Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

The pleasure and possibilities of living a time-shifted life?

(1/5) > >>

mouser:
With the power of sophisticated digital video recorders (like Tivo) and digital streaming services (like Netflix), it's becoming increasingly convenient to watch previously aired episodes of a series all in a row.

I know I'm not the only one who has found this to be infinitely more rewarding than trying to catch these shows one at a time, once per week, as they air originally.

The benefits of watching shows in this "time-shifted" manner are numerous:
Much better continuity since the previous episode is fresh in your mind.
The show has aired long ago so you have time to decide if it's something worth your time.

But I was thinking, it's not just tv shows that are receiving this "time-shift" treatment, where we ignore new things and instead set our focus back a few years to items that are *purposefully* new to *us*, because we avoided them at release time.

All things periodical seem to benefit from such an approach: comic books for example.  I know people buying video games routinely ignore the new releases knowing that if they simply wait a few months the prices will drop precipitously.

I wonder if this approach can't be extended to other less-obvious domains of life?  What would life be like if one purposefully shifted their entire focus of life back 5 years?

40hz:
I'm a little like that with TV series. I'll wait for the entire season to be released on disk or via stream before I'll watch it.

24 was an interesting show concept that got spoiled by some schlocky TV-style writing and plotting. But if you watch each episode back to back and over a two or three day period, it hangs together much better than you'd expect.

The only problem I can see with time-shifting 'real time' things too much is it makes everything effectively 'virtual' - which I think has a bad effect on some people. Because once everything becomes somewhat unreal or 'less real' there's a risk of a damaging sense of alienation creeping into a person's mindset. At least from my experience with people who electively spend much of their lives in the metaverse and mostly removed from 'real world' sequential reality and causality.

Just my 2 anyway.

barney:
Well, I can see the advantages/benefits of the approach, but there might be a disadvantage or two (2)  ;).
Like dental appointments, maybe?  Or cancer surgery?  Or jury duty?  Granted, that's an extreme, but ...

On the other hand, Baby Daughter has been hooked on several series that she'd never have watched in real life.  She's been using our NetFlix subscription to examine a number of series, most multi-season and most Sci-Fi stuff that she'd never have watched otherwise.  Currently fixated on Heroes, a series that definitely benefits from back-to-back-to-back viewings  :P.  She's gone through several vampire series - got hooked on Twilight (the book, not the visuals), and started checking out most anything that's outre, paranormal, fantasy.  So, in that respect, she's interested in venues that she would never have considered otherwise, gaining experiences that she'd never have had. 

Suspect the whole concept is Damoclean  :P.

4wd:
What would life be like if one purposefully shifted their entire focus of life back 5 years?
-mouser (August 06, 2012, 07:03 PM)
--- End quote ---

That'd be great, I'd do the whole Sth America/Antarctic trip again only this time I wouldn't get on the plane to come home.

eleman:
I usually buy 2 years old hardware. Not second hand, but such as a video card that was state-of-the-art in 2010. They become much cheaper then. And add to that the tendency to play 4-5 year old games, I get amazing FPS out of so little money :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page