In a time where convenience is king and all media is at the
click of a button, what is the long-term effect of the explosive popularity
that is digital media? For years now people have been able to access virtually
any music album, movie, TV show, video game or software application. It is the
identity of pop-culture in today’s society and yet you can’t help but wonder if
by the time our children grow up we’ll be able to share all of our favourite forms
of media the way our parents shared them with us. Where VHS and now DVD seem to
be close to obsolete and digital is the way of the future, is it really?
People are gathering more information at a faster pace now
than they ever have before. Our hard drives are getting bigger and the rate at
which we actually consume and delete this information is also increasing. With
the next thing always just around the corner, rarely do we take the time to
actually reflect and admire what has come before. We need the room to download
the latest season of Game Of Thrones.
It makes me wonder where we’ll be in 20 years’ time. Adding
to the problem is the shortening of attention spans everywhere. In fact I’ll
bet that almost nobody makes it this far into the article for that very reason.
This is a widespread realisation of the modern world we’re currently living in
and it won’t be long until the real world turns into a personification of the
attitude that many frequent internet users have. The internet at this stage is
just a constant recycling of old material with a new spin to fit in with the
latest meme. Internet memory is short. Things happen two years apart and people
believe the latest occurrence to be the first of its kind. More and more a
constant presence is required to stay relevant in people’s minds so how long
will it be until people have never heard of recent Oscar winning films or the
latest hit CD?
Looking at it from another perspective, a few decades ago
the mere premise of what has become the modern transaction would have come
across as pure lunacy. You exchange real money for a product which you never
physically have and at best all you’re doing is borrowing said product for the full
price of acquiring it yourself. You never truly own these forms of media
because if the company selling it to you goes under then which servers do you
think you’ll be streaming and downloading from?
In essence what I’m asking is how do we preserve the
sophisticated and complex world we live in on a few pages when nobody reads
books anymore? If a civilisation far off into the future were to dig up remains
of a USB stick holding every secret our society has to manage but inevitably
technology has surpassed that of our own, how are we remembered?
