Spyke
lemmy.world

Yeah it's not about the Internet and virtual reality or fax machines etc, it was about overpopulation and ecological collapse among other things.

The song was inspired by a trip to an underground city in Sendai, Japan if you read Wikipedia. In the late 90s Japan was a gadget obsessed place with neon signs and screens packed into places like Sendai. Japan had industrialised rapidly over the 20th century and gave the impression of a thriving technology and manufacturing industry.

It was seen as a futuristic place by people from the rest of the world when they visited. Of course in reality Japan was in the first of its "lost decades" of stagnation that's run from the early 90s to now.

127
e8d79reply
discuss.tchncs.de

Underground city in Sendai? Did they get radicalised by visiting a shopping center connected to the subway?

24
protistreply
mander.xyz

Besides not meeting its capitalist expectations, how have Japan's "lost decades" impacted its people, and how does that impact differ from that within comparable nations that had continuous economic growth during that same time (e.g. the US, Europe, Australia, and South Korea)?

19
slrpnk.net

political radicalization. in the past 100 years Japan has seen:

  • hypermilitarization
  • hyperfascism
  • hyperbombs
  • hyperdepression
  • hypercolonialism
  • hyperindustrialization
  • hypercapitalism
  • hyperrecession

and a lot of people want to know if there will ever be an end to everything being so damn extra all the time, or if Japan is simply expected to burn itself out working. and as is always the case when the people start askrng these questions, there's a rightwing reaction promising to restore Japan to the glory of an imagined past

45
yucandureply
lemmy.world

Is hyperfascism like regular fascism with neon lights or what?

11
slrpnk.net

overt fascism. it contrasts itself from fascisms that hide themselves by claiming to be something they're not.

hyper fascist regimes:

  • italian fascism
  • national socialism
  • sharia
  • christofascism
  • israeli zionism
  • japanese imperial militarism
  • post soviet russia

covert fascist regimes:

  • neoliberalism
  • feudalism
  • republicanism (the roman concept, not the us political party, they actually fit into the above)
  • bolshevism/stalinism/marxist-leninism
  • anarcho-capitalism
  • technocracy
4
yucandureply
lemmy.world

You're not at all worried about the phenomenon of diluting definitions of powerful words until they lose their power, are you?

24
slrpnk.net

it's more like if we don't talk about how these schemes of oppression hand off to eachother, pass the baton, now, the knowledge becomes lost to everyone but the academics who study ur-fascism. i work to be very considered in how i phrase things because words have meaning. i also come at it from the angle that a lot of people living in the imperial cores of America, Russia, and China don't even recognize that they live in the hellscape outlined in George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and that talking about capitalism v communism is not the fight most of the world at large is having, they're talking about fascism v anarchy.

7

The problem is if everything becomes fascism, then nobody cares about it. I remember in high school people calling Obama a fascist. So now they have nowhere to go when Trump showed up.

That kind of vague academic language screams of "word salad", of people using big words to make themselves feel smart and feel like they've said and done a lot without doing anything at all. Like this Calvin and Hobbes comic:

https://i.imgur.com/XUZce4A.jpeg

11

Honestly a lot of these terms are quite old and not great at describing current politics.

1
ColeSlothreply
discuss.tchncs.de

Overworked, or refusing to work at all. No one's having sex. Their economy is further collapsing, their population is converging to the point of a death spiral. No one can afford to have a family.

They still like tech in Tokyo and pump out anime, though.

11

That just sounds like South Korea, which AFAIK is doing worse than Japan on most quality-of-life metrics - they work longer hours, have even less sex, population is shrinking even faster and AFAIK the common Koreans aren't exactly getting rich off it, either.

2
0x0reply

Look to Japan to see what's the future like in the West a decade for now.

1

Yeah, sure. I suppose next you're gonna say that The Return of the Space Cowboy is not about the movie Serenity.

11

Don't forget Radiohead releasing Planet Telex in 1995, then OK Computer in 1997.

44
lemmy.world

Was born in 1996, please can someone tell me who's this? I'd like to listen to them. Thank you.

40

It's Jamiroquai.

This video is for: "Virtual Insanity".

The video to : "Automaton" is also worth a watch in my opinion.

74
Yondozareply
sh.itjust.works

I really love this cover of virtual insanity.

https://youtu.be/ZTDcdRTziMM

I know it's almost unrelated to the discussion because you're talking about the music video, but how often is Jamiroquai brought up?

