X, Y, ...I?

[davywavy]

Ever since Douglas Copeland struck it rich by identifying me and my contemporaries as 'Generation X', writing a book about us and then going on the lecture circuit and pocketing the loot, media observers have been keen to find the next generational demographic tag set themselves on the gravy train too.
In retrospect, Generation X was fairly easy call to make. It represented the children of the baby-boomers, living post-modern, dissolute lifestyles with few cares and even fewer plans thanks to the stored wealth of previous generations.

I'll tell you what, it was great.

Since then we've had 'Generation Y', which was supposed to be the Millennium generation who had greater tech-savvy than we Generation X fuddy-duddies, but as a demographic term that never really took off possibly because Y just isn't as cool a letter as X. Anyway, Generation Y is ten years out of date and a new tag for marketeers to sell the youth demographic to middle-aged executives is now needed, so enter 'Generation i'. I was reading an article about them last night.
The representatives of Generation i in question were the sort of young, fairly photogenic types who the papers are desperate to fill their pages with, and their defining characteristic was that they'd got rid of all that old-fashioned clunky technology like books and televisions and the like, and instead lived their lives entirely portably with all their media stored on laptops and iPads. One had even gone the whole hog and lived his life entirely in hotels, with no home of his own and just a bag of possessions and his constantly-connected electronic paraphenalia. He was quite charmingly naive in his pronouncements about how absolutely anybody could adopt this lifestyle, presumably assuming that absolutely anybody didn't have, say, pets, children, or any sick relatives who needed caring for.

Of course, the media in general has form in doing this sort of thing - finding a few outlying extremes of behaviour and presenting it as a new trend. The article in question managed to find a grand total of two people to illustrate their point, and I'm willing to make a tidy wager that in a city the size of London I could find two examples of pretty much any sort of human behaviour you could name without that being illustrative of anything beyond the fact that people can be bloody odd at times. What struck me was that both people interviewed described this lifestyle as liberating, but to my eyes, it looked incredibly restricted. You see, neither owned any books and instead carried virtual libraries on electronic readers and as I read I found my eyes drifting onto my bookshelves which are crammed with tomes which I'm confident aren't to be found in any electronic library as yet - if they ever will be. There's odd things I've just picked up because they looked interesting, like my copy of The statistical abstract of the British Empire 1925 - 1931, van Dover's The Octopus' Garden and Garrett Hardin's The limits of altruism. There's rarities like my prized first edition of Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic or the bound original 1891 edition of The Strand Magazine containing Conan Doyle's The Final Problem, and then there's the stuff I picked up in second hand bookshops such as crap '50s sci-fi like Worlds of the Imperium and Thongor at the end of time.

So that got me thinking, and today I ask you: What media do you own - it might be books or recordindings - which simply aren't available in downloadable format, and possibly never will be? Or would you adopt the Generation i lifestyle, making a grand total of three people to do so?

Comments

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

The concept of everything you own being available on a electronic device and having no posessions of your own does have a potentially liberating value, in the same way that being a homeless tibetean monk does.

Personally, I feel I have too much stuff that I can't bear to part with such as my signed copy of Sandman Quotes, my japenese imported Ibanez with twin humbuckers and a piezo pick-up and a fiancé.

Of course, someone will eventually point out that this new-fangled 'Generation i' is described in detail in dystopian, cyberpunk genres where the gap between income and property ownership has become so great that most of the population is practically homeless and have to carry everything they own from crappy motel to crappy motel...

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

I was interested in getting an ereader for a while. Then Amazon went into people's Kindles and took back copies of 1984 that the company had sold them because Amazon realized there were legal problems they hadn't hashed out. Yes, everyone was reimbursed, but the idea that a bookstore could sneak into my house and reclaim copies of books I'd bought—even if they left a fiver on the table—really put me off the whole ebook concept.

