Wednesday 29 October 2014

The Voodoo Viewpoint: Is new media stealing our souls and our memories?

Originally posted on lisascullard.wordpress.com

I haven’t blogged for a while, having had new things to deal with through the summer and autumn along with writing, and waiting for other things to be resolved – everyday life has got in the way, and all of it worthy of my time – so I can honestly say I don’t feel I’ve missed anything by not procrastinating online too much.
This post has been on my mind for a while over the past year, and I’ve turning it over further in my mind since a topic came up on Facebook regarding the well-roasted old chestnut of ebook vs. print books, and what might supplant them in the future. When I made my comment, I didn’t realise how much of an observation it really was. But the thought of it keeps returning to me, so I’ll attempt to dissect it further now. (I’ve used ‘Voodoo’ in the title as I was originally going to post it as Voodoo Spice first – but there is another relevance to the reference).
My comment on the post was:
I think real books will stick around for another reason – the same reason as real music disc collections, and real movie DVDs, and real photo albums. The death of these things will mean the end of being able to remember lost loved ones. Imagine going into an elderly relative’s last residence, and instead of shelves full of their favourite media that you can pick up and read and smell, and admire, all that’s there is a computer tablet full of password-protected cloud-storage erotica. Supposing they’re survived by 20+ family members all wanting a memento? Will they have to take turns hacking into his or her tablet to read their, erm, favourites???
It’s not only the issue of having physical objects with which to remember a loved one, though. When you first make a new friend, visit their home for the first time, you see immediately by their books, music, film collections, and photographs what you have in common. Without those, it takes far longer to define. How you learn about a person who wears nothing on their sleeve in real life? Are they hiding something about their personality, their cultural and entertainment tastes, behind password-protected anonymous digital storage products? How much of their social media persona is genuine – do they really like Top Gear, or do they just ‘Like’ it on Facebook? How long does it take to make early judgements of compatibility when all you see in their home is the faceless packaging and housing of technology? Is this creating the hacking, snooping, prying, suspicious culture that troubles present-day relationships?
Are we sacrificing our personalities, our ability to connect with one another in real life without the social media screens, in favour of electronic packaging?
Back to the subject of bereavement and memories, there is another agenda surfacing to consider.
Electronic media itself has no re-sale value. The tablets and electronic devices can be re-sold, but they lose value in the very short term. Unlike physical books, vinyls, cassettes, picture frames, CDs, and DVDs – when you buy anything in digital format, to watch, read or listen to, its solvency value is zero. So even if your descendants, friends and family don’t want to share the digital tablet and know your passwords to enjoy your *ahem* favourites, they can only sell the tablet itself. Even if you have bought 70,000 books, movies, and songs in your lifetime, they do not add up to £70,000 worth of house clearance on ebay to divide among the mourners. They add up to zero.
They money you spend on electronic books and media to fill your device has gone for good. You cannot donate the products to an Oxfam bookshop after you have enjoyed them in order for others to benefit. You cannot have a yard sale or a car boot fair stand of portable entertainment to fund a party, or to pay a few bills. You have not invested your money in anything physically reminiscent that can be enjoyed as part of the soul of a lost loved one, or liquidated as an asset in the future.
The money has gone for good, into the great black hole of the business that also sold you the device to enjoy it on, or to store in some online cloud.
So in the future, without personal possessions for family and friends to remember us by – not even the chance to flick through the same books and photo albums we held, and no idea how to access our family photographs and music – and more and more social lives being conducted online – how will anyone remember their grandparents and great-grandparents beyond faces on a screen?
Will the youngest family members have the sense of identity and individual heritage that children before the digital age grew up with?
Will old people just die and disappear, leaving nothing behind but an online account full of media they spent thousands on, which is worth precisely nothing to their descendants even if they have the ability to access it? Will their living memories and personalities evaporate the second you tap on ‘Confirm shut down/log off device’?
Will folk start leaving clauses on their departure, that no-one is to hack into the tablet at all to avoid finding out how much porn and erotica they downloaded to keep them warm in their old age?
Never mind what to do with Granny, the last Will and Testament says we have to burn her Kindle first… aptly named device, if ever there was one. I see a new business opportunity looming – the “Kindle Crematorium” where dirty old reading habits go after you die…
It’s a mystery that leaves me very curious. I already find houses without books, music, photograph or film collections very odd – rather like pictures of home interiors in advertising, with no identity of the occupants visible. Sterile, like a showroom to sell a product or furniture lifestyle – not a working, living home. And if that is what remains in the future, when individuals die, what is left to know of them? An indentation in the sofa, perhaps – where they sat while playing Candy Crush Saga online?
So never mind that a computer tablet doesn’t provide the same decorative impact as a bookshelf, or provide the same soundproofing from your neighbours. Never mind that it’s a good way of hiding your reading habits, and a bad way of storing your nekkid selfies. It’s also a good way of spending your children’s inheritance – permanently. Throwing your small change onto the Kindle Fire (literally), never, ever to return as second-hand small change, ever again. Quite possibly thrown away along with the material potential for any of your descendants to remember you for more than one surviving generation…
HHappy Halloween! :) xxx
IIf you want to learn to how to format a print-on-demand book, publish and distribute for free, click here for my tutorial. You can also learn how to format ebooks and multimedia booksIf those still light your candle ;) x

2 comments:

  1. Interesting post, Lisa. I wonder, too, what kind of memorabilia future generations will value. I'm pretty much out of touch with young people now that I'm no longer teaching, but it sometimes seems to me that the youth of today are far more attached to the electronic/cyber world than they are to the physical. I'm a huge nature lover and outdoor enthusiast, and I often feel like there are far fewer kids out and about than there were in my day. Might this be a symptom of a kind of physical detachment that could translate into not valuing memorabilia at all? Just a thought; I don't mean to overgeneralize.

    Rob

    P.S. I hope you are well.

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    1. Hi Rob, great to hear from you :) You're right, it seems that the concept of 'personal/sentimental value' is getting lost, between the cyber lifestyle, and the 'hobby hoarding' where memorabilia with no personal story behind it for the owner is collected en masse and either hidden away or proudly displayed, mausoleum/museum style. Individual items that trigger memories or that can be pondered over by descendants regarding personal significance mean more than either the ubiquitous electronic storage device or the room full of identical Marvel Heroes marketing - but at least there is re-sale value in that sort of memorabilia, if not personal memories. I wonder if we're getting close to completely digitising our existence - electronic family trees connecting up social media profiles will become our inheritance in the future, with the family wealth being funnelled into the companies that manufacture the devices instead of down the generations. Perhaps our parents will be the last generation who leave anything physical behind beyond bricks and mortar?

      L xx

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