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Why libraries are terrible.

Started by the_antithesis, July 08, 2013, 10:58:35 PM

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the_antithesis

I do love all the people here who think this is about public libraries. They so cute.

Hydra009

Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"You sound like quasi-republicans telling the world what a waste public libraries are. Next you'll tell us what a fucking waste it is to have a municipal water supply when it fucking rains..
Don't like to go to libraries? Stay the fuck home crybabies.
And stop inventing fake shit to fucking hissy bitch about.. :roll:
Bro, do you even read?  I certainly don't think they're a waste.  (But they're in a pretty poor shape this neck of the woods)  And the OP wasn't even really about that, anyway.

Smartmarzipan

Quote from: "the_antithesis"Having access to a large cache of media means you won't bother using any of it. Why? I'm not sure. Part of it is being spoiled for choice. Part of it is the lack of urgency. Why watch Arrested Development when it is likely to always be there when you want it? It's not like you have to arrange your schedule around catching it when it was originally available and only then. If you missed it, you had to wait for it to rerun. No more. You don't have to be organized or determined to watch that show or play that game or read that book. Just press a button if you feel like it. The irony is that by having to only press a button means you'll never feel like it.

I have definitely felt this way before. In just the past few years, I've discovered that I can have any show, any movie, any book at my fingertips. While this is neat thing if there is something you REALLY want immediately, I find I spend more time accumulating media than I do reading it. I just got a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday. I've downloaded 100 free books and have read precisely ONE of them, although I've started a few others. ("O Pioneers" is good, btw.) There are times I tell myself that I need to just finish what I'm doing before I look at other things. I feel...I feel like a hoarder sometimes. And I feel like my attention span is shortening because damn! there is so much to see and do! What shall I do first?!? I have to look at everything!

And then I have to sit in a quiet room and knit to clear my head.
Legi, Intellexi, Condemnavi.

"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die." ~Anon

Inter arma enim silent leges

surly74

Quote from: "the_antithesis"Having access to a large cache of media means you won't bother using any of it. Why? I'm not sure. Part of it is being spoiled for choice. Part of it is the lack of urgency. Why watch Arrested Development when it is likely to always be there when you want it? It's not like you have to arrange your schedule around catching it when it was originally available and only then. If you missed it, you had to wait for it to rerun. No more. You don't have to be organized or determined to watch that show or play that game or read that book. Just press a button if you feel like it. The irony is that by having to only press a button means you'll never feel like it.

am i the only one that will watch a movie on TV when i have it in my collection? Even though i could put the DVD in, get the full version, no commericals i'm too lazy to do that but will watch it on AMC.
God bless those Pagans
--
Homer Simpson

ParaGoomba Slayer

1.) You can just rent Library CDs and DVDs and burn them onto your hard drive.

2.) Some of the books I want to read cost upwards of $30 for a used copy. Fuck that, I'm using the library. I generally only buy a book if my network of Libraries doesn't have it and/or I want it real bad.
[size=150]Circumcision? HIS body, HIS decision.[/size]

[size=150]Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins. This is very simple reasoning that is applied to everything, EXCEPT infant circumcision for some stupid fucking reason.[/size]

Smartmarzipan

Quote from: "the_antithesis"I do love all the people here who think this is about public libraries. They so cute.

Half the posters on this site either don't fucking read anything or have very poor reading comprehension.

You either get over it or it slowly drives you insane.
Legi, Intellexi, Condemnavi.

"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die." ~Anon

Inter arma enim silent leges

GalacticBusDriver

Quote from: "Shiranu"
Quote from: "the_antithesis"I wonder if you put every book you re-read over the course of five years into a box, how many there would be in the box.

That would be one empty box...

