Digital music, movies, and books are easy to collect, and we have access to all media in the world spanning every genre in every decade simply by opening an app. Streaming and data storage technology is unbelievable, but there is a drawback that’s changing how old media is resurfaced. The digital age is ruining the natural discovery of media.
When I was a kid, my mom kept a lot of old photos, home videos, books, and albums on vinyl, and some of that stuff was kept in my bedroom. I took every opportunity to dive into those archives and discover a world that might as well been ancient Egypt.
It was pretty normal to find old books my parents collected when they were a young married couple and read it until I finished it the next morning when I was supposed to be cleaning my room. Discovering the unexpected always grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go, and I remember stumbling on The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesmen, and The Man of Bronze, which is how I developed a crush on Doc Savage.
Old photos were unearthed the same way in our home.
Our family ordered two of every photo from the roll of film, and I often stood at the photo department’s counter flipping through all of them to make sure they were all in focus, not double-exposed, and the flash was on. When we got home, we placed the photos that were wrapped in their paper envelope in a cabinet in the living room, and that’s where they stayed. A few times a year, one of my sisters or I would open that cabinet and spend a few hours going through old photos of ourselves. “Who’s this?” we’d ask my mom by yelling over the vacuum cleaner when we didn’t recognize a distant relative.
My sisters and I found old music and home videos the same way. Dusting off an album with interesting visual art meant playing a few minutes of scratchy classic rock, and finding an old home movie of my baby sister telling a joke would give us a few minutes of stomach-aching laughter.
Those discoveries are some of my favorite experiences growing up, but unfortunately, these experiences are changing. Most of our media is digital and stored on hard drives and social media accounts, forcing the interaction with our own archives to be about efficient organization, searching, and intentional browsing.
Discovering old stuff turns into digital antiquing—a purposeful search into a digital archive. Intentionally navigating through old social media profiles or hard drives means unlocking each digital silo hoping for something to find.
As our world slowly gives way to cheaper and more organized digital media I miss discovering media the old-fashioned way: tripping over it while I’m supposed to be cleaning my room.