The future is an empty room
Our fellow WFTC writer Michael Antman has just published a fine essay on the digitalization of our culture at the popular culture website PopMatters.com. Entitled “The Future is an Empty Room,” the piece explores the impact that digital progress has had and is likely to have on everything from music and books, to the very nature of living spaces in the future. Needless to say, I completely agree with him, and there’s only a few points I’d like to add.
One of the arguments for digitalization is made by a commenter at the end of Michael’s piece. Christopher Furniss writes: “Just because books and other media won’t exist in physical form in the future doesn’t make them any less valuable. You’re lamenting the fact that in the future we’ll have less clutter and less stuff? I see this as a great benefit.”
But, it’s apparent to me that “less clutter” will in fact lead to “less stuff”, or, rather, “less stuff that we’ll actually know about or engage.” Michael makes the point that the vast majority of music on iTunes goes unpurchased. I would add that the vast majority of music on iTunes goes unseen, unheard, and unfound.
Now, one could argue that at least the best music rises to the surface, and can be found on the home page, etc. Perhaps, but who’s choosing what goes on the home page? At least in a Borders Books, for example, everything is (was, if you’re talking about music, now almost gone) there to see.
Sure, there will be more stuff, but sifting through it will be the challenge. Consider Google Search. Those 2 million hits for a single search is the paradigm for exploring culture in the future.
The other point I’d like to make is, isn’t clutter awesome? My house is full of books and music. I have 10 rooms, not including bathrooms. There are books in 9 of them, lots of books. There are Cd’s in 6 of them. (My daughter recently told me that her friends tell her, “I love your house. All this stuff! I’d much rather live here than in my own house.”) I try to imagine all my “stuff” stored on one terabyte Kindles and iPods (not too distant, now, in the future). The thought makes me ill.
Forget the tactile pleasure of holding a book or seeing at least a large enough version of an album cover on a CD to make out the details (will albums in the future even have artwork?), how will my digitalized collections any longer furnish my mind, which my present collections do every day as I move about the house? When I can no longer pass by my long shelf of Philip Roth books, will I continue to think about them, remember anything about them, consider which one I want to reread next? Digitalization, once complete, will bring a whole new meaning to out of sight, out of mind.
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Just a few years ago, there was an enormous record and DVD store, two independent bookstores, two chain bookstores, a used record store, a comic book store, and even a Rand McNally map store (travel guides, maps, globes, etc.) within a short walking distance of my office in the Civic Opera Building in Chicago. Now, all are gone, along with the enormous Virgin Records store a few blocks further away on Michigan Avenue. All that’s left now in the Loop area is a Borders store that’s looking increasingly ragged. Bear in mind that this is the downtown area of one of America’s largest cities!
It’s interesting that people who question certain aspects of digitization’s impact on our culture are sometimes referred to as “Luddites,” though those who oppose (at times with good reason) other forms of technology such as advanced weapons systems, superhighways, and nuclear power plants are never referred to as such. Why? I suppose it’s because these latter technologies are generally viewed as destructive, (though it should go without saying that weapons systems, properly applied, preserve our liberty.)
Digital technology, OTOH, is viewed as benign and non-destructive, but in downtown Chicago, at least, its impact has been like some insidious weapon that wipes out only signs of life and culture, leaving behind Subway sandwich shops, banks, and sterile new office towers.