The Internet Storage Closet

Now that the internet has made things like stamps, cable TV, and paper all but obsolete, I just thought I would ask you all out there (all 3 of you?) a few questions:

How many of you still buy CDs?

With the advent of torrenting – and specifically I-tunes – why would you need to? Why would you want to?

What about books? Or DVDs? If the I-Pad and Kindle weren’t so expensive, would you download them instead?

I personally still buy CDs, but it’s usually only because I can’t find songs elsewhere for free. I tried searching for music that I like online, but I’ve learned that the internet is all about what’s popular and modern.

And my love of oldies jazz & neo-swing isn’t exactly either of those, so I usually have to hit the record stores (CD shops?) in hopes of finding a Tom Dorsey CD containing that one song I’ve been searching for.

Sometimes I end up paying around $20.00 for that one song…..and that sucks.

But Fred recently linked me to this article about Sony’s discontinuation of Floppy A: Drives and it got me thinking about how all this “information” that we used to “keep” in physical objects can now be uploaded, downloaded, transferred and stored as intangible “data” in this “other dimension” we call the Internet. It’s become a sort of artificial version of limbo…..or Hammer space closet where we store all our valuables out of convenience.

But are we losing something when we store it this way?

Back in College (before the invention of Facebook & MySpace was still the “IT’ thing) I had a friend, Lucas, who thought this – he used to constantly go to Amoeba music and buy CDs of albums that he’d already downloaded earlier for free.

I asked him once why he did that and he said that there’s just something about owning the album ‘legit’ that made him want to pay for it; some sort of comfort he took in knowing he had ‘the original’ (the label) in addition to the ‘bootleg copy.’

I thought this sounded odd at first until I realized this is the same reason I buy books and DVDs. There IS a certain kind of “legitimacy" to it.

I'm not sure why (maybe it's the prestige that comes with seeing the brand label) but given that I have the money, I would prefer to buy something outright rather than some other way.

Except for porn. Why would you ever go and buy / rent porn when you can download it at home? (Seriously)