17
olostareply
lemmy.world

I remember my mind being blown away by a TV segment that explained how the practical effect was achieved.

13
yucandureply
lemmy.world

Isn't this just Pasttime Paradise by Stevie Wonder?

4
lemmy.world

I'm a fan of both. I don't hear it. Different key, different progression. What are you hearing that I'm not? Also, IMO it's absolutely impossible to not be influenced by Stevie if you play this type of music, so there's that.

2
Dozzi92reply
lemmy.world

While you're checking out the video for virtual insanity, also check out the one for Canned Heat, another great tune and another great video from Jamiroquai. I was only a kid then, but I'd turn on MTV in the morning before school to watch videos back in like 97-99, and these videos popped up every so often, and they had a lasting impact.

Check out also the Wikipedia article on Sterno, sometimes referred to as Canned Heat, because people would drink the shit to get fucked up and would ultimately die, and the coroner would rule it a death by canned heat.

16

Great tune too tbh

ty OP for making my afternoon playlist a lot funkier

8

In french too.

And "make gaffe" (fait gaffe!) means watch out! when you are potentially doing a "gaffe".

1

I don't know why people say that English is hard it all makes perfect sense.

4
lemmynsfw.com

We tried to cover it with my band, but it sounded really boring. Upon listening closely to it, I was surprised by how minimalist it actually is. I mean there's barely anything on the track! Some piano, some strings, and drum and bass of course.

It was a happy surprise to find that it's one of those songs that are carried by the pure energy of the vocalist, which makes it very tricky to cover unless you go a very lateral route and "re-genre" it.

19

Not that much actually! There's not even any bass for the first verse, as it punches in at the first chorus. By the end, the strings appear to come a bit forward in the mix, and there are 2, maybe 3 additional vocal tracks but no additional instruments that I can hear.

1

Reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain, an anime released in 1998 that talks about the power of social networks and how companies will compete to gain control of the internet. Some of the predictions are outstandingly good.

17
0x0reply

Always wanted a Jamiroqoi hat

You'll have to be way more specific than that.

2

Ah, convergence. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the Web would just get extended to do all that stuff. The part that was harder to predict was corporations taking over all the platforms. I guess I just waited to believe that everything would stay democratized.

3
lemmy.world

Before the modern web, before Wikipedia, before pocket computers, Encarta was the shit!

15

yeah i spent so much time reading random shit on it. to be fair i already did that with physical encyclopedias so it was natural. but the fact that Encarta allowed what's now known as wiki surfing was next level for me.

6
lemmy.world

Looks like the The Expanse main character throwing a hat party inside the Rocinante.

14
lemmy.world

I'd been texting for a couple of years when this came out, and had just logged my first full year working as a web developer. The next 5 years or so felt amazing, hardware and software was improving so quickly on all fronts.

11
Poojabberreply
lemmy.world

Yeah, it was good times back then. Now the technlology has vastly exceeded our wildest dreams, yet it is under the control of greedy mega corporations, resulting in the most expensive shitty experience we have experienced so far.

4
rmrfreply
lemmy.ml

There's exceptions, though; that's why we're here :)

I totally read what you're saying. My work requires me to maintain a personal cell phone (Intune business profile) and, with any OEM implementation of a smartphone OS you're essentially paying to donate everything about you to a megacorp to sell it to another megacorp to siphon more of you're life away from you. The beauty of modern advancements, though, is that if you don't care to be within 20% of the "bleeding edge" of attention extraction and intention fabrication you can spend your time in communities like this and with tech like graphene and linux making few sacrifices, if any.

I don't know about you, but the lemmy atmosphere feels a lot like that of early forums to me. Not quite the same, but the community aspect is more present.

I think my stance is that technology doesn't suck, as is the case with most things; it's the unchecked and rampant abuse of a given thing.

2

Oh I agree 100%. The technology doesnt suck, It is fantastic beyond my wildest dreams as a young lad. What we are capable of doing now is amazing.

My complaints are with "subscriptions" and "accounts" to that technology. When I die, my accounts and subscriptions are non transferable. Meaning my $XX,000.00 dollar audible account with over 1000 audiobooks i bought and paid for dies with me. I now pay a yearly/monthly fee to use things like excell(which hasnt changed much) that i used to be able to buy and use indefinitely for 50 dollars.

The technology is amazing. The greedy corporate overlords are the problem.