And I would need multiple boxes. I own a couple hundred hard-backs and probably 500 paper-backs. The ones I haven't read twice might fill a box half-way. That's not counting the e-books, all the library books I've borrowed and all the audio-books I've listened to. A slow week means I read two books (almost exclusively e-book since Christmas) and listen to three others at work. Hell, I read so much that I have gotten "new" books only to find that I'd already read them and then forgotten I had read them. I also watch a ton of movies, many that I own. I own probably 300 titles, all of which I have seen at least twice, then there are the library checkouts and streaming. Music seems to be the only one of my three entertainment loves (books, movies and music) that has suffered in recent years. I don't buy or listen to nearly as much as I used to. Mostly just in the car, when an audio book just won't work.

I don't think large media libraries are the problem, if there is a problem. I think it has more to do with changing priorities than anything else. I used to live life around TV (like many still do) but have lost interest (except for my Broncos on Sunday afternoons). Music used to be a staple for me. Whatever I was doing, there was something playing in the background and sometimes I will still do that but only rarely any more.
"We should admire Prometheus, not Zues...Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."

From "Radiant" by James Alan Gardner

Hydra009

Quote from: "Smartmarzipan"Half the posters on this site either don't fucking read anything or have very poor reading comprehension.

You either get over it or it slowly drives you insane.
That's why I make short posts.

WitchSabrina

Seriously - I've not been in a library for ages.  Are they still libraries?  Will I even recognize one?  Aren't they all computer screens now?  Do they still have actual books?


I grew up and remember this:
I am currently experiencing life at several WTFs per hour.

Hydra009



They're like that now except the most of the books haven't been touched in decades and people are usually just screwing around on the computers.

mykcob4

The library is much more than a bunch of books that one can check out. It is history saved and presserved for all people to access. Nothing defines a community like it's library. It teaches, records, protects and saves a whole society.
I use the library as much as I can. There is something there for every walk of life. Even if you don't read there are useful tools. If the libraries go away then you are left with media corporations to provide you with access to information, which by definition are subjective and untrustworthy as a reliable source of information.
I don't understand the title of this thread at all. There is nothing terriable about libraries. If you don't want to use the library then don't bother, but you have NO argument to deny anyone else the use of a library.

the_antithesis

Quote from: "mykcob4"I don't understand the title of this thread at all.

That's because you didn't read the opening post and while that's annoying, it sort of proves my point.

SilentFutility

Quote from: "mykcob4"If the libraries go away then you are left with media corporations to provide you with access to information, which by definition are subjective and untrustworthy as a reliable source of information.
Every bit of media in the library was created by someone, and they are only as good, reliable and trustworthy as their creators and the level of peer review the work was subjected to, just like a piece of media from another source.

A piece of media being in a library does not automatically make it good information, like every piece of media, it is a good idea to think about where your information is coming from.

This is still nothing to do with the OP, but oh well.

WitchSabrina

Quote from: "the_antithesis"So, I've been loading crappy games onto my 3DS to get some fucking use of of the thing since I haven't calmed down enough yet after I rage quit from Luigi's Mansion. Fucking thing! What I have been most interested in lately are the game & Watch games, which there are some on the Nintendo E-shop, but not a lot and not many of the good ones. They do have the first two Game & Watch Galleries for Game Boy, which are functional if annoying having to load the game and not necessarily knowing which one has the game I want to play. Besides the Galleries are a couple individual G&W games and I'm pretty fucking snotty over which ones I want. I got Mario's Cement Factory because it's a classic. I'm hemming and hawing over Manhole (that's what she said) and Donkey Kong Jr. But I really don't care for Ball, Chef Vermin, Helmet, Flagman and Judge. These were some of the earlier and therefore less sophisticated G&W games. But you know what, as a kid I might have gotten one of these games and would up playing the hell out of it because it was the only game I had. In fact, that was true of my NES and Atari and Commodore ViC-20 (stop laughing). But now, thanks to emulators and ROM sites and Good Old Games and Steam and Nintendo's eShop, I can have a ton of games, many of which are great to play, but i just never play them. I'm thinking of getting Netflix so I don't have to use my brother's entirely too much projection TV to watch a movie, but how many movies of TV shows do I watch? I used to have a fairly sizable library of DVDs that I never watched until I got rid of them and since them I acquired a few more and I never watch any of them. I never watch TV shows anymore because I can watch those shows whenever I want. I used to have a schedule that revolved around TV so I can watch the shows I wanted. But I don't do that anymore.

