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BROADCAST LISTENING
Which art? Listening to radio type things? Then probably, there's just so many forms of media around, it's unlikely the same ones would remain equally big. And easier to be distracted when I always have a phone around.
Although podcasts are getting really big for various reasons, so stuff usually comes back round.
I think there's a wider point. I think having more choices possible is usually better, almost by definition, because the more there are, the more the chance there's one that fits what you need best. But there's significant problems with having choices *equally* available, as anyone's who's used a search engine knows: having three relevant results is so much better than hundreds of maybe useful maybe not results.
Is "having more forms of entertainment" good or bad? I think both, that's usually going to be good. Think of all those niche podcasts which would never have existed twenty years ago. Isn't that awesome? But there are some drawbacks. Like, what's the chance that, just by chance, technological limitations would have positive societal effects? I mean, if you said, "here's two societies, one can listen to any entertainment, the other has a choice of five options. Which population gets better skills from this?" you'd say, well, probably the one with more choice, but there's probably SOME exceptions that are better in 1950s-ville.
Not having anything to distract you is good for some people and bad for other people. That seems like a bad basis to prefer it on a societal level, when you CAN have other solutions (have a special device that only has five channels for people who want one, ban things that seem genuinely bad). So it's not ALL good, but I think "wouldn't things be better like they used to be" is much more often "I hate change" or "here's one or two things it would be good if we made an effort to keep alive" than a genuine observation that it would be desirable to put technological progress back in the bottle.
INTERPERSONAL LISTENING
Funnily enough, my reaction is similar. I think it's likely there are obstacles to interpersonal listening similar to those of broadcast listening. But it also just sounds like a "kids these days" lament, when people always complain about kids these days being insufficiently respectful, but probably, they're much the same as people-younger-than-the-speaker any time in the past.
BROADCAST LISTENING
Which art? Listening to radio type things? Then probably, there's just so many forms of media around, it's unlikely the same ones would remain equally big. And easier to be distracted when I always have a phone around.
Although podcasts are getting really big for various reasons, so stuff usually comes back round.
I think there's a wider point. I think having more choices possible is usually better, almost by definition, because the more there are, the more the chance there's one that fits what you need best. But there's significant problems with having choices *equally* available, as anyone's who's used a search engine knows: having three relevant results is so much better than hundreds of maybe useful maybe not results.
Is "having more forms of entertainment" good or bad? I think both, that's usually going to be good. Think of all those niche podcasts which would never have existed twenty years ago. Isn't that awesome? But there are some drawbacks. Like, what's the chance that, just by chance, technological limitations would have positive societal effects? I mean, if you said, "here's two societies, one can listen to any entertainment, the other has a choice of five options. Which population gets better skills from this?" you'd say, well, probably the one with more choice, but there's probably SOME exceptions that are better in 1950s-ville.
Not having anything to distract you is good for some people and bad for other people. That seems like a bad basis to prefer it on a societal level, when you CAN have other solutions (have a special device that only has five channels for people who want one, ban things that seem genuinely bad). So it's not ALL good, but I think "wouldn't things be better like they used to be" is much more often "I hate change" or "here's one or two things it would be good if we made an effort to keep alive" than a genuine observation that it would be desirable to put technological progress back in the bottle.
INTERPERSONAL LISTENING
Funnily enough, my reaction is similar. I think it's likely there are obstacles to interpersonal listening similar to those of broadcast listening. But it also just sounds like a "kids these days" lament, when people always complain about kids these days being insufficiently respectful, but probably, they're much the same as people-younger-than-the-speaker any time in the past.