{"id":4600,"date":"2011-01-02T21:14:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T01:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2011-01-02T21:14:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T01:14:57","slug":"instant-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2011\/01\/02\/instant-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Instant Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Patton Oswalt article – Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die.<\/a> – has been making the rounds. And not just amongst the geeks. For me (hey, shut up), this was a great exploration of something we’ve lost at the hands of the Internet:<\/p>\n

The problem with the Internet, however, is that it lets anyone become otaku about anything\u00c2\u00a0instantly<\/em>. In the \u00e2\u20ac\u212280s, you couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get up to speed on an entire genre in a weekend. You had to wait, month to month, for the issues of\u00c2\u00a0Watchmen<\/a><\/cite> to come out. We couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t BitTorrent the latest John Woo film or digitally download an entire decade\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth of grunge or hip hop. Hell, there were a few weeks during the spring of 1991 when we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell whether Nirvana or Tad would be the next band to break big. Imagine the terror!<\/p>\n

But then reflect on the advantages. Waiting for the next issue, movie, or album gave you time to reread, rewatch, reabsorb whatever you loved, so you brought your own idiosyncratic love of that thing to your thought-palace. People who were obsessed with\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/cite> or the\u00c2\u00a0Ender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Game<\/cite> books were all obsessed with the same object, but its light shone differently on each person. Everyone had to create in their mind unanswered questions or what-ifs. What if Leia, not Luke, had become a Jedi? What happens after Rorschach\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s journal is found at the end of\u00c2\u00a0Watchmen<\/cite>? What the hell was\u00c2\u00a0The Prisoner<\/a><\/cite> about?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you just went “yes!”, then you need to click on over and read the rest of it<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0If you haven’t already seen it and a dozen critiques of it, that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Patton Oswalt article – Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die. – has been making the rounds. And not just amongst the geeks. For me (hey, shut up), this was a great exploration of something we’ve lost at the hands of the Internet: The problem with the Internet, however, is that it lets anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-distribution","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t