The Repeated Past – We Are People of the Past Century
I haven't actually found the title yet. I remember a name being given to express a distaste for the current era and a longing for the past, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Unable to find it, and not wanting to spoil this moment, where my desire to write was so overwhelming, I just came up with a title like this for now. If I haven't changed it and these lines are still there (it happened the next day, and the result is still the same), then I either haven't found it yet or I've given up looking.
Yesterday, I said on Twitter that it's normal for everything to be remastered. I wanted to delve a little deeper into this. Why is that natural? Why have our expectations been raised? Why has a stalemate occurred? Hold on to your seats, because to explain these things, we'll have to go back in time a bit. What I'm about to say might sound a bit like nostalgia for the past, but it's not. I'll be assessing the situation and making comparisons.
Not much, until about 15 years ago, many things could satisfy us. What I'm referring to here as things were movies, music, games, and many other things I haven't mentioned here (I used the word "a lot" like that). A movie would come out, and we'd watch it with fascination. We'd get excited, sweaty, and even yell at the actors. Computer games would tie us to our couches, playing for hours on end. I can't even remember how many sleepless nights I spent playing games. We'd listen to music on Kral TV, the radio, cassette tapes, or, more recently, on MP3s we'd acquired here and there. Now, new movies don't even let our facial expressions show. They have much better effects and other features than traditional movies, but despite all that, we don't get excited. Games are bought and played, but we don't spend hours glued to the computer; they don't give us the same excitement. Of course, this isn't the case with new generations. Music, on the other hand, has become a sector that rarely impresses anyone. In reality, the sectors haven't changed; they've simply adapted to the changes. It is us, or rather our brain, that cannot keep up with development.
If you follow scientific websites, you might have heard of posts about our brains failing to keep pace with development. The problem is, why are reading rates so low, even though access to information is much easier? It's because our brains haven't kept up with the changes of the last 15 years. Thanks to the evolving internet and technology, our brains are bombarded with information. We're exposed to so much information that we're forced to filter much of it, and we do this unconsciously. For this reason, I've distanced myself from social media and stopped following current events to reduce my exposure to unnecessary information.
Let's put this aside and return to our topic. Until 15 years ago, the amount of books, movies, music, and games we had access to was far less than it is today. Our brains weren't bombarded with information. Naturally, when we acquired these few things, we consumed them greedily, like someone who had been starving for days. This appetite enhanced their value and beauty. Time has moved on, technology has advanced, and knowledge has multiplied exponentially. Just as our brains are bombarded with information, the amount of books, movies, music, and games we have access to has increased tremendously. Just as we unconsciously filter out information, we are also forced to filter out these things, or we are raising our expectations. And these rising expectations are no longer being met.
We're just starting to see the results of this. I don't follow the film industry much, but from what I've read, budgets for unfashionable ideas are being cut short due to high expectations, leading to a decrease in the likelihood of seeing low-budget, high-quality films. The film industry, now sidelined, has begun retooling and re-releasing old films. Similarly, with books, we can say they're prioritizing publishing guaranteed sellers. In our country, they're publishing old abridged books (like Stephen King's "Armageddon" and "It") as full text. I saw some of them, and you've cut the book in half, you morons! In games, they're trying to create sequels to old games, but because they lack the same mindset as the original creators, they don't deliver the same punch. I won't even get into the music...
So, who is all this being done for? For those of us who lived before and witnessed the rise of the internet (it happened in a Terminator 3-Rise of the Machines kind of way). When I researched Einstein's life, I came across a striking fact about him. I found it absurd that a genius like him wouldn't accept quantum mechanics. But he was actually a 19th-century man living in the 20th century. Born in the late 19th century, he was a man of that era, but he also had to enter the 20th century. As a 19th-century man, he resisted accepting the classical, deterministic universe. We, on the other hand, are 20th-century men living in the 21st century. Since we are currently in the majority, they are trying to please us and rehash the old ones. I estimate this blockage will last at most 5-10 years. Since future generations haven't experienced such a transition and have already grown up with a bombardment of information, they will be used to it.
No matter what, I strive to keep up with developments and move forward. To take the simplest example, while I was surrounded by romantic backwards who wanted to touch the pages of a book and smell its scent, I continued to progress by reading e-books, even on my phone. Since I'm a software engineer, the technologies I follow to stay ahead are probably on par with the scientific publications physicists need to keep up with.
So, will you continue to remain a 20th century person?
I don't know about you, but I'm going to see this movie! I'm happy with how I am!