1
lemmy.world

Went down a rabbit hole bc of this (thank you) and found out JK is a twinkess twin and so is Elvis

9
Klearreply
lemmy.world

Not sure what that means but I saw him live a few years back and I was shocked how extremely British he is, both in accent and great sense of humour. Also the whole band is now a bunch of old dudes. I guess that shouldn't be surprising but it was very different from the picture I had in my head since my childhood.

Except the music. The music was just as good as ever. It was awesome.

15
ReiRosereply
lemmy.world

Original post made me search for jamiraquoi, which led to me listening to their music, then finding a yt about their music video which led me to the jk wiki page, which had the term twinkess twin, so then I started on that etc. Internet Rabbit hole.

Im glad he's still robustly british.

1
lemmy.ca

I don't know that I've ever actually registered any of the lyrics within this song, save for "vurchahwuhh insayynatyy!"

8

Yeah sometimes I wish the internet had never been invented and we all just kept using teletext.

2
lemmy.world

People have always complained about how new tech warps people’s minds. Like back in the day there were people saying the same thing about books when the printing press was invented

6

And they had a point. While the printing press (not books, those are way older) was a tool that could be used for good, many quickly realized that it gave propagandists a whole new set of tools to manipulate people with. Newspapers had a ridiculous amount of opinion-making power for quite a while there, they just got replaced by radio, TV, and then social media and now LLMs.

8
feddit.org

What if very powerful people are literally using tech to warp people's minds on purpose?

5
feddit.org

I mean like literally controlling who people talk to and how often, and without most people being aware of how much they are being controlled.

3

Information always comes from somewhere, that's why they banned books (& "ideas") and promoted "their ideas". You can't talk about democracy, equality, ... if it hasn't been presented to you as an Idea. Old as the world!

1

The other day I heard a Joe Walsh song playing from a coworker's phone on break, and I was ready to excitedly nerd out over classic rock with someone.

But my coworker went, "Who? It's a TikTok," and my enthusiasm deflated like a balloon.

I guess we're both showing our age. Sigh

2
0x0reply
lemmy.zip

People have always complained about how new tech warps people’s minds.

Because it does.
Ask a 20yo to do simple math without using a calculator.
The more "helping" technology we rely on, the stupider we become.

1
lemmy.world

Ask a 20yo from the 70s to use Excel. Nobody could do that back then. How stupid.

It's an equally wrong argument.

People's skills adapt to what they need frequently. If they need something, they will learn how to do it and they will know how to do it. If they don't need it, they will lose it. Why would you want to keep maintaining a skill you don't need? It doesn't make you a better person.

4
0x0reply
lemmy.zip

Ask a 20yo from the 70s to use Excel.

You went backwards, i went forwards, slight difference there.
People are losing basic cognitive skills.

2

People are losing/not learning skills they don't need. That's it. They learn other skills instead, that they do need.

Everyone has basic photography and photo editing skills. Something most people really didn't have in the 70s. Most people know how to use a smartphone or a PC, again not something that the average person could do in the 70s.

Then again, in the 1890s most people knew how to handle a horse and hardly anyone knew how to control a car back then.

Even back in the late 1990s a large portion of the adults were afraid to touch a computer, because they thought it was some arcane magic, and now that's not an issue any more.

In the 80s and 90s, calligraphy was a quite common skill. Nowadays it's not necessary any more because if I want text to look nice, I print it.

There's no such thing as a "basic cognitive skill" that everyone needs to have in every circumstance throughout world history. Because stuff changes and skills that were super important 30 years ago just aren't nowadays.

Case in point, to return to your original argument: It was a common thing for pupils in the early 2000s to ask their teachers why they need to be able to do long division if they can just use a calculator instead, and the common answer was "You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time". Well, we do now.

2

When common core math was introduced across the US, I wanted to know what all the hubbub was about, so I looked into it. Funny that, despite so many parents decrying it, a few instruction pages ended up giving me (as an adult) the number sense that hadn't fully developed from my time in school. I use constructs from it all the time now and mental math has never been easier.

Calculators are great tools, but being able to do quick math in your head before everyone else can finish punching the numbers in makes people wonder if you have super powers.

3

JK was inspired to write the song after he spent all night exploring a web ring - all of which were GeoCities sites with an “under construction” animated gif.

5
Mr_Dr_Oinkreply
lemmy.world

It's so strange for me, having been born in 1988, to hear someone not know who this guy is, and this song.

I fully understand that it's been just about 30 years since this came out, and there are multiple generations of kids that will never have heard it that are fully grown adults now.

