• BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

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

    • protist@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      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)?

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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          1 month ago

          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.

        • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

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

    • Klear@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

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

  • cout970@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Always wanted a Jamiroqoi hat

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

  • mrfriki@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

  • espentan@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • Poojabber@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • rmrf@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • Poojabber@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          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.

  • ReiRose@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

    • Klear@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • ReiRose@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

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