What is it about the future that people are so scared of?
Is it because as things change and evolve and eventually end, our mortality comes into focus? Is it the fear of being left behind? Is it the fear of having to become part of a new modus operandi?
Whatever it is, there's no shortage of commentators willing to pontificate on just how evil the future is and how great things "used to be." Things were simpler. Better. Rosier. Of course, pointing out just how shitty and unhappy people were at the time does nothing to decrease the mouth-foaming and boot-stomping.
Yesterday was always the better day--and to prove it, detractors employ a two-part ideology. First, they purposefully underestimate the importance of the innovation by using guarded language--they call it "up and coming," "still developing," "unproven," and so on. Second, they pluck the heart strings of the reader by wistfully referring to what we're giving up by moving ahead with the innovation, and in the process, they completely ignore the positives of what we have now. An example:
Digital music certainly is making some noise as an up and coming trend, but I tell you, I miss the days of buying a nice LP at Tower Records.
Never mind the fact that digital format music--besides already being the norm--is cheap, efficient, readily available, easy to store, and easy to transport, and records were wasteful, easily destroyed, cumbersome, and less cost-efficient. No, no. Ignore that.
The good 'ol days, people.
The good 'ol days.
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It's that mindset that Richard Corliss brings to his recent TIME article, "Why Netflix Stinks: A Critic's Complaint."
I won't get into his specific points, although this Gizmodo post does, and I agree with the responses, but there's a couple of bigger issues for me that I need to address.
First:
No question, Netflix serves a need.
Here we see the first strike in the technophobes arsenal. A need? Is that what we're calling it? I'll use statistics that Corliss himself provided to answer this one:
Since its start in 1999, [Netflix] has sent more than 2 billion discs to its 10.6 million subscribers.
Sorry, Richard, but 10.6 million subscribers is more than a need. It's 3% of the population, and that's not even taking into account the fact that only 8 out of every 10 own a DVD player.
And the 2 billion discs shipped averages out to 188 per subscriber, which proves this isn't some fad--it's an integrated life choice.
Second:
A Netflix ad has one contented couple purring, "We don't miss the video store at all." Well, I do. Specifically, I miss Kim's Video, a lower-Manhattan movie-rental landmark that housed 55,000 DVDs and cassettes of the vastest and most eccentric variety — until it closed early this year and shipped the whole stash to Sicily.
Like clockwork, there it is--strike two. Poor Kim's Video (that you'd have to actually go to to rent the movie and then return to to bring the movie back and potentially pay a late fee if your schedule didn't allow for two trips). 55,000 DVDs and cassettes (Yeah, sorry. Netflix has 100,000). In lower-Manhattan (this sweetens the deal how?). A movie-rental landmark (to who?). Of the vastest and most--is vastest even a word?
You get my point. I don't want to come off sounding like some cold-hearted the future is now type of Gen Whatever. I understand the sadness that Mr. Corliss is expressing--for that past, for how things used to be, for how the world is a rapidly changing place that will leave you behind if you're not prepared to try and keep up.
What I don't get is how that can be passed off as knock against what the future has to offer--in this case, Netflix.
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And with that, I'm off to check the mail.
Whatever's next in my queue came today--I think it's "Revolutionary Road."
More soon.
JS
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