Notes from all over

A few news stories that piqued my new media interest lately. All are from the Times, except one, which makes me wonder if they really are the web-phobics Keen put them out to be.

A new method of television delivery?

E-mail forces better greeting cards.

The CD is 25.

"Digg or Die"; academia's "publish-or-perish" mentality meets the Internet.

BoingBoing continues to bash Andrew Keen. This time with Stephen Colbert.

And now, a story: I have been searching for an album by one Miss Alice Smith. Local stores tell me it's not possible to find. eBay doesn't have it for less than $40. None of the illegal downloading areas had it. It's stuck in a limbo of being a good album by a not-so-well-known artist that didn't sell so well when it came out last year and now is unavailable. But they have it on iTunes.

The point of this story is that in finding this album, I utilized several types of new media, and tracking it down would have been extremely difficult had these technological advancements never happened.

A song from the album was featured on an episode of the HBO series "Entourage," which I watch obsessively because it's very funny. (On a side note, apparently this show doesn't appeal to women because the women characters aren't prominent and the male characters can be chauvinistic jerks. I don't care. Funny is funny and people should recognize that.) Anyway, the song is played over the closing credits. I watched the show on digital cable on a Sunday night, when it first aired. Then, I watched it again during lunch on Tuesday utilizing the On Demand feature of my digital cable. I scanned the credits for the name of the song, but didn't find it, so I went to my computer and Googled a snippet of the lyrics I could remember along with "Entourage" and the title of the episode. This led me to Smith's MySpace page, where the song was available for listening, but not downloading. I listened to the four songs of hers on the site and decided I liked them enough to buy the album.

Here's where the New Media portions break down. You see, I wanted this CD right away. So instead of first scouring the web for it, I got into my car and drove to the local Best Buy. They didn't have it. Then I went to Barnes and Noble (to get a book, but I stopped by the music section and they told me it wasn't in their computer). Back at home, eBay had it for $44, with two days left to bid it up higher. Finally, I searched for it in iTunes, and there it was. For $9.99 I could have the whole album instantly on my computer. This was not exactly what I wanted.

You see, I am one of those dorky people that still collects vinyl record albums. I still buy CDs. I still listen to music on a stereo instead of just on my computer. I like to have an item to correspond with, an object to hold in my hands and liner notes to look through while I listen. Call me old fashioned, but there's something about the ephemeral nature of downloaded music that doesn't appeal to me. I mean, I know it's still music, but it isn't exactly the same. What if my computer crashed? What if I drop my iPod?

I ended up buying the album from iTunes and burning a CD immediately. It isn't the same though.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though new media and the internet and ecommerce and all of these things make certain things accessible that weren't before, it doesn't necessarily make them, or the experiences associated with them, any better. Going to record stores and book stores used to be a Saturday afternoon pasttime. My friends and I would flip through used albums and CDs for hours, then drive over to the used bookstores and do the same thing with pages. Now, we just type up things we want and have them shipped, new or used, straight to our houses. But we're missing the chase. We're missing happening upon something interesting by chance. We're missing the community aspect as well, since we don't do this together as a social outing anymore. We aren't squeezing it between breakfast out and a late matinee movie.

If I'd happened upon the Alice Smith CD in a used CD bin at a local store on this hypothetical Saturday afternoon, there would have been this tiny, thrilling moment when I saw it. I'd pick it up and open it, check out the liner notes and the disc for scratches. I'd take it to the counter and pay for it and maybe have a quippy conversation with the clerk. My friends and I would have listened to it in the car on the way to our next stop and talked about it, or the episode of "Entourage" that featured it. And sure, I can go online and comment about it on Smith's MySpace, or on the "Entourage" fan message boards, but something about that, like buying the album from iTunes, has an ephemeral quality that isn't endearing, but cheapening. If anything, this course has taught me to really appreciate the personal interactions the Internet has made unnecessary. Sure, I appreciate being able to find or buy just about anything from my own sofa, and the comfort in knowing that for a price, anything, even out-of-print CDs can be found with just clicks and keystrokes. But where did spontaneity go? What about happenstance?