Why “Offline” Media Feels Different – A Ramble « PekoeBlaze

Well, I thought that I’d ramble about why “offline” media feels different (or, in a vain attempt to sound a decade younger than I am, “hits different”). This was something I ended up thinking about in mid-April when I found and started re-reading an old paperback novel that I first read in about summer 2006.

The novel in question is a giant slow-paced sci-fi tome, with tiny print, called “House Atreides” (1999) by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson. It’s so atmospheric 🙂 My next book review might not be for a while, since I found myself slowing down and just enjoying this one. It’s a prequel to Frank Herbert’s legendary 1965 sci-fi novel “Dune” and, despite not having read any Dune books since about 2007 – although I watched an old TV adaptation during the 2010s – I still instantly recognised a lot of the locations and characters.

Whilst I couldn’t remember much about “House Atreides” (1999), I found myself feeling nostalgic for when I read the original “Dune” (1965) at the age of seventeen. How I sat on my small lime-green sofa, with a MP3 of Manowar’s “The Dawn Of Battle” playing on repeat from my old Windows 98 PC in the background, and literally churned through the whole thing in a single weekend of binge-reading. How, in Sixth Form college the next week, I’d find myself doodling giant sandworms on my planner book and stuff like that.

This teenage nostalgia then led me to re-play parts of the sci-fi 3D platform game “Ratchet And Clank” (2002) again. For a while, I was back in a rose-tinted version of the mid-2000s again 🙂 But, whilst playing, I suddenly realised something about both the book and the game. Both are totally “offline” pieces of media from an age when entertainment media was expected to be “offline”. And this makes them feel very different to modern media.

In short, an old paperback book and an old PS2 game disc were completely self-contained things. It’s more noticeable in sci-fi media, due to the fact that the creators have to build an entire futuristic “world”, but everything within the book or disc is not only contained within it but also “frozen” as well. It’s a complete self-contained thing that is totally unchanging. And there is something wonderfully focused and reassuring about this that you don’t really get with more modern internet-connected media.

Yes, you can still get things like DRM-free editions of modern computer games – I literally exclusively play these – but the trend these days is for everything to be connected online. E-books, “live service” games, online “updates”, “streaming services” etc… And this changes everything about the “feel” of these pieces of media. Because they can be changed and updated, or because they can connect to the wider world of the internet, they just feel different. More diffused.

I’m probably not explaining this well. It’s almost more of a feeling. When you open an old paperback sci-fi novel, there’s a sense that the thing in your hands is just the novel. It’s an entire galaxy – and only an entire galaxy – contained within a book. There’s a focus to this. Ditto an old PS2 disc or an old music CD. Not only is it totally frozen in time, exactly the same as when it was made, but it is literally just that thing. It exists as an island, something which is nothing else but what it is. There’s a purity to it. A feeling of direction. But also a meditative feeling, a relaxation. You feel more alone, but in a really good way. Like a peaceful forest clearing after spending time in a bustling city.

The exact feeling is difficult to describe because, as little as fifteen or twenty years ago, it was totally standard for virtually every form of entertainment. But, like how the dreaded “A.I. generators” have made me appreciate the actual process of drawing or painting – something which was just “ordinary” before about 2022 – the focus on everything being internet-connected (even things like single-player games or movies or novels) and remotely-updatable has made me appreciate “offline” media a lot more.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