Friday, November 1, 2013

From Digital to Physical

With every passing year and an increasing amount of publications that discuss humanity's transition and total immersion in the digital realm, I long for the days in the future where we move away from the hyperspecific, hyperreal arena of the digital domain and back to physical reality.

Perhaps this will occur as a trend that becomes "hip" among a select few. As a meme, notions of physical reality will reappear as some folks choose to "tune out" or go back to the "retro" days of physical media and property. Compact discs will come back, stores will stock them and people will buy them. They'll be the hip thing like the vinyl resurgence—that started in 2008 or so—was (and still is, to some extent). People will write letters. (Perhaps even the postal service will make money again.)

This retro impulse will leave us all more focused on one thing at a time. Instead of streaming video while ordering pizza while Facetiming while Facebooking while tweeting, we might actually live in actual moments. We'll focus more on the things around us. We'll see leaves fall to the ground. We'll feel the booklet that came with the album. We'll see art in person instead of looking at virtual museums online.

And, in this future, we'll be open to more of the world around us because the physical world allows for more distraction rather than less.

We'll become better. We'll become smarter.


7 comments:

  1. oh god I hope so. so tired of all this third order simulacra all up in my face. Not looking forward to it getting worse before it gets better. Me and Hennessy Youngman just gonna hang outside the structure for now.

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    1. I had not heard of Hennessy Youngman before and now he's my favorite person.

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  2. How serendipitous. I'm about to do just that. First, I'm going wireless free on December 1. Then I'm disabling my Facebook account for good. It's done nothing positive for me professionally so why keep it? I want my life back. You know, the one where people don't know what I'm doing every minute of the day. The one people have to contact me by home telephone or email (how archaic is that) to hear about what I've been up to (and vice versa). I need to spend more time interacting with the people around me, including my daughter. THAT'S reality.

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    1. But how will I know when you FEED THE GOATS, TOM???? HOW WILL I KNOW????

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    2. All the free time that I get back will be devoted to honing my temporal messaging skills. When it happens, you'll know immediately.

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  3. Look at us. Commenting on a blog post. How revolutionary!

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    1. It's like riding a bike for the very first time.

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