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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (186654)	2/26/2009 8:57:41 AM
From: Jill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Here is another nice essay which is very apt. It is called "Screenworld." austinchronicle.com It begins: "Screens, screens, screens – everywhere, screens. Right in front of me, in arm's reach, are three: the three computers accessible from this chair (often I work on two at once). Another screen's across the room – the TV. My cell phone, also in arm's reach, has a screen, even though I bought the simplest device possible – it cost 10 bucks, but it can take and transmit photos and movies. You see screens at checkout counters, restaurants, laundromats, waiting rooms, and on the dashboards of cars. Millions preen for screens on YouTube and Facebook, marketing their images like politicians or starlets. What with BlackBerrys, iPhones, and my 10-buck cell, few Americans go anywhere anymore without a handy screen that connects to every other screen in some way or another, linking to any event, broadcast, or data source anywhere, including satellite photos of every address you know..." Print is in trouble partly for this reason. And I admit, I love to watch youtube videos on my Iphone, for instance--do web searches in bed, email myself useful info etc. Texting people is easier and more efficient sometimes than phoning. I recently interviewed an 18 year old in Italy who underwent successful gene therapy--and he referred me to his youtube videos--one of them pictures of himself and his girlfriend set to romantic music; another of him and his brother pretending to be rock stars, he himself using a broom. So in one way I had immediate access to an intimacy with him etc. The problem is that all this is so enticing, that the essence of print as a medium--honing a fine craft, over and over, writing and rewriting, and sitting with a good book and poring over it, time and time again, is lost. One does not substitute for the other. But unfortunately, it has. I just see that an era is basically over. I'm glad I grew up when it was still in its heyday.