What's Not For Me--New Media, Technology, and Gadgets...

In considering aspects of new media, technology, and various modern gadgets, I have come to some conclusions and theories about the future of media and electronics, both personally and generally.

Here are some media and technological products that, I am sorry to say, just aren't for me:

• No way can I ever imagine that I would watch a movie on a tiny screen like the screens of cell phones and texting devices. No thanks!
• I also don't watch movies on a computer. You see, when I want to watch something long, like a movie or a documentary, I like to sit on a comfortable couch and watch a screen that's across the room. A VCR is a nice addition, because I can start, stop, and start again when I want to. TV remains the place for my film viewing.
• No, never would I read a book on an electronic screen. For me, a Kindle-type device will never replace the good feeling of opening up a book and reading from paper-page to paper-page. I also prefer library check-out to the Internet for reading a book, although the Internet is a great resource for research and quick information.
• Twittering? Oh, I don't think so. It reminds me of what I didn't like about USA Today, when it was all the rage for the new kind of newspaper: The brevity of stories and content. It was nice that USA Today added the splashes of color and color photos. But it was media cotton candy. The New York Times and the Washington Post still are the T-bone steaks. I still look for those great papers in libraries or, at a lesser degree, online. I haven't seen a copy of USA Today in years. Does it still exist?
• Even Facebook falls short for me because it is Twitter-like in its brevity that works well for chit-chat about how the "weather is bad" or "it's time for a beer" or "I just got to the zinnia level of the zombie flower game I am playing." Oops, the last comment may be too long, in words, characters, and attention-deficit, for Facebook. But what I mean is that anything of depth is not what Facebook and other social networking sites are about apparently. Media cotton candy again.
• I wonder just how "lasting" a lot of this new media, including sites on the Internet, will be. When I subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine, I usually stay for years. I can't think of one newspaper or magazine website on the Internet that I go to as consistently. In fact, I have lost more interest in websites the longer they exist than I have found in terms of maintaining a connection. When eBay first started, I was excited to surf for items and to even sell some items. But about eight years ago or so, eBay became more "corporate" with lots of big companies getting into the act and I think the feeling of an individual finding items in the attic that he wanted to sell was lost. I haven't been back to eBay in years. I used to enjoy looking at all the videos on YouTube. I haven't been there in months. I used to go to Salon.com, as it has some very good writers, such as Glenn Greenwald. But I haven't been there in weeks and once when I returned, it had changed its look and I felt like I had to re-learn the procedure for looking or writing comments. No time for that. I only go to the Huffington Post when relatives send me links to something interesting. I certainly prefer the progressive sites to the conservative sites, just as I never go to the Fox channel on TV, but I still want to read or see objective and neutral reporting, for my own evaluations or the scope of the arguments, and I just don't tend to find that on the Internet. I am on Facebook, but now I visit it about once every two weeks, just to keep up with the chit-chat. Facebook probably has reduced e-mailing. As I have heard from others too, I get less personal e-mails now than ever before, though there is still plenty of it coming from spam sources. So, even e-mail is losing its popularity.
• I don't like the idea of connecting my bank account to anything on the web. So, the paypal concept doesn't work for me. If a website is paypal only, I don't buy products.
• I heard from a recent broadcast speaker that the fastest-growing user group for Facebook now is the group of middle-aged to older women. Hmmm? I have this theory called "Theory of the Generations," which theorizes that when older generations take over a youth media, fad, or product, the young people move on to something else (and new). I have often said that when some young men were walking around in the fashion fad of letting their trousers drop low enough so that their boxer-covered butts were exposed (and fortunately at least the fad included boxer shorts), the sure-fire way of eliminating the fad was if the faculty and parents had done the same thing for about a week. That would have killed the fad pretty immediately and beyond measure. MySpace gave way to Facebook. What will replace Facebook for the new youth social network?
• I heard a faculty adviser from a Missouri university comment that, while college students will place zillions of personal photos on their social networks, why is it that it remains somewhat difficult to get them to go out and take photographs of news events and activities on campus? Wow, I don't know, either. Students in journalism and mass media are wasting their valuable time if they are spending too much of it on Facebook and social networks. They should be creating portfolio-quality products and experiencing journalistic moments in order to make the most of their education and to get a good boost into the professional world. Much of their work then could still end up online, but involving subjects beyond themselves and published in more serious form.
• The "lasting" feature is problematic to new media. I believe people are wrong if they think that newspapers will vanish and Internet sites will pick up their place. I don't think new media may last long enough, in any form that becomes a tradition, to not be easily replaced. New media is also partly about product sales. The way of selling electronic products is to change them. For example, the VHS tape gave way to DVDs and now Blu-Ray and 3-D wants to claim the DVD customer base. If you have lots of money, you can keep up with electronic media products.
• It took about 10 years for digital cameras to get good enough for the replacement of 35mm camera, though some photographers might disagree. I certainly love the replacement of the chemical darkroom with the computer darkroom of Photoshop. I like the immediacy of the digital photo and its transfer capabilities. But I kept looking for a digital camera that would have, not only removable lenses, but also a shutter speed adjustment on the outside of the camera...and with digital cameras at 12 megapixels that I have recently seen, it finally has arrived, or so I have now found them.