i realize i am connected to the world in a way my grandfather or even my parents are not when they were growing up. what we have now for technology didn't even exist for them. in fact they didn't even have a tv until later in life, living in china. my grandfather is still amazed that we can buy things over the internet. i think the idea of transferring money over for goods through a computer linked to the internet was something he had never thought of. he is not pure analog, but close to it. my grandfather has a digital camera and cell phone but for the most part, he does not live on the internet the way i do.
I have a cell phone, a computer, a digital camera and i use twitter, gmail and facebook to connect with friends. i upload photos on flickr and read blogs on googlereader. everything in the digital world is instant, it's just a click away from my fingertips. as an artist, i find the internet an amazing resource for images. in fact i am flooded with images from blogs i read, flickr photos uploaded by friends and contacts around the world that it can be kind of overwhemling. sometimes it's so hard to pull away from being connected and i can't seem to get off the internet!
I found this quote from the article The Medium is the Message "That our human senses. of which all media are extensions, are also fixed charges on our personal energies." To me, this means that our senses, which include sight and sound, have been extended through media such as television and the internet and cell phones. with these new inventions, we spend our lives differently, by texting messages instead of talking on the phone. we download music through the internet rather than buy cds. i realize everything digital is compressed, weightless and often invisible to the eye. the object is no longer there.
i am analog when i make collages, when i write letters to my penpals, when i read a book. there's something about physical objects that i cherish.