I figure that everything that's in copyright will be scanned and sold eventually. And the Gutenberg project is working on the resst. But my 18-something copy of Marvell's poems has half its charm due to the old fashioned binding and printing. I have several old Finnish books that my great-grandparents brought to the US when they immigrated, and they're full of marginalia from long-dead family members that could never be replicated on an ereader.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Except, of course, that the homeless cyber-population trudging from motel to motel have turned out to be rather plump, sleek middle-class professionals with plenty of disposable income.
In your face, William Gibson! Didn't predict that, didja?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a point I hadn't considered - in living with all your media in 'the cloud', you make it possible for others to control that media. How do you know, for example, that an author won't do a George Lucas and edit out the best bits of all your online books? In fact, I reckon it's almost inevitable that they will startt doing so, sooner or later.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I keep two former members of The Shamen in my wardrobe, and have them wake me up every morning with a rendition of Move Any Mountain. Does that count?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Is the song choice a reference to the difficulty of getting you out of bed?

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

I own a number of ebooks. Often i'll buy a book in store and then... acquire.. a digital copy to keep (I've paid the author, I just don't want to keep the stuff around my house). I've bought numerous books from amazon kindle store and read them on my iphone, and do not keep any physical books longer than reading them. I like having my library in my pocket and have a small house and little space for storage. All of my music is copied to my PC (needs backing up) and the CDs have been packed away. If I could guarantee that a freak lightning store wouldn't wipe out my itunes then I would dispose of the CDs all together. I wish I could do the same with my DVDs, the cupboard is overflowing and it takes ages to find anything - I can search for a song or album in seconds, finding disk 3 of Generation Kill is a half hour shuffle. I read all of my comics on my PC - if they're not available online then I don't read them. And as for those weird Scifi oldies, i've read more classic sciofi on project gutenberg than I ever have in print - though it's harder to kill a spider with my iphone that the physical copy of the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

I require the content, not the medium. I like books but because of the words, not the paper. The only thing I occasionally buy physically are roleplaying books because there's no good device for reading them - I expect that when I eventually get a suitable tablet PC, then they too will go and I'll order everything digitally.

My wife is the reverse, she hates anything stored digitally and it's a constant tussle between our preferences.

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

Is that a bad thing? If all versions are accessible, is it bad that books can continue to be worked on? We already have precedent. One of my favourite books is the hobbit. That was changed quite a bit between editions. And we have minor edits happening with re-prints. Shouldn't a piece of literature be vibrant and alive, not pinned down like some dead moth?

not saying that that is the case, just that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

[the-mendicant.livejournal.com]

I own quite a number of my parent's 33 LPs including one which was a live recording of one of the best jazz concerts ever featuring Sydney Bechet and Claude Luter in Paris in 1924, oh and a 33 recording of 'On Top of Old Smokie' in Swedish!

Oh and poetry book of Christina Rosetti's works signed by Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

Plus of course many old paintings and maps in frames and many interesting letters (remember those?) from my youth.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I've started sending letters and cards to people over the last few years, just because I htink it's nice and people should do it more.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That's an 'it depends' question; if a work is published only to the cloud and it's possible to edit all copies, I'd object if that was done to me without my consent - after all, I paid my own money for this edition, so it now belongs to me. Changing it without my consent isn't on.
One suspects Lucas would have done just that if he'd had the opportunity.

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

I did say that all copies should be accessible. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

I've got the bound volumes of Punch from 1996 with the Susan McQuillan story Peter & I worked on, including issue 1 signed by various people we buttonholed at the Punch party, such as David Langdon, and a man who once shared a cab with E.H. Shepard.

H

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It should really be 'iGeneration'.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Ironically enough, getting me out of bed is remarkably like the effects of MDMA.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

What, it makes you really affectionate and huggy, and it makes me want to punch you?

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

My Victorian and Edwardian novels. My own drawings. The Last Hero: I mean, you could digitise it, but there wouldn't be any point. The beauty is in the book. Ditto the Sandman graphic novels.

