March 6 - Greenberg

What a sweet reading!

The most compelling aspect of Greenberg's book is the way in which he touches on several aspects of the American society, en passant, without any pretense at creating the 'ultimate' theory about anything. At the same time, he offers a very broad and compelling insight on the history of a technological artifact. Really interesting reading.

Two things, in special, were very interesting to me: first, the description of the videophile community, and its resemblances with the communities on the internet. Second, the relationship between being a movie aficionado and a video rental store clerk.

The first is more a personal view than anything else. Feel free to disagree with that. What struck me in particular was the resemblance in terms of the psychological and social profiles of the videophiles and the internet chat users. Of course, the web allows for more distance and less information about one person than that kind of group did at that time. But the fact that videohiles were usually single males, 21 to 39, who rarely matched their own description of themselves was quite funny and interesting. Eventually, they would gather in those meetings, such as the one in Ohio, 1979. Also, they would talk to each other over the phone, and mail the 'video letters' in which they would show their homes. We do that nowadays with blogs and photologs!

The second, however, is very interesting in a social perspective. In the industrial world, workers lost their identification with the commodities the help produce. In the assembly line, for instance, one person tightens a couple of screws, and here comes the next pair. He doesn't identify himself with the final product. In the case of the video rental stores, that was somewhat subverted. The clerks were not only movie lovers who were amiable towards their customers, but also peopole who would enjoy watching movies all day long -- thus increasing their own knowledge about films. It was probably the closest a movie lover would get to being in the motion picture industry, and actually the last step before doing so (becoming a movie maker) for a lot of them.