Some little thoughts

[brainwane]

I wonder whether area code redlining was a thing (a very hasty search does not turn up anything) stopping people in different neighborhoods from easily talking with each other across racial lines.

Maybe TNG : Ramayana : DS9 :: Mahabharata? And Data is a bit like Hanuman and Odo is a bit like Karna.... But Picard : Rama :: Sisko : ?

In an era of very low media/consumer choice and availability, Book Of The Month and monthly record subscription clubs were popular. The rise of subscription box services comes as consumers have so much choice and availability that we desire better discoverability and curation for that choice. And book clubs also provide some of the same value; "this is the book we're reading" also helps the reader say no to other new books (for now) and ignore the rest of the To Be Read pile.

Some people are actually fine, most of the time, with probabilistic communication and not being certain that they're hearing or being heard properly. This is tough for me to grasp.

Comments

Book Of The Month as curation

[elysdir]

Interesting. I guess my impression of Book of the Month club and other such companies was that they were primarily about curation rather than about increasing choice and availability. There were lots of bookstores that were chock full of books; I feel like BotM was primarily a way to subscribe a curation service that would send you a particularly interesting book every month.

There were alternate choices each month too, and probably a way to order from some kind of catalog. But I feel like the main focus was on the one main book they would send each month.

Re: Book Of The Month as curation

[brainwane]

I appreciate the correction! And I don't know what proportion of club subscribers had lives that made it hard to get to a good bookstore.... or much about the various book/music subscription mail-order services' histories in general. Perhaps when I have more time I'll do a bit of reading about them.