Nostalgia for Rental Shops: Time Says “Netflix Stinks!”

Netflix has grown so quickly that you can’t be surprised some are still left clinging to the old ways of getting content to your eye balls. A writer for Time is one of them and this is what he has to say:

Beyond the mail delays and the botched orders, the lack of human interaction is the big problem with Netflix and its cyber-ilk. Thanks to the Internet, we can now do nearly everything–working, shopping, moviegoing, social networking, having sex–on one machine at home. We’re becoming a society of shut-ins. We deprive ourselves of exercise, even if it’s just a stroll around the mall, until we’re the shape of those blobby people in WALL•E. And we deny ourselves the random epiphanies of human contact.

Getting movies by mail is, Netflix hopes, just a stage between the Blockbuster era of video stores and the imminent streaming of movies. You can already get 12,000 Netflix titles on your TV (if you have a Blu-ray player or spring for a $100 Netflix box). So, O.K., soon there will be no more waiting for DVDs. But it’ll come at a price. You’ll be what the online corporate culture wants you to be: a passive, inert receptacle for its products.

I don’t really agree with most of it, but if there’s anything to take away from the article it’s that Netflix’s recommendation system could use some more work, and you’re a mindless lump of lard if you embrace simplified, direct, and active choices for accessing the one thing that really matters: content. Full article over at Time.