If someone suggested to you that we could and should do the same thing to the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Terry Southern’s Candy, or any other physically existing element of human culture, what would you say?
Update: Obviously I need to make myself more clear. Which elements of human culture which could otherwise also exist in concrete physical form would you be willing to relinquish to digital form only – and why, or why not? Feel free to cite specific works, entire genres, whatever you like.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I’m not sure what you are driving at here. One can get all the works you mentioned online. If you are referring to an original copy of the Magna Carta or the Constitution, or a First Folio Hamlet, these are historical objects. Newsweek is a weekly newsmagazine, not as good as Time, better than Weekly Reader. When they lost Fareed Zakaria, they lost my interest. About a year ago they sent me a brief subscription gratis, with no explanation. I could read it in about two craps.
I think this is another step in the “slowly fading away” business.
As for the Magna Carta, etc, a physical presence matters. Newsweek will die as sure as the sun sets in the west. The name might live on for a while as newsy blog for a longer time.
Update: Obviously I need to make myself more clear. Which elements of human culture which could otherwise also exist in concrete physical form would you be willing to relinquish to digital form only – and why, or why not? Feel free to cite specific works, entire genres, whatever you like.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
The switch to digital is easily acceptable for media that is quickly consumed and discarded – magazines for instance. But then again I’ve started choosing e-versions of books precisely so I will not have to discard them in the future. Every time I move I give away books because they are deemed too bulky to move and store. Next time I won’t have to do that.
As for the Constitution, Hamlet, etc., it’s good that we have the original physical documents, but it’s even better if more people can read them via a digital version than if less people can read them due to not being able to access a physical version.
Newsweek specifically is “dying” because it’s function has been fulfilled by other media. Too bad for them they didn’t catch on quicker. They could have parlayed the Newsweek brand into an on-line powerhouse – although perhaps as NewsDay, NewsHour or NewMinute as the cycle sped up.
Some forms of art are better viewed in physical form, but much of the world’s art has only been viewed by most people as copies anyway – most of my college Art History class covered material we could only see as pictures in books. What’s the difference between that and viewing those same photos on-line? I don’t see having digital forms as relinquishing, but rather expanding.
My good Sally,
I was merely curious how people viewed autonomous possession and ownership of a semi-permanent to permanent thing like a book constructed wholly of materials they then own and control absolutely compared to passive participation in a transient event like a digital broadcast wholly dependent on and controlled by others, even a broadcast from a small, portable broadcast station like a computer or a Kindle. More simply, sit in front of your television or computer with a book and contemplate both.
Even the cultural comment I am now responding to now is not yours, good Sally. Our upstream host controls the storage and the power, and your words are mine to edit to the ends I please at will.
Hannah Arendt has a great deal to say on the way made and owned things shape or relative humanities in The Human Condition, a step quite a bit beyond this post; within its scope I suppose how one views these distinctions depends on at what point in one’s life one embraced digital culture and to what extent one regards digital culture as materially and historically incorruptible compared to material culture.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria