You know, I was cleaning out my garage last week and found a box of old VHS tapes buried under some satellite component manuals from the ’80s. Held up a copy of *Blade Runner* – the original theatrical release, not the director’s cut everyone argues about now – and just stood there for a minute remembering what it was like to actually hunt for good science fiction.
These days I watch my wife scroll through Netflix for twenty minutes before giving up and putting on some cooking show, and I think… man, we really lost something important when we gained infinite choice. Back when I was starting my career at Hughes Aircraft, weekends meant one thing: hitting up Video Paradise on Ventura Boulevard and hoping they still had that sci-fi flick the guy at work mentioned.
The ritual started in the parking lot. You’d see other people walking out with their little plastic cases, and you’d try to catch a glimpse of what they’d scored. Sometimes you’d recognize a fellow traveler – another engineer or scientist type who appreciated hard science fiction – and you might even strike up a conversation about whether *2010* was worth the rental fee. (It was, by the way, even if Arthur C. Clarke’s orbital mechanics were a bit optimistic.)
Inside Video Paradise, the sci-fi section was maybe twelve feet of shelf space, but it felt like a treasure map. No algorithm trying to guess what you wanted based on what you’d watched before. No endless scrolling. Just you, standing there with actual physical objects, reading the back of each box and making a commitment. Because once you walked out with *Enemy Mine* or *The Last Starfighter*, that was your entertainment for the night. No backing out, no switching to something else halfway through.
I remember discovering *Outland* purely because Sean Connery was on the cover and the synopsis mentioned mining operations in space. As someone who’d spent months working on attitude control systems for communication satellites, I was curious how they’d handle the physics of working in zero gravity. Turned out they didn’t handle it well – the movie’s basically *High Noon* in space – but I watched the whole thing anyway because I’d made the investment.
That’s what we lost, I think. Investment. Commitment. The understanding that consuming media requires some effort on your part.
The VHS experience itself was tactile in ways these streaming kids can’t appreciate. You had to rewind the tape if the previous renter was inconsiderate (and they usually were). You had to adjust the tracking if the picture was fuzzy. Sometimes the tape would get eaten by your VCR, and you’d spend twenty minutes with a pencil, carefully winding it back onto the spool. My wife thought I was crazy for keeping our old Panasonic VCR until 2003, but I had tapes that weren’t available on DVD yet.
The imperfections were part of the charm. My copy of *Star Wars* – and yes, I still call it *Star Wars*, not “A New Hope” – had this weird color shift about halfway through where everything went slightly green for thirty seconds. Probably from magnetic degradation or someone storing it near speakers. But after watching it dozens of times, that green shift became a familiar landmark. Like knowing exactly where the creaky step is in your house.
When DVDs arrived in the late ’90s, I was genuinely excited. Finally, no more rewinding. No more tracking issues. Picture quality that didn’t degrade with each viewing. I bought *The Matrix* on DVD the day it came out and spent an entire Saturday watching it twice, then diving into the special features. Commentary tracks from the Wachowskis, behind-the-scenes documentaries, deleted scenes… it was like getting a graduate course in filmmaking along with your entertainment.
The bonus features were a revelation for someone with my background. Watching the making-of documentary for *Terminator 2*, seeing how Stan Winston’s team built those practical T-1000 effects before layering in the CGI… that was engineering porn. Real problem-solving, real innovation, people figuring out how to make impossible things look believable. I spent more time watching James Cameron explain how they achieved the liquid metal effect than I did watching the actual movie.
But even with all those improvements, something was lost in the transition from VHS to DVD. The hunt became easier, which made it less rewarding. Tower Records and Best Buy had huge DVD sections with everything in stock. No more wondering if you’d find that obscure sci-fi film you’d been looking for. No more serendipitous discoveries because you grabbed something at random when your first choice was rented out.
By the time Blu-ray arrived, I was starting to feel like a format refugee. Sure, the picture quality was stunning – watching *2001: A Space Odyssey* in high definition was like seeing it for the first time – but the ritual was disappearing. The commitment was gone. You could order movies online and have them delivered. No human interaction, no browsing, no discovery.
Then came streaming, and suddenly everything was available all the time. Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service was convenient, I’ll give them that. But when they switched to streaming and started pushing their algorithm-driven recommendations… that’s when I knew we’d lost the plot entirely.
Don’t get me wrong – I have Netflix and Amazon Prime and whatever other services my daughter has convinced me I need. The convenience is undeniable. Last week I wanted to rewatch *Gattaca* to see how their genetic engineering predictions were holding up (pretty well, actually), and there it was, ready to stream instantly. No trip to the store, no wondering if it was in stock, no commitment beyond clicking a button.
But that ease of access comes with hidden costs. When everything is available instantly, nothing feels special. When an algorithm is constantly suggesting what you should watch next, you stop developing your own taste. When you can bail out of a movie after twenty minutes with no consequences, you never learn to appreciate slow burns or complex narratives that take time to develop.
I see this with younger engineers at the aerospace conferences I still attend sometimes. They’ll reference *The Expanse* or *Interstellar* – good choices, both scientifically literate – but when you dig deeper, they’ve usually watched them in pieces, on their phones, while doing other things. They’ve absorbed the plot but missed the craftsmanship.
The other thing streaming has killed is the shared cultural experience of scarcity. When there were only three copies of *Brazil* at your local video store, finding it felt like winning a small lottery. You’d tell your friends about it, maybe even invite someone over to watch it because who knew when you’d be able to see it again? Now every sci-fi film ever made is available instantly, so none of them feel worth discussing.
I think about this a lot when I’m reviewing hard sci-fi novels for my blog. The books that stick with me are usually the ones I had to hunt for, the ones that weren’t immediately available or widely promoted. Same principle applied to films. The effort required to find them made them more valuable, not less.
My grandkids think I’m being nostalgic, and maybe I am. They can’t imagine waiting to see a movie, or watching something they didn’t specifically choose, or dealing with imperfect picture quality. To them, these sound like problems that technology rightfully solved.
But I think we lost something important when we optimized away all the friction from media consumption. The ritual of choosing, the commitment of watching, the acceptance of imperfection, the joy of unexpected discovery – these weren’t bugs in the old system. They were features.
Sometimes I’ll pull out that old VHS copy of *Blade Runner* just to remember what it felt like when finding good science fiction required actual effort. The tracking is terrible, the colors are faded, and there’s a weird audio dropout during the “tears in rain” speech. But sitting through those imperfections, investing in the experience despite its flaws… that’s how you develop genuine appreciation for craftsmanship.
These days, we have access to more science fiction than any generation in history, but I’m not sure we’re any better at recognizing quality. When everything is equally easy to access, we lose the ability to distinguish between the essential and the disposable. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re watching *Citizen Kane* or some direct-to-streaming garbage – it just wants to keep you engaged.
I still maintain my physical media collection, much to my wife’s annoyance. Blu-rays of the sci-fi films that matter, the ones I want to revisit and study and share with people who appreciate them. Because ownership means something. Permanence means something. The knowledge that Netflix might remove *Dark City* from their catalog next month, but my disc will work as long as I have electricity.
Maybe I’m fighting a losing battle against convenience and progress. Wouldn’t be the first time an old engineer got left behind by changing technology. But I think there’s value in remembering what we gave up when we traded the hunt for instant gratification. The best science fiction has always been about asking whether technological progress actually makes us happier.
In this case, I’m not so sure it did.
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