The Digital Revolution? Baby, It’s Done Passed Us By Already

I realized yesterday just how massive a shift in my daily routine the whole "going digital" thing has generated. I checked my email (digital!) as usual and received my once in a blue moon newsletter from the Beastie Boys talking about their scheduled appearance on the Jimmy Fallon Show to promote their upcoming album, Hot Sauce Committee. I flipped over to Eye TV to record it (digital!) to watch later, and then immediately turned my thoughts to the new album. However, instead of getting all jazzed about heading to the store in the near future to buy it, or even Amazon to order the CD, I was thinking "Man, I can't wait to download that!"

It's an inevitability that's become reality in my household, and many others, that I don't think we stop to appreciate/fear/think about very often. Sure, when new tech drops, we all get excited for a while, until it becomes commonplace and passé, but man...10 years ago, I'd have thought you were nuts if you'd told me that I'd be downloading entire albums, legally and for under 10 bucks, on a regular basis. If you'd suggested that I'd be perfectly happy to, sometimes even prefer to, read comics on my monitor rather than in a monthly hardcopy format, I'd have laughed and quite possibly bored you to death with a litany of reasons why that was nuts.

Yet here we are, 2009, and I haven't bought a CD since the last Beasties recording. I've bought a bunch of albums since then, but through iTunes or Amazon's mp3 offerings. I've even bought the fancy pants 20th Anniversary digitally remastered Paul's Boutique...via Amazon's mp3 offerings.

The hardcopy market is far from dead, but there's little doubt in my mind that I'm becoming less and less likely to support it myself. It's not that my entertainment needs are more mercurial or disposable in nature either, since I still intend to store my comics and music and games for as long as I can. Rather, I want the good stuff without all the junk cluttering up my house. I have a three year old daughter now, and as many of you well know, that alone generates enough crap on the floor/on the shelves/in the closet for 2 adults. Luckily, she's already embraced the world she was born into, swiping across the face of my iPod Touch without a second thought and not having a clue as to what those weird looking VHS tapes in the garage are. With any luck, she'll humor her old man and we'll be downloading the 50th Anniversary holotech re-remastered version of Paul's Boutique into our implanted headjacks together in 2039.