THE DIGITAL REALM
I was reading a newspaper article about a 44-year-old professional named Michael Howe who has recently co-founded a company called YOUDiligence that specializes in monitoring social networking sites. The company offers an automated ssearch tool that replaces the need for parents or guardians to manually monitor their children’s activity on MySpace and Facebook. When asked why he does what he does, he said, “I studied philosophy at Bowdoin. My thesis adviser was a brilliant but broken-down man. The story went that his wife had thrown the only copy of his masterpeice into the fire during an argument, and that he had never been the same afterwards. I decided that working in the digital realm, where redundancy is omnipresent, was a good thing.” I guess that’s what I’m thinking about cyberspace these days. Now, of course, I need to look up digital….
Hi Gale,
So we have had a little debate in the office this morning. We sensed some sarcasm here, but we can’t figure out where exactly it is being directed. Are you agreeing that redundancy is a positive aspect of cyberspace, or is that included in the sarcasm?
Also–looking up digital–are you being self-deprecating, or are you questioning the use of digital in this context?
As usual, there is always more to the story than can get stuffed into a newspaper profile piece. The other part of the story is that I have been a working musician my entire life, and I lived through the migration from analog (tape & records) to digital (computers & CDs). I was a purist who was attached to the analog world of recording. In the beginning it was easy for those with good (or “golden”) ears to hear the discrepencies, and therefore remain committed to analog.
Over time, especially on the recording side (the consumer listening side has made less dramatic improvements), the quality of digital has far surpassed analog, so the digital ledger includes almost all benefits (which I will not go into here) and no drawbacks as compared to analog.
Anyways, I thought I would provide you a little more context.
Mike
Comment by Michael Howe — January 2, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
Mike,
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I intended no sarcasm. I was touched by the story of your broken-spirited professor whose wife had thrown the only copy of his manuscript into the fire. As a writer myself I figure losing a manuscript–especially a long one that I had worked hard on–would be devastating. What I’m thinking these days is that written words, whether in manuscript form or published aren’t as permanent and durable as I used to think they were. When I was younger, I wanted to get what I wrote published in books because I thought books were the most reliable repositories for words. In the 30 years since I published my first book I have learned otherwise and now think cyberspace is probably the best place to put writing because it’s vast,durable, and searchable–and, as you pointed out–redundant.
As for looking up digital, I’m referring back to an earlier post (December 6) when I looked up words like cyberspace, internet, Web, and blog to see what exactly they meant and when they entered the language.
It’s interesting to me that your experience as a musician is parallel to mine as a writer. I resisted computers until the year 2000, when I was forced to buy one in order to get the last book I published back in print. The Authors Guild had made arrangements with a brand new (maybe even the first?) publish-on-demand company to reprint members’ out-of-print books. The young techies running iUniverse.com refused to talk on the telephone or deal with letters. The only way I could communicate with them was by e-mail, and they expected me to proofread their reprint of my book online. It was an incredibly frustrating and stressful experience, but in the process of learning how to use a computer, I also discovered the Web, Web sites, and blogs, all of which really appealed to me. At this point in my evolution, there’s nothing that would tempt me to return to print publication.
It’s taken me until now to start thinking about the whole amazing phenomenon, wondering what cyberspace is, how it operates, how it evolved. What you perceived as sarcasm might have been me having fun with what I’m learning, which I’m fascinated by. And I do intend to look up digital to see how it is related to the other words I’m just now getting around to looking up.
So I’m a relative newcomer to cyberspace and know very little about it except what I’ve taught myself by trial and error. I enjoyed the newspaper article about you and think your company is providing an incredibly important service. At this point in my explorations, I don’t even want to think about the darker forces that lurk out there in cyberspace….
Gale
Comment by gale — January 4, 2009 @ 9:49 pm