Re: [ARSCLIST] Is The Record Shop Dead?

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 30/06/07, Steven C. Barr(x) wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Bottom line, with retailing, if you're not comfortable with the web
>> today,
> you're at a severe
>> disadvantage for just about any item.
>> 
> As well, the "buyer demographic" for popular music happens to coincide
> with the Internet-cognizant demographic...! At this point, music (and
> other recorded sound), images and text documents can easily be
> distributed via the Internet.
> 
> The next two VERY scary possibilities are these:
> 
> 1) A direct computer-to-human-brain interface that will allow us to
> record, save, and distribute the actual experiences we have (or,
> actually, THINK we have...!) as opposed to copies of sounds and
> still/moving images...!
> 
> 2) A digital method...possibly by recording the details and positions
> of each atom therein...of creating a repeatable digital version of a
> solid object (it remains to be seen if this could be used for living
> entities, but it would seem to be possible for inanimate items...?!).
> 
> Keep in mind that if the above sound like "crazoid dreams" to
> you...well, had you told the average ordinary person in 1857...a
> century-and-a-half ago (and twelve years before my house was
> erected...!)...that, before the end of his/her/its century, he/she/it
> would be able to use a small device in his home to speak to ther
> folks, even in different cities... that it would become not only
> possible (it was, to some extent) but easy to preserve an image of
> virtually anything that could be seen...and that it would be possible
> to record and distribute the performances of various artists...and
> that it would be possible to preserve actual moving images of
> important events...the above individual would have, without
> hesitation, called either the local lunatics' home or the constabulary
> (or both) and informed them that someone seemed to be a raving maniac,
> and ought to be put where the dogs wouldn't bite him!

Not quite as early as 1857, but there is a drawing by George du Maurier
in the Punch Almanac for 1879 showing the use of a wide-screen
videophone for talking to your relatives in Australia. The screen is
about 8 feet wide, and both the parents in England and the daughter in
the Antipodes are talking into speaking tubes.

The caption is "Edison's Telephonoscope (transmits light as well as
sound)". 

Du Maurier might have been disapointed to find that as late as 2007 most
phones are still sound only, and the screens are tiny.

> 
> Then, when you added that it would be only a few years after the above
> events that it would be possible to have a small(ish) "talking box" in
> one's home allowing one to listen to music or entertainment...or even
> to contact other parties thousands of miles away...and, shortly after
> THAT, it would be possible to receive moving images, including sound,
> from just about anywhere on the planet...well, your cell would then be
> double-padlocked and the strait-jacket laced up another couple of
> laps...!
> 
> And I won't even go into what we can already do with computers and
> other digitalia...!
> 
> Steven C. Barr
Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx