In a Space Exclusively

2019/08/11 There seems to be a lot of interest and/or nostalgia for the "bubble economy" years in Japan.  I was in Japan for that entire period (arriving a couple of years before it started), and via video time machine, I have spent the past twelve years (2007-2019) revisiting the 1990-93 (mainly 1990 and 1991) period.  1990 was the tail end of the peak bubble economy years and by the end of 1991, it was clear things were sliding....  That combination has put that period of time front-and-center in my mind in a kind of strange way.  Normally, you live through things and remember highlights, reinforcing those highlights whenever you recall them - and apparently also altering them, as the memory is, unfortunately, not read-only access, but access, and then overwrite-save, and so memories can be changed through your own perceptions and/or others' opinions, etc.  The past twelve years for me however, has been a period of continually jumping back to video I took of 1990 and 1991, and so while time flows onward, those two years have taken on a kind of permanence (and clarity) in time as though they were - forevermore - a piece of current time.

One of the fundamentally different things about that pre-cell phone, pre-Internet, pre-smartphone era is that spaces were unmolested by continual interruption from outside information (and/or disinformation).  If you arranged to meet someone, you needed to be at a certain place at a certain time.  Often you would arrange to meet at a train station, and for times when someone didn't show up at the designated time, there were message boards where you could write say, "Hiro - we waited for 30 minutes... we're going on to the restaurant" or whatever.  Being able to receive messages from those in transit about being late is definitely a nice feature of modern portable telecommunication devices... however...:

Fast forward (a tape-era term, do post-tape people still use it?) to a coffee shop; jazz music playing from records (not CD's) via a quality sound system.  You're sitting across from someone you want to spend time with.  You look at each other and begin talking about one thing or another (periodically glancing around the room at the other people in the space), and if the chemistry is right, the time is magical and cannot be interrupted by anyone not in the coffee shop, since no-one is carrying wireless telecommunication devices.  No news, no phone calls or text messages from distant friends.  No interruptions in that exclusive space and time.  This is - for me - possibly the single biggest difference between life back then and now.  Now, wherever you are, typically any individual you are talking to considers messages via their microcomputer telecommunication device more important than whoever they are actually physically with.

The result is I've begun to just expect that the longest attention anyone will give an in-person conversation is five to ten seconds.  Anything longer than that and either their Internet-trained brains complain that a change of topic is overdue or a message comes in via their micro telecommunication device and they shift brain focus away from the human standing in front of them to the message on screen.  Few appear to comprehend the concept of long-term time management.  Any microseconds saved are cause for joyous celebration, and the long-term reality of time wasted through fragmentation and endless miscommunication is... overlooked?  Not understood?  Ignored?  Not conceptualized?  Something....

It occurs to me that my usage of "exclusive" might be misunderstood, so allow me to comment on dictionary usage (or non-usage) in the year 2019:

One of the problems with current language usage, I feel, is that too many people don't reference vocabulary beyond how they hear it being used around them, or how it's simplistically explained in pop-up boxes on their micro-computers, and those definitions - if user-group editable - are often at variance with the actual meaning of a word.  Of course the meaning of words shifts over time, but if the definitions of words are considered to be only a matter of opinion, then we might as well just grunt at each other.  Printed dictionaries (or non-editable electronic versions of printed dictionaries) really ought to be the way to reference vocabulary.  A lot of time and effort goes into compiling printed dictionaries and their definitions are not changed on a whim.  As a way of coming to agreement regarding what any given word actually means, they should be paid attention to.  All of that said, let's have a look at a dictionary definition of "exclusive" (from the "Longman Advanced American Dictionary" - [2000]): exclusive - 1. available to only one person or group, and not shared

There are a number of other definitions, but that's #1 and that's the concept of "In a Space Exclusively".  A space for the people in that space, not shared with whoever (or whatever) has a telecommunications link with someone inside.

Regarding the dictionary I referenced... I have a lot of dictionaries actually, but that one was most readily at hand while writing this.  I'm pretty sure any respectable/reliable dictionary will have a similar definition for that term (along with other definitions too of course).  I would look it up on-line as well, but I'm writing this off-line.  You really need to do that if you want to focus on something exclusively....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
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