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Tech Expiration Date | A Wakeup Call

The death of the video tape was a wakeup call for me. In 2001 I had already become a movie addict. Before I left for grad school I was renting about two movies a day. Buying original tapes was a dream. When I arrived to the States the first thing I did was to find a video rental store. Then, I discover that Alden Library had any movie I could wish for. That was paradise and I did not have to pay a cent (well, I guess that was included in the tuition and other fees).

Then, my first daughter came and watching movies soon became our thing. I wanted her to watch all the animated classics and in the states I could get even the cartoons I watched when I was little. Amazon.com and any local video rental provided amazing deals!

Soon I started to compile an eclectic video library that included even the movies my father used to tell me about. From The Birth of a Nation to Gladiator I was willing to have them all. There was just a tiny little detail. I was buying VHS tapes. I was too busy with grad school and stuck in the past and our technological backwardness to realize that the reason tapes were being sold so cheap was because the format was on the verge of extinction.

I started to get the same movies in DVD format, then and just when I was completing my collection a fucking Blue Ray was already substituting the DVDs. They had shorten the technology expiration date by decades!

I gave up on time. I dumped every tape, CD, or DVD (I never bother to move to Blue Ray). Everything is digital now. Either in some cloud or via some streaming service. I have no idea what will come next, but I know now that it will come very soon, so I will not waste my time filling my hard drive with digital copies of my favorite movies. I don’t even have time to watch the new ones, let alone rewatch the oldies.

Tech developments arrivals and departures feel like traveling by train or on the fast lane. One can’t enjoy the journey. One does not have time for contemplations or attachments. The same immediacy and ephemerality of human relationships and fads is making us more alienated, which in turn makes all our production of cultural artifact equally alienating.

Thanks for your reading

This was my entry to @mariannewest, @felt.buzz, and @latino.romano’s 5-Minute Daily Freewrite: Friday Prompt: VIDEO TAPE. You can see the details here

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