Now-and-days I find that I am inheritly "wired." I don't mean I have a lot of caffiene in my blood or that I am on a constant sugar-rush, but I mean that I have networked, connected and distributed myself through a myriad of means of electronic webs. Sometimes I wonder, after all the Facebook, Myspace, DeRanter, twitter, email, forums, comments on blogs and youtube, if "there is anything left? On the other hand, I also wonder how much of this stuff that I'm recieving is neccesary? Do I have to read Wired Online everyday? If I don't scroll through the hundreds of RSS Feeds from Google Reader, will there be a consequence? If I forget my cell phone at home one day, can I stay connected? For some reason, society has taught us that we
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Wired to Wine: Rhetoric Questions Galore!
need to be wired; we need to be connected to each other. "Without a cell phone, you can't make calls if there is an emergency." Well, how did they deal with emergencies back then? "Yeah, well, without Facebook, you can't stay connected." Do I really need to stay connected to 789 friends? Or maybe it's okay to let some of them go; it's not like we speak at all anymore. Am I just pretending that being "socially-networked" and "connected" is vital, and in reality I am just doing it to feel important?
Now I speak as an individual, but larger corperations, in this case being wineries, distributors, merchants, etc. have either decided to be completely wired, avoid it and stay in a brick-and-mortar style of business or combine the two; I learned it as click-and-mortar. What are the considerations a winery must make before they do this. There are the obvious benefits- mass advertising, real-time information to consumers, reach to global markets, etc. But what are some of the problems this might face? Is it almost a necessity to have an online transaction component to your local wine store ? Maybe, maybe not. Okay, I'm beating around the bush: what I'm getting at is, like I am spread thin by "connecting" so much, have we been spread thin and spoiled by the internet when it relates to wine? How many times can you say you went out, bought a wine and didn't look it up online somehow prior? Could most of us keep track of excessive cellars if it wasn't for the services of cellar tracker? What was it that made us think that we need these things to be into wine. That is something I'm trying to figure out as well... Please comment!
'till next time,
-Tatum
2 comments:
People kept track of stuff before computers, and will long after they evolve into something else (the computers, less likely the people evolving.) As for wines, like most purchases or explorations, sometimes a little knowledge is a good thing. That being said, the beauty of where we are at this point in our information inundation, we still have the option of saying, "y'know, I'm done for a little bit." And simply remove ourselves from the data stream. It's only a problem if you find yourself unable to live without it, or unable to conceive of ways to live without it.
People kept track of stuff before computers, and will long after they evolve into something else (the computers, less likely the people evolving.) As for wines, like most purchases or explorations, sometimes a little knowledge is a good thing. That being said, the beauty of where we are at this point in our information inundation, we still have the option of saying, "y'know, I'm done for a little bit." And simply remove ourselves from the data stream. It's only a problem if you find yourself unable to live without it, or unable to conceive of ways to live without it.
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