Sushi-ish
I like sushi. Just last night, I had a delicious rainbow roll and some spicy tuna maki from a restaurant around the corner. I’m no sushi genius, but I can appreciate the textures of the different ingredients, I can tell fresh from sorta-fresh, and even though it’s on the expensive side, made-to-order sushi is worth it.
On the other hand, I also like Trader Joe’s sushi. But TJ’s sushi isn’t made to order, the ingredients all mush together into a weird gummy texture, and it’s “fresh” in that it is less than a week old. All in all, it’s pretty weird. It tastes good, and it’s cheap, and I like it – but is it sushi if it lacks everything I think of when I think of sushi?
My wife likes “yogurt cheese,” which looks a lot like cheese but has a strange taste and texture. She says that she’s just learned to think of it as something else – not cheese. If she does that, she can appreciate it for what it is, not hate it for what it isn’t.
I think that Trader Joe’s sushi is to “real” sushi in the same way that camera-phone photography is to “real” photography, and heavily compressed MP3 recordings are to “real” high-fidelity recordings. The basic idea is there, and the name has changed, but the technical details have changed. And with that change you lose something, and gain something else. And over time, the new details define the experience. You could never take a photograph like this one with a camera-phone. But Ansel Adams could never take a picture like this one, with its weird digital grain and right-place-right-time immediacy. And vinyl is “superior” to MP3 just like live music is “superior” to vinyl – but only for a certain set of priorities. I can’t carry a record player with me.
It’s rare that technology changes the core of an idea – it just changes the details.
[photo by drp]
Follow Me
I have a 70’s dial telephone (avocado, of course) that I display with some other antiques in the living room. My girlfriend’s 10-year old daughter was trying to figure out how it worked, never having used one before, so I hooked it up and had her dial someone’s number. For her, it was a “cell-phone appreciation” moment. She couldn’t believe how long it took to dial, and there was no redial if the number was busy (not that we get many busy signals anymore). For fun, I kept it hooked up for a few days, and made some phone calls on it, noticing the feeling of being much more connected to the person on the other line. The sound was clearer, cradling the heavy receiver felt kinesthetically better than holding a cordless phone, and being tethered to the phone itself meant I had to sit there and talk, to really be with the person, as opposed to walking around doing dishes or waiting in line at Starbucks. I didn’t realize how much of the experience of talking on the phone had changed since I was a kid. But the part that felt really good was being able to slam the receiver down, when called for (telemarketers, robo-calls, etc.); contrasted with simply pushing the off button on my cell phone, the feel of the hard plastic hitting hard plastic along with the two bells inside ringing out in protest, it was a much more satisfying experience.