Think about when you were younger, and how kids at school were so cool because they had large CD collections. Or when you slept over at a friend’s house and they had a huge selection of DVDs for you both to watch. Remember when a new book came out in a series you were all reading, and one classmate was lucky enough to have it brand new, with a long waiting list of kids wanting to read it next? And the excitement of lending a game cartridge to a friend who wanted to try out your favorite game? Now, this may just be the fondness of nostalgia talking, but I think that there was real value to all the physical media that we owned, swapped, and borrowed in our younger years. Nowadays, there isn’t much need to loan things because everyone has a digital copy, and if not, no worries—I can send you a link to view on your own phone or laptop!
Okay, so it’s made everyone self-sustaining. You might ask whether that is such a bad thing. YES! IT IS! This may seem silly or insignificant, but not needing to rely on anyone is the first sign of an ailing community. Humans are incredibly social creatures; you know the saying: “It takes a village to raise a child,” but in modern times, there’s no longer a village. Not only is this detrimental to community building, but it also encourages over-consumerism. This is an issue everyone is well aware of, thanks to the approaching recession that does nothing but remind us of its imminence. Having a digital copy of everything makes it difficult to share media, legally at least, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume you’re not sailing the high seas. This means that if I see a great movie that I absolutely need my friend to watch, I can’t lend her the DVD over which we could excitedly discuss our thoughts the next day. Instead, I’d better hope that she has a subscription to the right streaming platform or can rent it online. Password sharing used to be the answer, but with many streaming services cracking down on sneaky money-saving policies, it makes things difficult. And even if I wanted to buy the physical copy to avoid this problem, most modern movies and TV shows don’t come out on DVD or Blu-ray anymore.
But okay, let’s say you’re rich and a lone wolf. You don’t care about paying for everything, and you think community is overrated. For you, digital media is convenient. In that case, I’d have to ask, do you care about owning what you pay for? Recently, it’s become abundantly clear that having digital copies of media doesn’t mean that you get to keep it forever. There have been many instances where movies that people have bought virtually have been removed from their digital libraries because of some corporate decision or upset. This has also happened with several other types of media: many readers have lost books that they paid for on their e-readers thanks to a tangled mess of copyright and digital rights. Other people have lost access to games that they bought because companies closed the eShops and withdrew support for the games. Back in the days of physical media, no one could come into your house and take your DVDs from your collection, remove books from your home library, or return a game from your shelf because the games shop had closed down.
These are things that I’ve really been thinking about, not just in terms of over-consumerism and corporate greed, but also my own reliance on my devices. If my phone or laptop broke, all of my photos, videos, and journal entries would be gone forever. Besides that, digital media has taken away the art of nostalgia, so much so that I hardly look at those things anymore anyway. When I was younger, my mother would bring down the photo albums, and I would turn through the pages and ask her questions about where she was or what she was doing in each picture. My future kids will have nothing to look at for my life. If I’m being optimistic, I guess they could look at the library of images on my cloud or probably some sci-fi phone we’ll have developed in the future, which wouldn’t have the same personal charm. And if I’m being realistic, technology will erode, software will become outdated, servers will crash, and I’ll probably lose most, if not all, of my digitally stored memories.
I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings – I’ve been seeing a rise in people collecting old tech for access to simpler times, such as modding old iPods to include modern features like Bluetooth to abandon their music subscriptions, buying used classic handheld consoles with physical game cartridges, and pulling out old CD players or going second-hand vinyl shopping. This has inspired me to buy a photo album and start printing out some of my pictures every month. While digital media is convenient, there’s a joy in having media you can touch. There’s still charm in the eject buttons, scratched discs, and shelves that hold something. The reality of digitisation is far from ideal, but it’s comforting to remember that physical media isn’t gone, it’s just waiting to be picked back up again.