It doesnt take very long to know me to understand my view on the treatment of material goods. Bags, shoes, clothes even books have all experienced the brunt of my rugged lifestyle at some point of time. It doesnt pain me that my hand phone gets scratched, or my bag gets torn. I see no qualms in underlining and annotating my books. If there is a CD in my room, which doesnt have a cracked casing, that CD probably doesnt belong to me.
Its not that I dont value my stuff, or presents people give me. Its just that i see such items as being there for the sole purpose of adding quality and comfort to our life. It might feel good now, but im not going to bend over backwards JUST to keep it looking good. It wears and tears, it wears and tears. Thats just the natural order of things after all. And thats just the hierarchy in which it works. people (the owners) comes first after all. If there was no people, there would be no need for these goods in the first place.
I suppose I could blame this materialistic (or consumerist, maybe?) attitude on two things. Affluence and technology. Affluence, because i can afford to get new wallets, socks, ear phones, when the old ones die on me. And I dont mean, when they get old, or out of fashion. I mean when I seriously consume them to the brink of exhaustion, and when they cease to yield their purpose. No doubt, if i was less well off, i would be a lot more gentle on my belongings and my consumption patters.
And technology? yeaps. might sound a little strange, but its true. For some reason, technology (or the Internet in particular), has imbued me with this curious belief in immortality. A whole new world where colour, life, sound, ideas and words live forever. And it is for this reason, my heart hardly cringes whenever I am forced to throw away my stacks of writings and essays and thoughts on paper. Because the Internet has allowed me to immortalise and safe guard my ideas in a magical world of electricity. It has given these thoughts a place in eternity. My music feels blissfully safe, once it has been ripped onto my hard drive. My doodles are immune from vandalism, once scanned and stored. even were my hard drive to die, i would just need to open any other computer, sign onto gmail, and everything would remain there, safe and secure. The physical world is constantly ageing. But not the realm of the digital.
And so, with the attitude, I couldnt care less that the spine of all my books are broken, or the cover page for my readings are gone. Because in my heart I have a great belief that all the world's great genius and musings are safe and secure in this digital world, somewhere out there, ready to be re-published or re-recorded, at the touch of a button. It may or it may not be true, but it motivates my behaviour, nonetheless.
But I suppose therein lies the problem. If i carry on with this mindset, even before I have successfully transferred all my family photos and such onto the computer, I would be even more likely and prone to allow these photos to be destroyed or damaged. Or worse still. Over relying on the computer to store my songs, poems, and writings may just prove to be my own fatal undoing. What would happen the day blogger dies? So would nearly all my most priceless writings and feelings in the past 2~ years. Or worse still. gmail. A scenario I would never want to risk.
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Dear rishik,On February 1st, 2008 Sony will close the ImageStation® online photo service. The closure will happen in phases and most site features such as upload, sharing and shopping will be disabled on November 12th 2007.
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