Its just that this song was not only massive, one that everyone knew, but it lived on way past its release date, it was played on radio, tv, used in films and tv shows (silicon valley is a recent one of note). The same band also had a meme based on the film "napolean dynamite" with the song canned heat, which the main character did a dance to that made it into games such as world of warcraft and fortnite.

The band is a part of pop culture, and despite it all, there are still places in the world where people dont know instantly what this picture is from and who that is.

I get it. It just boggles my mind how vast the world is. Even 10 years ago there were people living in the north west of england asking who the beatles were. (Beatles are from liverpool in the north west of england and liverpool is littered with beatles murals, staturs and that kind of shit) its insane that anyone could not know who they are.

But hey ho. Just thinking out loud.

17
0x0reply

Even 10 years ago there were people living in the north west of england asking who the beatles were.

I once head 20yis on the bus saying how lucky that old guy Paul McCartney was for being in Rihanna video, like, it'll really be a boost for his career...

2

I'm between 1 and 2 years older than you and I just found the song. As far as I can tell I've never heard it or anything about that dude before.

Not sure where I would have heard it... But I am pretty good at guess that tune from about 1970 to 2010 when I switched to streaming my own playlists.

2
Ithireply

I only knew the song years ago from one single source which was a DDR game on Xbox. Born the same year too lol. Until my 20s I thought it was some obscure song with cheap to buy licensing for the game.

In the last 5-10 years though I did see the music video for the first time and in the past couple years I have seen his name pop up several times at least.

That's about it though. I guess I never really listened to music until my teens and any car radio was 70-80s rock or even older pop music.

1
aussie.zone

Also, little kids are going around in Nirvana t-shirts, so they can can all the “before my time” natter.

1
0x0reply

little kids are going around in Nirvana t-shirts,

...and never listened to In Bloom.

3
Echo Dotreply
feddit.uk

Well it's possible people have heard the song and just not know where it is from. I've seen the music video in muted online clips about film production, but I don't think I've ever actually heard the music.

I don't think I've ever heard the music and the video together at once so I wouldn't have made any connection. Assuming that you have heard the music because I have no idea what it would even sound like.

0

Yeah! Thats what i am saying.

It absolutely makes sense that there will be vast numbers of people who dont know any single well known anything.

But it never fails to blow my mind just how big the world is.

2
Psythikreply
lemmy.world

I was born in 1988 as well; I just don't recognize most musicians by their faces. (Is that a normal thing to do?) No need for the freak out.

Sorry for not always seeing every music video for every popular song. My bad, yo.

-1
Mr_Dr_Oinkreply
lemmy.world

Hey man, i wanna be clear. That wasn't intended as a freak out. At all. I'm sorry it came off that way. It was a general musing about how vast the world is and that despite thinking everyone must know about a particular thing, there will always be people that don't.

I was more wonder and amazement at that fact. I wasn't having a go at you.

Sorry again my dude.

3

I know who he is (thanks to context from other comments), I just don't recognize his face.

1

I mean, I guess yea? They was already putting out 2 albums of classic modern soul before traveling without moving and the world couldn’t be bothered…

3

Hah, one of those coincidences.

Just 2(?) weeks ago Virtual Insanity popped up on stream and I wondered if Jamiroquai are prophets now or the song is just way younger than I remember

3
feddit.uk

And yet you somehow think that all posters on the internet are being absolutely literal?

5
aussie.zone

Was thinking earlier about how, before becoming prominent crypto-Zionists, Radiohead were singing about the numbing effect of working in a cubicle job as a tiny cog in the machine of a monolithic consumerist society, but then thought - didn’t this band form at public school, paid for by their parents, and might they possibly never have worked a 9-to-5 in their life? And could they be cashing in on the aesthetic of pre-millennial salaryman angst as seen in many movies of the time such as Office Space, Fight Club, The Matrix, American Beauty, etc etc?

5
lemmy.myserv.one

Sabrina Carpenter clearly does. It all describes how much of a stuck up, insecure, bratty cunt monster she is anyway.

-1
Psythikreply
lemmy.world

I'm sorry, it just really annoys me when people pretend not to recognize extremely famous names. Feigning ignorance is a major pet peeve of mine.

If you've turned on a radio or have visited a public place anytime within the past year or so, you've heard one of her songs before. If you've spoken to more than one person outside of the internet within that same timeframe, you've heard her name mentioned at least once before.

But you already know who she is, so IDK why I waste my breath on trolls.

0