A History of English Public Health 1834-1939 by W.M. Frazer and also my delightfully lovely copy of Illustrated Notes on English Church History AD33 to 1509 by Rev. C.A. Lane.

And absolutely definitely not ever my Daily Express book of Home Games and Amusements which contains a recipe for gunpowder and is thus proscribed material.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Other way round.

[(Anonymous)]

I just bought a raid box:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-N2B1D-Blu-ray-Attached-Enclosure/dp/B002YDN12U/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1282649560&sr=8-5

Big bin of CDs off to the charity shop now, I have no more excuses.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

I'm quite happy with putting things in the cloud and accessing them via my ipad.

Techincally I don't need stuff, just the infomation it contains right? Well... not really.

Whats media... first off, any part of the book/picture that might be considered art. Or where the feeling of contagion is at play. There is an emotive contagion around objects that is very different to that which is expereinced from looking at the same webpage. To actually have a print of a famous picture, or a peice of art work for its own sake is different digitally.

Reference books, particlarly in RPG, are not as good in some ways on an ereader at the moment. Referencing 2 or 3 tables on different pages is not as easy.

Though I think the old books that you love and cherish may well be digitised, they will not be the same. Google will get everything they can for the sake of completeness I'm sure.

So real world info has 2 advantages

1) Contagion.
2) Easy of use.


The cloud has:

1) Immortality.
2) Portability.

The disavantages though, of my new iPad related comic book collection I can only lend them out if I lend the whole ipad.... (and it might still be against the licence agreement...)

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

I have an enormous love of Things With Histories. I like things that have manifestly Been Places and Done Things. How do you download that?

I also love that my books have been round the block and bear all of the scars from that. They look, feel and smell different. I know you can add notes to Kindle docs, but it's not the same. I like all those little cues that make books and nick nacks bring former lives with them, it adds an enormous amount.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I own several things in pdf format that I would *never* be able to own: The Voynich Manuscript, Codex Seraphinianus, some Victorian entomological treaties. I'd still rather have them in hard format though.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I have no emotional attachment to sound-storage media, I'd happily have all of my music in electronic format if I could guarantee it replicated the wierdnesses of the format it was previously on faithfully and didn't degrade.

I have way too much space dedicated to CD storage...

There are exceptions: my whole "noise/experimental" collection consists of recordings I was given by the artists (er, I know I know), and the packaging is as much part of the compositions as the sonic stuff.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The statistical abstract of the British Empire 1925 - 1931

What is this beautiful thing you speak of, and where can I find more of them?

Gen X vs. Gen Y.

[applez.livejournal.com]

All convenient nonsensical generational monikers given, I know what I have that most 20-somethings do not ... a job, paying me the convenient tradable object called 'money' that still hasn't fallen out of fashion.

Re: Gen X vs. Gen Y.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's hardly courteous to brag about it, though. The fault for their lack of employment lies more with Gordon Brown than them, and most 20-somethings aren't even old enough to take the blame for voting for him.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I found mine in the basement of a second-hand book dealer on the Charing Cross Road. If you like I can tell you how many sheep there were in New Zealand in 1927, though.

Re: Gen X vs. Gen Y.

[applez.livejournal.com]

Consider it my expression of crotchety fatigue at the recent spate of media navel-gazing (http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/23/how_do_generations_think_about_international_relations) about 20-somethings (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage).

It seems to me that all those media outlets are missing this harsh economic reality which my unemployed peers are handling as well or better than I did in their shoes back in my day.

I welcome their shoulders at the wheel, 'cause there's more than enough actual work to go around, and I can't push out the Baby Boomers fast enough to open up the jobs for the allegedly feckless youth. ;-)

Re: Gen X vs. Gen Y.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The baby boomers are going to resist being pushed out, because they just had a decade of having their retirement savings debased and being lied to about cheap credit being a good idea.

Re: Gen X vs. Gen Y.

[applez.livejournal.com]

Just need to build an Early Pension Thunderdome ... "break the deal, spin the wheel."