This “creative destruction”

David Byrne write about...

I started thinking a few days ago about how the digitization and networking of so much of what we hold dear has changed things.

I see that in my lifetime I will witness the end of books, or most of them, physical copies of recorded music and probably physical newspapers too.

Stuff that’s been around for a thousand years will be gone in my lifetime! Film based photography is pretty much a remnant, an art form, an artisanal craft used by fine artists and high-end fashion photographers.

And writing letters to one another? On paper? And dropping them in the mailbox? When was the last time I wrote and mailed a physical letter? All those academic books filled with Auden’s or Jane Austen’s letters — it’s hard to imagine a collection of someone’s text messages, tweets and e-mails.

I suspect that television as we know it will be gone soon as well. All right, film and recorded music have only been around a hundred or so years, but books! All of which led me back to wondering — how did this get started?

Learn more