Morning Discussion

With the future only a second away, I'm torn between our bold new dystopia of shining glass and cold steel and the warm and fuzzy old days when everything was great and there were no wars and everything was great, wasn't it? My hangup is this: do I want my arts and entertainment to be in intangible, digital form or made of warm, hard stuff?

I buy my video games digitally whenever possible. Games are rarely more than a disk in a box, neither of which is particularly attractive nor offers anything I'd miss by going digital. DRM can be a bit prickly but mostly it's good enough for me to not notice or be bothered by its demands. I did buy the Collector's Edition of BioShock 2, though, because it came with a book and other stuff I'd like to touch.

All my books are proper books. Beyond the fact that eReaders aren't as good as paper yet, I love the physicality of books. I like their look, their feel, their sound and their smell. I buy my music in physical formats when possible too, though lately I'm buying far more vinyl than CDs. CDs may as well be MP3s for all I care, sterile little discs, but, again, there's a great physical interaction with vinyl in the sleeves and the player.

My point is that we should halt all technological progress until I am brought in to vet it all personally with an extensive testing procedure of sensual interactions. All which fail to meet my standards shall be smashed. Should I disapprove of purely digital doodads, then we will be forced to crush and burn all computers. It's a small price to pay.

ps- looking to talk about Call of Duty: Black Ops? We have a dedicated discussion thread today for your chatting pleasure.

From The Chatty
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