I really enjoyed the Yale Review article on analog media. As a vinyl collector, magazine reader, and film photographer, a lot of it resonated with the way I feel about the sheer size of digital capacity and how it can stifle creativity. I want to read the book that the piece is an excerpt from now. I will say, I am hoping the book will include some more critical appreciations of digital/streaming and what that brings to our possibilities. It's not that I found the article to be wrong in any capacity — though, I might have stated the case for limitations differently than the author, who reminded me a bit of Loki's ranting against freedom in the first Avengers movie — but the lack of acknowledgement toward what digital does offer to us, and what analog does not, seemed missing. It's not to say that they are equal, or have pros and cons that must be considered, it's more to say that each has a way of shaping our engagement with media and that to paint digital shaping as wholly harmful and analog as mostly good misses the point of what the format actually does to us and our expectations.
I really enjoyed the Yale Review article on analog media. As a vinyl collector, magazine reader, and film photographer, a lot of it resonated with the way I feel about the sheer size of digital capacity and how it can stifle creativity. I want to read the book that the piece is an excerpt from now. I will say, I am hoping the book will include some more critical appreciations of digital/streaming and what that brings to our possibilities. It's not that I found the article to be wrong in any capacity — though, I might have stated the case for limitations differently than the author, who reminded me a bit of Loki's ranting against freedom in the first Avengers movie — but the lack of acknowledgement toward what digital does offer to us, and what analog does not, seemed missing. It's not to say that they are equal, or have pros and cons that must be considered, it's more to say that each has a way of shaping our engagement with media and that to paint digital shaping as wholly harmful and analog as mostly good misses the point of what the format actually does to us and our expectations.