more notes on postmodernism: the printed word is dead and other lies of the 21st century
Wow. It’s been a while since I posted last. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I feel I should preface this post by saying that I am an analog preservationist. I like the digital revolution, but think that some are way too gung-ho to replace everything with digital technology. I believe that would be detrimental to society. I was thinking this morning about how computer technology has affected the tangibility of the written word…and all that is analog for that matter. My hard drive handed in it’s resignation the other day.
It was thankfully the one that holds my operating system and not the one housing my photos and music and such. But what if it had been? At my mom’s house we have all of these boxes just filled with old photos. I have a hard drive…and the hard drive is much less reliable than a box under the kitchen counter…or in a closet…or in a photo album…or where ever you keep your photos. The digital format has not only affected photography (a profession in which the new trend is digital photography over traditional) but the written word as well. As the printed word hurdles headlong toward extinction I wonder if a completely digital world is the best course of action. And what will it do for the concept of nostalgia? Is the nostalgia of photos, books, newspapers, etc in the information being delivered or is it tied more to the tangible object itself? Or is it a combination of the two? I do get those nostalgic feelings when I look back in my collection of digital pictures, but it is nowhere near as intense as the feeling you get when you find photographs in a drawer or a box that you forgot about. Is it the act of finding and rediscovering these things that creates the emotional attachment we have to these objects? There is something to be said for the aging of these tangible objects as well. When photos are old they should look old. When one looks at a picture from the 1970s it looks like something from the 1970s the color is off, it looks earthy, sepia toned almost, there is a haze in the picture that lets the viewer know “hey this is old, that means it’s important”. When I look back at the photos on my computer 10, 20, 30 years from now (provided of course my hard drive doesn’t stop working , and my back ups don’t become corrupted), they will look the same as the day I took them. Something about that doesn’t sit well with me. I want my kids and grandkids to be able to connect with the photos I take in the same way that I connect with those of my parents and grandparents. Those photos, especially the one’s from the 1920s and 30s seemed more like precious objects. I have a photo of my grandfather and his army buddies that is a small photo booth size picture encased in a flimsy metal frame. I hold it very dear to me. The subject matter is very important but what is more important is that I connect with my grandfather (who is no longer with us) every time that I touch this object because that is the common relationship he and I have with this object. The object serves as a link to the past. It is precious. Can digital information accomplish the same thing? 
Can Walgreens digital prints and photos that don’t age really conjure up the same emotions? Books are the same way. eBooks is a concept I just don’t buy. The importance in passing a book on is having the physical object. It’s about the yellow pages, the dog-eared corners, the creases in the spine, the underlined passages, the intimacy of graphite on paper. All of these things make a book what it is. Magazines are only good for one thing, being in a pile in a doctor’s office, or on the back of the toilet, or on a shelf on a bookcase. I love my collection of Artforums. The arrangement of them on my bookshelf acts as a time line through which I can track the last 4 years of my life. With all of this importance that resides firmly in the act of these “things” being tangible objects how can people go around making claims like “the printed word is dead” or “digital is the wave of the future”? These objects exist because we need them. If we give up these objects do we also forfeit our history? In a purely digital world all is without age, and when all is ageless even nostalgia is obsolete.
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