The World as we Think we Know It

The magnitude of thoughts, discoveries, documents, and scrawls of our past begin to buckle under their own weight, unable to keep up with the media surplus of our era. (photo: JHU Library, Jan 28, 2010)

The tangible world becomes more obsolete with each passing day as we turn to more convenient modes of sensory intake–through screens and headphones, with which our bodies need no more exertion than subtle movements in our fingertips. No longer is it necessary to venture further than the confines of a keyboard, a remote, a computer mouse.

But it remains evident that these media modes will not last, just as they never have. Books, Billboards, Flyers, Bulletin Boards face physical weathering of time. And in the deterioration of virtual media, is it the consumer or the agent that decides when this or that device is no longer good enough, fast enough, smart enough? I believe in a more physical form of experience and communication, and I lament the degradation and desensitization that the current forms of media have bestowed upon the world as we think we know it.

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