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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#231

Post by crazygringo »

Last5Digits wrote: post #135

I'm always wary of articles like this. The feeling of things becoming mediocre strongly resonates with me, but I am aware that there could be a great many different biases at play. When I was younger, entertainment media felt magical. The complexity and depth of experiences I could get from even a second-rate story was immense. I remember staying up late at night to process the last movie I watched, or feeling that r…

> every book, movie, TV show, video game and song fails to give me an interesting or meaningful experience

I'm curious, have you tried watching shows like Russian Doll? Andor? The Last of Us? The Leftovers?

These are shows that deal with the very deepest of human themes -- growth overcoming trauma, political radicalization, paradoxical aspects of love, and finding meaning in life (respectively, for those four shows).

They're some of the most exciting and well-written pieces of art to come around in a long time. And then after each episode, you can easily spend a couple of hours reading story analysis and criticism, listening to podcast analysis and so forth. Because there is a lot to unpack -- the patterns there aren't simple at all.

I can't help but wonder if you're not finding things like these that are actually pushing the envelope. (Obviously we're not talking about things like the NBC reboot of Night Court.)

Re: The age of average

#232

Post by fullshark »

michaelt wrote: post #213
fullshark wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any novel TV. The last truly novel TV format was probably the different reality TV formats which exploded 20 years ago and kind of took over everything. Netflix which has dropped billions of dollars on TV basically decided to just copy every format which was successful on cable TV, and has invented nothing novel as far as I can tell except for the interactive TV specials ( https://help.netflix.com/en/node…

If you expand TV to include youtube and other streaming services, in a sense we're in an age of unprecedented choice. You want to watch someone building a robot? Or building a sailboat from scratch? Smelting iron in a furnace they built themselves out of clay? Blacksmithing? Welding? Reviewing PC-98 Visual Novels? Taking apart LED lights? Picking locks? Shooting antique firearms? Using a tatoo-removing laser on thems…

Great point! But even those services seem to have stagnated after an explosion in their growth phase maybe 10 years ago with novel attempts to capture eyeballs, and are becoming relatively samey in terms of content. The article even talks about the phenomenon of "instagram face" and "UGC all looks the same."

One of the weirdest to me is twitch, before twitch/justin.tv existed did you think a platform for live streaming by anyone on the planet would be used largely for watching strangers play video games?

Re: The age of average

#233

Post by Macha »

ryandrake wrote: post #148
bumby wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same because the design constraints generally converge on the same handful of principles. They've converged not in the aesthetic sense as much as the engineering sense: because they work at a relatively low cost. (I'm speaking mainly about things like aerodynamics here,…

Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…

So I checked the local market and while metallic grey is the most popular here in Ireland, white is fifth, compared to its clear first place when I've been to California. White is established in popular culture as the colour of transit vans and small traders, which isn't an image that inspires demand in personal vehicles. I think in recent years, Tesla marketing has rehabilated the image of white cars a little, but I don't see them getting US levels of use in the near future, especially as there aren't actually that many Tesla's being sold here.

So I think there's some level of marketers adapting to at least what they think works in the market rather than simple volume discounts on white paint.

Re: The age of average

#236

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

Art nouveau buildings from the early 20th century are almost universally considered nicer than today's buildings, and yet they're no longer made.

Not because we think modern buildings are nicer, but purely for a matter of cost.

I suspect the same is the case (even if to a lesser extent) in electric toothbrushes and other items of our daily life.

Re: The age of average

#237

Post by thomastjeffery »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

On the contrary!

There is a key difference going from "convergence" to "conformity": circular reasoning.

People who need to sell the thing they invent, tell themselves that "convergence" is the best way there. Customers like familiar traits. So they design for intentional convergence, and that is the essence of conformity.

99.99999% of keyboards are the same physical layout. This layout is a standard that conforms to the general shape of an 1800s typewriter. There is no functional need to continue this. There was no natural convergence toward this shape: it's so bad it often injures the user! The only driver is the value of familiarity to the act of selling a keyboard.

With the advent of cheap 3D printers, we have seen a surge in hobby keyboard design. These people care so much about getting a better keyboard shape that they are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get there. What they want they cannot buy; this was especially the case 5-10 years ago. The very existence of this group proves that traditional keyboards are the result of conformity, not convergence.

Re: The age of average

#238

Post by reso »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

Lots of people before have claimed there is a "perfect" or "final" aesthetic that is discoverable through science. They've all been surprised 20 or 30 years later when people started liking different things.

Re: The age of average

#239

Post by TheCoelacanth »

anthomtb wrote: post #70
sidewndr46 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 over 1 is the result of regulations of various kinds converging resulting in economic pressures dictating that building format. Also unless land is just atrociously expensive, the marginal cost of adding floors doesn't go down. In fact it really goes up at some point. I've still never actually worked out how sewage works in supertall buildings.

I'm no expert but sewage seems rather simple in a tall building. You have gravity on your side so you "just" need longer pipes. Its getting the fresh water up that should get exponentially more difficult as building height increases.

Sewage is far more difficult to handle than water.

You need to maintain a continuous downward slope. You are very limited in how you can have bends in pipes or two pipes join each other. You need to make sure air can get in and out of every point of the pipes, otherwise differences in air pressure will make things get stuck inside.

With pressurized water it just gets pushed wherever you route the pipes and you don't need to worry about the exact route nearly as much. Yeah, you need pumps to get the appropriate pressure on higher floors, but it's still simpler than sewage.

Re: The age of average

#240

Post by JALTU »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

I cringe at this idea, and especially when it comes to human distinction. I see what the "media" (advertising) portrays as a beautiful human body. I look at the people around me. Not the same.
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