Tag Archives: Media

Just when I thought…

Posted by Whatever Color Flag on

That’s it everyone. That is it. The media debate has really come to life for me: I can’t find my journal. Good old, reliable, carry-it-wherever-I-may-go journal. Gone. My hopes remain high that I will find the black leather-bound and handwritten hardcopy of my life. Née: day after high school graduation; MIA: last Friday…ish?

In the midst of this frienzied debate over the lost archives of authors who work in computer media, the latent panic in academia to let go of the hallowed BOOK, I can’t help but be just a bit upset that there isn’t some sort of… restoration point for all those thoughts that I have just lost. BOOK: o, blasted word. I come to You, pen, paper, and wonder what good any archive can be if it’s full of lost books?

This would not have happened on my computer. This would not have happened on my computer. This. Would. Not. Have. Happened.

Yes, I concede that there is a certain amount of romance to the hand-written manuscript of yester year *sighs at prospect of lost molskine* but it’s not as if things documented and saved on the interface of the computer are attempting to get rid of paper. In reality, computer media are saving paper, saving books. I’m sure that I’ll continue to print out important/lengthy readings. I am sure books will go on in physical cirulation: good. Wonderful. Aren’t we always talking about the incredible interwoven texture of media in the 21st century?

But what if I get my hands on them and lose the hardcopy before it’s scanned?

(No, really. It might be a problem.)

People like me are the reason we need to digitize. I have lost my wallet twice (once on a public bus and the other time on a train to Newark; I have locked myself out of my room three times in college, one incident resulting in the locks having to be changed. Not to mention the numerous times I’ve lost paper money out of my back pocket, mislain many a slip of paper containing valuable poetic inspiration; the list goes on…) Is this why approximately half the books ever written aren’t in circulation or are just plain lost? I would not be surprised.

 So, I say, let us have our conversations on the implication of “new” technologies; but please, Wordsworth, let’s do digitize the written word, lest our intellectual self portraits be trampled on the icy New Brunswick streets.

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