In defense of physical media

Shreeka Thangarasu

One of my all-time favourite book trilogies includes the Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman—it follows these two kids as they navigate their dystopian world, ruled, in a sense, by a conglomerate of human knowledge known only as "the Thunderhead." 

Now, you might be wondering why I'm summarising a (truly phenomenal) book in a blog post about physical media and digitisation. Well, truthfully, when I was first introduced to the concept of the Thunderhead, the first thing I thought of was Google. 

The Thunderhead was meant to be a means to access all human knowledge, however, near the end of the first book, it completely shut itself down, locking people out of the network. This meant people lost access to everything they'd ever known, which was especially dire in the fully digital world of Scythe. In short, every single article, album, research paper, video, photo, and all of humanity's knowledge from aeons past, had become monopolized and inaccessible due to the Thunderhead and the Thunderhead alone. 

Of course, this is heavily misconstruing the message behind Scythe, but I'm sure you're seeing the real-world parallels.

But, digitisation is good, surely? It gives hundreds of thousands of people access to books, resources, articles—blog posts! Physical copies are a thing of the past, who needs DVDs or Blu-Ray when you've got Netflix?

And to that, I agree. I am not here to argue that the internet was a mistake—I'm sure you'll find a Reddit post under r/uneccesarycynicism about that—if anything, I view the internet as an invaluable tool for equity, grazing a level playing ground for communities of various socio-economic backgrounds where there was once none. Instead, I'm here to argue for the preservation of physical copies. 

Lost media - defined as any media that is believed to no longer exist in any format, or for which any copies cannot be located (Wikipedia). 

Ever heard of this term? It seems counterintuitive at first; the first thing you learn about staying safe online is how nothing is ever truly 'gone.' Anything you post online, every tweet, every Tumblr reblog, it can all be screenshotted, saved, shared, or downloaded. The sheer amount of times I've woken up to find some celebrity getting cancelled for an old tweet of theirs is honestly baffling (why even hire a PR team at that point?)

The Internet is so expansive and widely accessible, it's hard to imagine something ever truly being deleted. 

And yet, just how is it that every day, we seemingly lose more and more pieces of information to the pitless void that is the internet?

Twitch live streams which (unless clipped) go unsaved, YouTube videos from small creators who eventually delete their accounts, shows removed from subscription services that can't be found elsewhere (I'm looking at you, Disney+), heck, even the drafts to this post—all pieces of media that, for the large part, lack any copies and become inaccessible to the widespread public. On some level, can you even argue they existed in the first place?

Circling back to my original argument, would it not be logical to save media physically? Despite our digital age, it is not unfathomable to imagine a world where we suddenly lose access to the internet (as dystopian as that may sound). 

This is an increasingly pressing issue now, seeing how companies many of us rely on, such as Google, have begun clearing search cache, or even Instagram, who has recently admitted to deleting old stories and videos, replacing them with smaller files. 

Furthermore, with the introduction of things like AI, I believe we're going to begin seeing an influx in lost media due to storage saving measures. With the computing requirements of websites such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, it is not surprising, though slightly disappointing, that companies may choose to erase data they deem unnecessary in order to accommodate AI.

With digital media, you are essentially at the mercy of the company you're choosing to entrust your data with. If that company decides to cut down on storage costs or goes bankrupt, you will be the one facing the loss. I don't say this to fear monger, but this is a serious concern that I believe isn't as hot-button as it perhaps should be. 

So, how about it? Streaming is great, but do you think you'll consider transferring some stuff over to a floppy-disc after reading this?