Post digital

Been catching up with a big pile of reading on the train - there are some things that just demand the hard copy treatment, rather than a quick skim on line.

Which, I guess, is the point of Russell Davies' 'new schtick'. Do read it, but I will let him summarise the key points...

1. "Screens are getting boring. It's really hard to impress anyone with stuff on a screen any more. However clever you've been. However much thought you've put in. However good the tech is. No-one's impressed. They've all seen better stuff in ads and movies anyway - when will on screen stuff be as good as that? Whereas doing stuff in the real world still seems to delight and impress people. Really simple stuff with objects looks like magic. Really hard stuff with screens still just looks like media."
2. "There are a lot of people around now who have thoroughly integrated 'digitalness' into their lives. To the extent that it makes as much sense to define them as digital as it does to define them as air-breathing. ie it's true but not useful or interesting."
3. "The stuff that digital technologies have catalysed online and on screens is starting to migrate into the real world of objects. Ideas and possibilities to do with community, conversation, collaboration and creativity are turning out real things, real events, real places, real objects. I'm not saying that this means that these things are therefore innately better, or that the internet has 'come of age' or any of that nonsense. I just mean that there are new, interesting things going on IRL and that they have some advantages (and penalties) that don't apply online."

In a strange act of syncronicity, next on my list was Gigonomics, an article from the Economist's More Inteligent Life magazine, looking at the changing nature of the music industry. Which made a not disimilar point to Russell: that as 'digital' has sucked the money, thrill and (collective) enjoyment out of music, so the analogue world of live gigs has picked up the slack, delivering a tangible, visceral experience iTunes could never offer (and one people are prepared to pay thru the nose for).

As Miles Copeland, former manager of the Police and music biz guru says: "You can digitise a song. You can’t digitise a concert." By which I think he means the experience of being there, rather than filming it on your iPhone and sticking it on Youtube.

All of which has just reminded me of something I read awhile ago (though can't remember where): that for teens, digital stuff is so inegrated into their lives as to no longer be particulalry special (Russell's point). But getting something thru the post is a reall event and a huge thrill, as it so rarely happens.

So maybe there's life in the old DM dog still (as long as what you're sending has true value).