This has got me thinking that having a large library where you can access media any time you want may be a bad idea since, for the most part, people simply won't do it. Why sit down and watch 24 when you can watch it any old time you want? Why play through the two Legend of Zelda Oracle games when you can just download them and play them anytime? How many hear checked books out of their school library growing up? How many of you have checked out a book since graduation? I haven't used a public library in years and not just because I don't read that much anymore. I own books that I never read.

Having access to a large cache of media means you won't bother using any of it. Why? I'm not sure. Part of it is being spoiled for choice. Part of it is the lack of urgency. Why watch Arrested Development when it is likely to always be there when you want it? It's not like you have to arrange your schedule around catching it when it was originally available and only then. If you missed it, you had to wait for it to rerun. No more. You don't have to be organized or determined to watch that show or play that game or read that book. Just press a button if you feel like it. The irony is that by having to only press a button means you'll never feel like it.

Been wanting to say for a couple of days that That ^ statement is certainly true.  Weird huh?

I dunno - I think Libraries became somewhat obsolete once the internet arrived. First it was personal computers - but not every household had one.  Then there was the effort to wait for large amounts of information to upload. Now? Now people can access anything on their phone for pete's sake.    I guess I still like knowing libraries are still around - that books still exist.  What if the entire internet crashed and kids still needed to look up information and write papers?

Personally, I think we will always need books and I still enjoy a book in my hands.  I have a tablet for Kindle - but I still buy books too- especially reference books. My personal library is pretty extensive --- a hobby since the 70s.
I am currently experiencing life at several WTFs per hour.

SilentFutility

Quote from: "WitchSabrina"Been wanting to say for a couple of days that That ^ statement is certainly true.  Weird huh?

I dunno - I think Libraries became somewhat obsolete once the internet arrived. First it was personal computers - but not every household had one.  Then there was the effort to wait for large amounts of information to upload. Now? Now people can access anything on their phone for pete's sake.    I guess I still like knowing libraries are still around - that books still exist.  What if the entire internet crashed and kids still needed to look up information and write papers?

Personally, I think we will always need books and I still enjoy a book in my hands.  I have a tablet for Kindle - but I still buy books too- especially reference books. My personal library is pretty extensive --- a hobby since the 70s.

I think that it is perhaps important to differentiate between public libraries and libraries designed to serve an educational or other specific purpose. I'd say that things like university libraries, for instance, are still not yet obsolete, as people need the library not only for access to information specific to their subjects, but also to use many other services and to have a place to work/study.

I think that public libraries still fulfill this function to an extent, as there are those who still visit them in order to have a place to work quietly, or to use their printers and scanners and classes etc. However, public libraries also perform another function, which is to give people access to media that they otherwise would not have at home. As broadband internet becomes more and more prevalent in all areas of society, the amount of media that a library can provide that people don't have instant access to at home will shrink.

It strikes me that the main point of the OP was that media is no longer some sort of "finite resource" (for lack of a better term), where people had access to it in moderation and were not exposed to information from a vast array of sources almost constantly. As soon as something becomes abundant, it stops being worth expending effort to obtain or even to use. Another interesting point raised is that people consume less media intentionally than they perhaps used to. In many ways, we consume so much media in our daily lives without trying to that we feel less of a need to seek more out in our own time. It used to be that watching television for a few hours in the evening would be your only exposure to something removed from your own immediate surroundings and environment. Now we are so bombarded with information about things from anything and everything, all the time. I don't want to know what happens to the protagonist in the last episode who was in danger, because there are a million channels, with a million protagonists in danger that ended on cliffhangers, I simply cannot care about all of the ones I could possibly be exposed to, so I care about none of them. We are exposed to so much that it is simply impossible to become emotionally invested in it all, or to care about all of it, which makes these things boring and they then do not hold nor warrant our attention.