Analog Versus Digital
At 15 I took a summer job in an office. Duties revolved around the preparation and scanning of leasing contracts, hulking file cabinets reduced daily to reflective laser disks. It was easily half as glamorous as it sounds, a monotonous paper-strewn hell.
Years later I was part of a team that implemented a proprietary audio handling system, digitizing a dozen analog voice networks and filtering them through heaving servers and slick fiber optics only to spit them back over their originating hardware. One operator could monitor every radio net via touch screen laptop, simultaneously hearing independent voice in each ear while incoming transmissions were held in queue. It was the future.
And just recently I made the transition from Moleskin to Smartphone, tactile scribbling now synchronized at each of my workstations with information back-lit by brilliant pixels where ink-soaked paper once sufficed.
As a long time IT goon I can personally vouch for many of the advantages Digital claims over Analog ("analog" a colloquialism here, math/music geeks). Information saturation can become manageable if sorting by meta data while a stack from the local bookstore can be made to fit in the palm of your hand. My RSS reader can and will beat the ever-living crap out of your newspaper subscription any time any place without smudging your hands or cutting down a tree.
But even binary has 10 two sides.
I will never forget the cheap thrill of sliding a comic from its plastic sheath, the first smell of an old book, or the indescribable satisfaction of a well-organized bookshelf. These experiences assault the senses in ways that even the warmest monitor glow never could.
Even with that in mind I, in preparation for yet another move, hastily decided to ditch all my media packaging. Huge piles of DVD cases and album art growing as I marveled at my cleverness and considerable reduction in volume. I briefly considered saving a few choice articles but where to put them? A scrapbook? A cardboard box, one of dozens existing only to be lugged up and down flights of stairs and likely never opened?
At this very moment I have 16 banker's boxes in storage full of books that have moved across this country more times than I care to count. With them travel the assortment of figures, framed prints, wall sconces, and various bric-a-brac of sentiment. I am but one man and something had to be done given my damn near Bedouin lifestyle. So into the trash went the jewel cases, glossy game boxes, and what now strikes as quite the biographical time line.
Retrospect has bred regret.
I flew too close to the digital sun and fell, screaming for my trifold cd cases. My shiny box art. My mint condition Doom 2 manual!
What's done is done and I depart from this reflection wiser. I'll revert to my hybrid stylings, twittering and snapping digital photos while enjoying the sensory overloading delights of wood-pulped media old and new. My mouth still waters at the site of a fresh National Geographic and words won't do justice to how much I enjoyed the first issue recently published by the Coilhouse crew.
At the same time Steam and iTunes are are both reliable forms of media distribution, to say nothing of Hulu or the growing habit of television networks to make recently aired shows available on their website. Print is far from dead and the "paperless office" remains science fiction. Folly only greets those that charge headlong down a solitary path, ignoring the countless forks as our options grow daily.
Now I'm curious how other geeks handle their media.
Do you still clack through alphabetized jewel cases at Best Buy? Store your game packaging neatly or simply exchange to reduce the cost of new purchases? Do your old vinyl and CD cases form vast horizontal monoliths at which you worship?
If there's a mix what determines an exalted place in meatspace versus the wonderland of your hard drive?
