Technological benefits

Realized tonight that we live in a golden age of information when I tried to get a key snippet of dialogue from a VHS tape of Citizen Kane for my lesson plan (the DVDs were all rented out). Dialogue in the movie is fast, clippy, and often overlaps, meaning that I had to pause and rewind the tape about six times to get the full exchange, which was only about a minute long. With a DVD, however, I could have paused and played more precisely (there's some lag with tape), or (even better) put on the subtitles. Sure, sometimes the subtitles aren't 100% accurate—but they definitely would have helped.

Of course, this is the same technology that won't let me tape two key snippets from episodes of the Simpsons that visually reference Kane ("Rosebud" [aka the Bobo episode] and "Marge Gets a Job" for those who care), which I have already ranted about.