Robbins also made another good point. When you're putting a tape or cassette in, you know exactly what you're going to get. When I was a kid, the sci-fi writers warned that one day we each would be sealed up in our own little box, each living in a private universe entirely of his or her own choosing. Yet what they all have in common is their collective nature, their mass appeal, their sharedness. Other people, of course, through chat rooms and e-mail.
Many Web sites welcome arrivals with a count of how many other users have been there.
The moral of the story is, the shared experience still matters. St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.