This is an important piece. In the last decade a lot of what was considered valuable has been thrown out. I saw them on streets on monthly furniture disposal. Encyclopedias, books, tapes, magazines, devices of all kinds. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Yet I don't feel there's something equivalent that replaced it. Wikipedia maybe but .. not really.
And the trend of "replace in-depth well paid work by cheap short term attention catching hooks" keeps spreading.
It's very very strange to witness that kind of social waves.
My print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is one of the best gifts I ever purchased for myself upon graduating from high school.
The social pressure that makes youngsters watch TikTok cat videos instead, mixed with instant gratification effects from online media consumption (in contrast with the active reading of a 150 page in-depth encyclopedia article on a topic) leads to generations that are unwilling - and for lack of exercise then also unable - to put much effort into anything, and to value knowledge/expertise.
> Encyclopedias, books, tapes, magazines, devices of all kinds. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Yet I don't feel there's something equivalent that replaced it. Wikipedia maybe but .. not really.
They were replaced with (sometimes inferior, but often cheaper and more convenient) substitutes delivered via the web or internet, often to smartphones, whose usage patterns tend toward short-form, bite-sized "content" (as per TFA). Playback devices (CD players, DVD players, radios, hi-fi audio systems...) have been replaced by mobile devices and/or smart TVs/streaming devices.
The brick and mortar stores that used to sell physical media (bookstores, music stores, magazine stands, video stores, software stores, etc.) are mostly gone as well.
Libraries are still around, but digital collections are hamstrung by copyright law.
I don't think it's that surprising that such items are being discarded today.
They might have had value at some point in the past, but they probably haven't retained that value well at all.
For example, enough of the information in those encyclopedia sets, non-fiction books, and magazines is probably now out-of-date, invalid, wrong, or incomplete.
Most of the paperback books and magazines I've seen discarded in boxes along sidewalks are merely previous generations' equivalents of "cheap short term attention catching hooks" from when such things inherently required more physical overhead.
A good chunk of those items probably weren't particularly wanted to begin with, or are infeasible to keep now. No replacements are needed or wanted.
Some of the books, tapes, devices, and other items were probably given as birthday, Christmas, graduation, etc., gifts. They might not have even been that useful to the recipients to begin with. Physical gift-giving like that is less-common these days in my experience, with gift cards and even cash replacing physical items. A lot of items given as gifts in the past are simply no longer offered for sale today, or are so cheap that giving them can even be seen as insulting by some people.
Much of the new housing stock in places like Canada, Europe, and even the US to a lesser extent are small apartments. A lot of people just don't have space for items in general, especially when downsizing or moving into a retirement or care facility.
Enough of the items I see discarded are also damaged, broken, or otherwise unusable, too.
For informational content, maybe, but on a larger level it seems that nothing has value anymore. Makes me curious about what disappeared in people's mind. I don't think spotify replaces a set of LPs even though in terms of sound waves you can have the same amount of bits.
Spotify absolutely replaces LPs or other physical media. Sure you own the physical media, but it doesn’t last forever, it takes up space and it’s somewhat inconvenient. Most people don’t really care about owning music and are happy to pay a few dollars a month for a service that has every song they might ever way to play and to never have to move a box of records again.
I wonder about if lot of these were ever considered valuable. To buy yes, and then kept around for a bit as it costed money, but after certain time as valuable? Very likely not. Pruning collections is normal process and something like encyclopaedia never truly had much second hand value.
You buy a book, and you read it one time and then after it has been sitting in yourself filling up for years maybe you decide just to get rid of it. I have shelf full of books I will likely not read and by parents have book cases I think they have not touched during my lifetime... At some point some of this collection is discarded and "donating" feels cleanest way.
One would hope that all of these hardcopy texts at least get digitized to be preserved on Internet Archive (and preferably as many more backups as possible).
Another source, for academic writing, is jstor.org. A lot of the older stuff is free with an account. It presents as if you need a current educational affiliation, but not so for a basic free account.
Honestly, a ton of stuff is digitally preserved. Far more than happened historically. Sure a lot of things will still end up in the bit bucket but we're still never going to preserve everything and it's probably just as well that we don't.
And the trend of "replace in-depth well paid work by cheap short term attention catching hooks" keeps spreading.
It's very very strange to witness that kind of social waves.