Blog Post #3

Manovich believes that the interface of information severely affects how the information is portrayed and how it is used. I completely, wholeheartedly agree. My generation was the last to experience a few years of life without everything becoming completely digitized. I used video cassettes, music cassette tapes, read physical books instead of books on a tablet, and played real pinball games--the kind that actually use gravity, not the kind that comes as a default game on your computer. If I wanted to see a photo that I took, I had to take my film to get it developed. If I wanted to communicate with a friend, I would have to call their home phone and deal with the intimidation of asking their mom or dad, "Is so-and-so there?" or I would actually talk to them in person. We didn't text in class, we passed notes in class. By the time I was in high school, Facebook started to gain traction and everybody had ipods instead of CD collections. But for the majority of my childhood, technology wasn't king.

MUSIC

I remember when I first started using iTunes. Before iTunes came into my life, I was the proud owner of a beautiful shelf full of CD jewel cases, all neatly organized in alphabetical order by artist and then by date of publication (I was quite the organized 13 year-old). I only used iTunes to buy music to burn onto a CD to add to my collection. I got an Ipod for my 15th birthday, and my beautiful CD collection began to sit on the back burner of my mind. Within a few years, my CD's had collected dust and were simply little trophies of my past that I just couldn't get rid of. 

Thinking about it now, I miss the novelty of music that would come with getting a new CD. Over-playing a song wasn't as big of a deal because you had less of a variety of songs. If you wanted to listen to another artist, you would either pop in another album or you would listen to a compilation CD. A CD was timeless. Once you got a CD, you had it for a long time and listened to it somewhat frequently. Now, the liquidity of a song on a computer is far more than it used to be. Songs can be downloaded, deleted, altered or forgotten. On a CD, they were much more of a novelty. I find that now, I take my music for granted. Getting a new song really isn't that big of a deal. Once upon a time, getting a new CD was like a little piece of Christmas.

BOOKS/ARTICLES/MAGAZINES

Any bookworm will tell you that there is nothing like the feel and smell of a new book. I would thoroughly agree. I remember when I would wait for the next Harry Potter book to hit the shelves, anticipating it like a new movie that I just had to see. I would stand in line at Barnes & Noble with a twenty dollar bill in my hand, just waiting for the doors to open. Now, all that I have to do is pull out my Kindle Touch and download it after paying through the Internet. No lines, no new book smell, no twenty dollar bills -- I get it right away, I pay a lesser price, I save some trees and I save some space on my shelf. This is bitter-sweet to me, because yes, there is nothing like holding a book in your hands. At the same time, have you ever tried to read and you just can't get comfortable, no matter how you hold the book? 

With my Kindle, I can hold my book however I want without it flipping closed or sitting in a weird angle for my hands. My hands don't get tired trying to hold a brand new, stubborn, stiff book open. I can carry my entire library with me in my bag through the airport. I can look up definitions of words in books just by tapping the word on my Kindle screen. But I feel the same way about this as I do about music. I tend to take books for granted now that they are so easy to access. I will often be reading a book and then get busy, forgetting a week later that I am half way through it and just moving on to another book. It's easy to forget about it because it's just a title in a long list on my screen, not a physical book on my shelf. 

Articles and magazines online are much harder to trust than if they are in an actual magazine. In a published magazine or newspaper, there was much more of an editing process. Online, anybody can publish anything, any time. This is great for those who want to get the word out about things without having to be employed or undergo a complicated process. This is not so great if you want credible resources and research.