The Worth of Digital Material

The internet is great for several things. It was the catalyst for the age we're currently in, The Information Age. Historians coined the term out of how modern society interacts: by the exchange of information, which is near-instantaneous. This constant, reliable, and readily available stream of information (be it in a news broadcast or a cell phone conversation) has transformed our daily lives. So much, in fact, that the technology involved has become transparent to our attention. We use technology without realizing it.

Only recently has the transparency begun to waver. The massive popularity of digital material, which can loosely be defined a binary copy of the real thing, has caused various parties to rethink their agendas. Digital material encompasses alternatives to material items like e-books, e-comics, and MP3 albums, as well as more obscure items, like documents and catalogs. So popular, in fact, that lawsuits have been dealt, and marketing has been reevaluated.

We may yet reach a time when copyrighted material is safe from the hands of unwanted public domain. Until then, the internet has proven a useful adage to marketers: if it's free to take, people will take it, especially if the alternative is to buy it. The problem is that the taken material is merely a digital copy. This leads one to puzzle at which item has more worth: the material item or its digital copy? This question plagues e-book users, who find that they are displacing their material books and purchasing a substitute that is, at heart, very bare bones, with little to actually "keep". This holds true for those who purchase their music albums at various online vendors: they may pay for their album, but they forsake the precious album art.

In truth, the digital age forsakes a lot of things. Plenty, in fact.

It does affect our lives. For instance, e-books remove any possibility of classy, book-lined walls; where, to some, the very nature of reading a book is altered in ways that may neuter the experience. This is no less true for collectors of comics. While the music and, so far, the, literary world have been quick to embrace the over simplification of digital material, the comic book world has been less enthused, at least according to the industry. Web comics have posed very little threat to monthly issue comics the way, say, leaked MP3s have watered down opening sales of a hotly anticipated album. If anything, comics have taken their market a notch higher by rereleasing their issues into trade paperbacks, an increasingly popular form of material distribution. Web comics themselves have had an accommodating side-effect on the industry: independent artists have published their works online, and to much success.

Perhaps this complimentary ideal of the comic book industry can serve as a role model for the other industries. This largely depends on the ideal of its audience, and secondly on the competency of those who hold sway over the industry. Because there is, and eventually will be, a way for both fronts to coincide.

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Sam Mckenzy
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