How The Extinction of Books, Albums, Photographs And Real Musical Instruments Will Be Our Ultimate Undoing!

"Who needs albums when you've got mp3's, baby!"

First off, let me just say I'm not at all stoned as I write this. It just so happens that I've been reading a lot of shit on the web and I'm starting to see a distinct pattern that immediately leads me to believe that George Santayana's quote 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" will ultimately be lost on the willfully stupid.

See, when you read about things like Google's massive book-scanning project - recently ruled perfectly legal by an appeals court - and the growing popularity of reading books on electronic devices, you see the aggressive war against physical copies of creative works being waged in a passive-aggressive manner bent on ultimately destroying any proof of humanity's boundless creativity and imagination because, let me tell you, when the grid goes down one day, everything we ever had to be proud of as humans will be gone in a split second.

And those of us who allowed it to happen because we were too dumb to see any further down the road than the small bit right in front of us will be living in caveman days all over again. We'll be scribbling crude drawings on cave walls with animal blood because there will be no paper, no pens, no actual musical instruments that don't require a plug to work.

Future generations will think us dumb, embryonic versions of the superior beings they are once they've unknowingly re-invented all the very things that we had, but gave up willingly for inferior digital versions will lead to their downfall too because, if anything, the one thing we humans have proved quite adept at is missing the fucking point and making the same mistakes over and over again.

How else can you explain the lack of common sense involved in trading the beauty and majesty of an LP record - with its larger-than-life sound and sprawling artwork. Heck, you can even read the credits and know who did what so you can develop a sort of relationship with the players and the makers of this magic - for a 1" x 1" thumbnail of the album art on a phone screen and music that once lived and breathed compressed to death and blasted through plastic earbuds?

It's sad that even I realize that this all sounds like the lunatic ravings of a conspiracy theorist, but there will be no joy in being proven right because humanity will be the ultimate loser in the end. We always are.

Who needs museums when you can store digital approximations of every Van Gogh, Picasso,
Monet, Rembrandt, Dali and Warhol painting on a thumb drive?

Whose to say the cavemen we read about and think of as crude subhumans walking around in bear pelts weren't once exactly like us; advanced to the point of causing our own moral and cultural destruction. They chased technological advancement, ultimately at their own peril, every shred of their intelligence gone when the grid went down.

Ah, but the grid will never go down, right? The internet will survive a bomb blast, right? But what if there is some diabolical plan to get us to hand over all that we've accomplished in the physical world in exchange for a shoddy digital imitation and then one day take that away from us too?
Believe it or not, those with the most money in this world do not see art as necessary. They also hate, hate, hate the idea of the masses being educated. They have piss-poor taste in everything and are, generally speaking, dumber than a box of rocks. They see creative thinking by others as a severe threat to their existence.

Ah, but they're clever and self-preservational to a fault. They'd hate to be told this, but they too are creative, but never put it to use for good. It's always to find the latest set of loopholes by which to separate others from their money, or their freedom, or their life. Their genius lies in their ability to commit crimes for which they pay no price even when caught red-handed. Even a fine in the billions is no real punishment to them, but if they spent even one day in a jail cell, they'd see the error of their ways.

The less said about this the better.

Who are these people, you ask?

Oh, I dunno. Google, maybe. Apple, too. Anyone who suddenly takes an interest in driving around the entire globe taking pictures of every street and house and business, scanning every book, giving every album and movie away for free. Sure, it's great being able to lose yourself down the proverbial wormhole on Youtube, living the life you never got to have by watching old episodes of Top Of The Pops or historic concerts that happened before you were born, but if the grid were to go down, what would we be left with?

A bunch of expensive phones and devices with everything great we've ever done stored on them, the physical versions (the books, the albums, the photographs) long gone because we didn't think we'd need them anymore once they were uploaded to "the cloud".

And all those who spent their lives texting, Tweeting, banging out video game code, Photoshopping images and churning out SEO-friendly content in some cubicle farm will be rendered dumb when all they've ever known disappears in a blip. They won't know how to talk to people, how to write even, much like the big dumb cavemen we all read about in school.

Their brilliance gone forever like an unsaved document after a blackout.

All that will survive for future generations to discover of our existence will be a few copies of The DaVinci Code, Hootie & The Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View", some "Jane Fonda Workout" VHS tapes and a gazillion abandoned "Guitar Hero" controllers, none of which will bode well for us.

They'll think us highly evolved, but easily distracted and ultimately too dumb to have saved ourselves.

And, sadly, they will be right.