Not far from where I am sitting, there is a paper bag filled with floppy disks, leftovers from my father's past. These are true 8" long floppy disks here, not the 3-1/2" ones. What is it about floppy disks or cassette tapes or VHS tapes that are so interesting to me?
Don't get me wrong. The future's here and now and downloadable to your nearest computer. Everything will be digital, from novels to homework and everything in-between. I am happy that this means we'll be cutting down less trees and manufacturing less plastics, but something feels missing.
It's okay to pick on five year olds, because they don't know any better, but there seems to be a divide between them and us (or me.) Growing up, I was aware of what came before, but nowadays kids are only interested in things beginning in "i," and there is no willingness to learn about the past. Maybe I'm different, because I was born in a time of media flux: records to cassettes to compact discs to digital files.
In any rate, what I'm groping for is ignorance. There seems like there's too much willful ignorance about the past, about technology. It's a dangerous thing, ignorance. But I don't envy them. They'll never experience that feeling I had as a child: feeding in the floppy disk, closing the drive's slot, and booting up the computer.
It was like magic.
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