be seen as to be de-evolving from open standards, open access, and user ability to participate, create, and learn. Video was 60% of downstream internet traffic in 2019. "Go the way of the TV" as a metaphor may be interpreted in may ways. Early idealists saw TV as bringing Shakespeare to the masses. We know how that went.

CharlesW 5y ago
> Early idealists saw TV as bringing Shakespeare to the masses. We know how that went. Yes — it went well. Shakespeare wrote for mainstream audiences. There's bad TV just like there are bad plays, but there's plenty of great TV that will become tomorrow's classics.
- creamytaco 5y ago
  Mention one great TV show that even remotely compares to Shakespeare. Maybe the Sopranos. Maybe. That's pretty much it. There are great movies (I can't think of any released in the last 15 years though), worthy to be called Art and talked about for generations to come, but great TV? More like absolute brain rotting garbage that's contributing to our cultural degeneration and artistic suicide. Mainstream Internet with the Facebooks and the Googles is not far behind.
  - toofy 5y ago
    We have to remember that certain people were wholly convinced that Jazz in the early 20th century was evidence that the Jazz generation with all of its “degeneracy” would destroy civilization because the music in their generation was somehow pure or whatever. And certain people threw absolute tantrums that Elvis and his gyrating hips on television was “cultural degeneracy” of the worst kind. Since they didn’t personally know anything of modern music they were sure that their generation had far better music. Parents absolutely freaked out over packed stadiums of suburban kids singing along to Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly, you sure like to ball.” And you guessed it, they were crying about cultural “degeneracy.” And certain people in the 60s and 70s stamped their feet in anger and shook their fists at the sky that Led Zeppelin was nothing but noise and the Beatles were admitting on television that they ...[audible gasp]... did drugs! They decried the “degeneracy” and that society was falling and that music hasn’t been good since their days when wholesome Elvis and Little Richard were popular. In the 90s this group convinced themselves “degenerates” Marilyn Manson and Slayer and Rap were a sure sign that music was dead and that music hadn’t been good since the days when good music like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were popular Many in every generation are totally convinced that their generation was the last generation to make “good” music. And perhaps more troubling, there’s a certain group of people who are obsessed with “degeneracy”
- tshaddox 5y ago
  And also lots of literally Shakespeare on TV.
tialaramex 5y ago
> Early idealists saw TV as bringing Shakespeare to the masses. We know how that went. Yes. The masses got to see Shakespeare. At school we spent a year on Julius Caesar. Now, the problem with these plays as literary material is that they're intended to be performed. The school was able (with support from parents) to ship students to see one performance of the play they were studying at a professional theatre (in our case a Royal Shakespeare Company performance) but for an entire year's English classes that's a pretty poor ratio. However we could watch (video recordings of) several different TV adaptations of this work during class, we could see a staging with "authentic" Roman backgrounds and a cast dressed in togas, and we could see the same scenes re-imagined as a Present Day drama. Short of having us actually put together a performance ourselves (this was English class, not drama) I don't see a better way to actually teach these plays. What I'm reading here is the usual nostalgia for an imagined past. If you wanted the Internet to make the masses suddenly better educated and more interested in expressing themselves then you've made a mistake just as if you expected the city park to make the masses healthier and more interested in running. This is infrastructure, it's necessary but not sufficient. Also, surely the least healthy thing the Internet did so far was create the Twitter pile-on? Which is totally user ability to participate, create and learn, it's just that they will participate in hating today's Milkshake Duck, they will create memes and awful jokes about Milkshake Duck, and they will go out of their way to learn other reasons to believe that actually Milkshake Duck was always awful and anybody who thought otherwise ought to be next in the pillory.
- NotPavlovsDog 5y ago
  I would direct you towards Kay's original argument. > nostalgia for an imagined past You can read it however you like, I have actively worked on making the imagined future, it just happens to be envisioned in the past as no better vision has somehow emerged. Do contemplate the reason. General use computing with users in control is a humanist imperative.

CharlesW 5y ago

> Early idealists saw TV as bringing Shakespeare to the masses. We know how that went. Yes — it went well. Shakespeare wrote for mainstream audiences. There's bad TV just like there are bad plays, but there's plenty of great TV that will become tomorrow's classics.

creamytaco 5y ago
Mention one great TV show that even remotely compares to Shakespeare. Maybe the Sopranos. Maybe. That's pretty much it. There are great movies (I can't think of any released in the last 15 years though), worthy to be called Art and talked about for generations to come, but great TV? More like absolute brain rotting garbage that's contributing to our cultural degeneration and artistic suicide. Mainstream Internet with the Facebooks and the Googles is not far behind.
- toofy 5y ago
  We have to remember that certain people were wholly convinced that Jazz in the early 20th century was evidence that the Jazz generation with all of its “degeneracy” would destroy civilization because the music in their generation was somehow pure or whatever. And certain people threw absolute tantrums that Elvis and his gyrating hips on television was “cultural degeneracy” of the worst kind. Since they didn’t personally know anything of modern music they were sure that their generation had far better music. Parents absolutely freaked out over packed stadiums of suburban kids singing along to Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly, you sure like to ball.” And you guessed it, they were crying about cultural “degeneracy.” And certain people in the 60s and 70s stamped their feet in anger and shook their fists at the sky that Led Zeppelin was nothing but noise and the Beatles were admitting on television that they ...[audible gasp]... did drugs! They decried the “degeneracy” and that society was falling and that music hasn’t been good since their days when wholesome Elvis and Little Richard were popular. In the 90s this group convinced themselves “degenerates” Marilyn Manson and Slayer and Rap were a sure sign that music was dead and that music hadn’t been good since the days when good music like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were popular Many in every generation are totally convinced that their generation was the last generation to make “good” music. And perhaps more troubling, there’s a certain group of people who are obsessed with “degeneracy”
tshaddox 5y ago
And also lots of literally Shakespeare on TV.

tialaramex 5y ago

> Early idealists saw TV as bringing Shakespeare to the masses. We know how that went. Yes. The masses got to see Shakespeare. At school we spent a year on Julius Caesar. Now, the problem with these plays as literary material is that they're intended to be performed. The school was able (with support from parents) to ship students to see one performance of the play they were studying at a professional theatre (in our case a Royal Shakespeare Company performance) but for an entire year's English classes that's a pretty poor ratio. However we could watch (video recordings of) several different TV adaptations of this work during class, we could see a staging with "authentic" Roman backgrounds and a cast dressed in togas, and we could see the same scenes re-imagined as a Present Day drama. Short of having us actually put together a performance ourselves (this was English class, not drama) I don't see a better way to actually teach these plays. What I'm reading here is the usual nostalgia for an imagined past. If you wanted the Internet to make the masses suddenly better educated and more interested in expressing themselves then you've made a mistake just as if you expected the city park to make the masses healthier and more interested in running. This is infrastructure, it's necessary but not sufficient. Also, surely the least healthy thing the Internet did so far was create the Twitter pile-on? Which is totally user ability to participate, create and learn, it's just that they will participate in hating today's Milkshake Duck, they will create memes and awful jokes about Milkshake Duck, and they will go out of their way to learn other reasons to believe that actually Milkshake Duck was always awful and anybody who thought otherwise ought to be next in the pillory.

NotPavlovsDog 5y ago
I would direct you towards Kay's original argument. > nostalgia for an imagined past You can read it however you like, I have actively worked on making the imagined future, it just happens to be envisioned in the past as no better vision has somehow emerged. Do contemplate the reason. General use computing with users in control is a humanist imperative.