[StavrosK]

Why has digital life removed substance? Today I can talk with my friends, who are scattered all around the globe, all day, every day, in real time. I get lessons from experts on things that interest me, for free, whenever I want them, without having to lift a finger. I can call my friends at a moment's notice and we get together and do a whole host of things that would be pretty much impossible twenty years ago.

How did digital life cheapen substance? Because I can no longer get on stage and touch the actors in movies? When it comes to photographs, specifically, the difference between the phone screen and a piece of paper is a hell of a lot less than the actual thing in the photograph and the photograph itself. If anything, your argument is against photography as a whole.

[anigbrowl]

Why has digital life removed substance?

Because you can't view digital content without a computer. At a fundamental level, your interaction with it must be mediated with the aid of a third party. Nobody thinks digital lacks utility but it is inherently ephemeral.

If I give you an old photograph to look at, then all you need to look at it are your eyes and whatever light happens to be about. If I hand you an SD card, you need to go and find some sort of computer to stick it into, as well as a source of power for said computer, although I think that latter consideration might cease to matter in a couple of decades.

[TheOtherHobbes]

>Why has digital life removed substance?

I have no idea about the how, but it's not hard to understand that bits are fragile and totally dependent on a huge network of many technologies.

I spent last week in Europe looking at ancient buildings and incredible art. Some of this stuff is literally millennia old - but people are still queuing around the block to see it.

If you build something out of atoms, that sucker stays there - not quite forever, but some combinations of atoms can easily outlast many human lifetimes.

Compare that with bits, where file formats, storage media, operating systems, and basic hardware all keep changing and content preservation is hit and miss. (I have video files from the late 1990s that are unplayable now.)

Code is even more fragile, especially if it's heavily OS- or framework-specific.

So people like physical stuff. It can survive without power or a reader device. That makes it more reassuring than a transient digital content blip that's gone before your kids have had a chance to experience it.

[unfamiliar]

I didn't mention the word substance once so I don't know what you're on about.

[StavrosK]

The GP (the person I was replying to) did. It's right there in the quote.