I was able to find my way around okay with paper maps--but I still prefer having GPS in my phone.
My issue with those passages is that the author is conflating "digital" or "computers are involved" with "Internet". They're not the same.
Worth pointing out how this too is an example of somewhat mistaken value analysis based on libertarian ideals.
The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere.
Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. Which was one of the points of the linked article.
lots of people perceive higher quality media as having value, in fact there are markets for those people, just not the largest market which values convenience more.
Not in a free market (which is part of "libertarian ideals", or at least it's supposed to be). In a free market, there is no single "solution"--there are whatever solutions people are willing to pay more than they cost for. If you want your music in the cloud, and you pay for that, and I want my music locally, and I pay for that, that is the libertarian ideal.
Trying to own the entire market and force your "solution" on everyone, just because you happen to have enough users to be able to get away with such bullying, at least for a time, is not a free market. But that's what the tech giants are trying to do.
> Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not.
That the majority of the market does not, yes. But I don't think I'm even close to being the only person that doesn't want to depend on "the cloud" for everything I do.
The ability to browse music is very powerful.
I lost my 1 Soundgarden CD 20 years ago. Now I can listen to all their albums.
You can do the entire Beatles catalogue <- this is a different form of listening.
Discover artists I would never have otherwise heard of.
It has it's downsides, but I dont think CD was 'better'.
We just have an imperfect situation.
As someone who spent a lot of his youth carefully avoiding big label acts and trying to support small artists, this is what bothers me the most: there is no way to do that anymore if you use streaming.
[1] https://mertbulan.com/2025/08/10/why-paying-for-spotify-most...
Storing data of any kind in plastic as opposed to silicon metal seems like a meaningless distinction that only comes about from imagining that there is some disembodied, ethereal and platonic notion of digital “data” which is decoupled from any physical substrate. everything is always materialized and mediated through some complex, and probably vaguely arcane, geologically extractive process in some way.
Also over time friction would build up in the medium, causing the tape to occasionally resist being pulled so strongly that some sections would stretch and introduce a hard to ignore "wah" effect.
Overall not my favourite means of storing information, like you said - it was fine. I've listened to a huge palette of mixes made by friends for friends and the social aspect of this is something I appreciated greatly.
"I have a CD player in my home, a VCR in a closet. But I’m also inclined to think about the work that older devices demand of a person compared with the frictionless present day, when we are told that any and all content is at our fingertips (a myth, but a myth that sells.) And I can’t help but think of the reality that there are many significantly larger and more consequential inconveniences that Americans, plainly, do not have the heart or stomach for. One example might be the inconvenience caused by a mass political uprising, one that risks the security, safety, and comfort of its participants. I have seen glimpses of people’s threshold for that level of friction. "
I recently went on holiday to deepest darkest Wales where phone signal is intermittent. Trying to locate people and get messages to them was such a bloody pain.
I remember thinking in 2003 "surely we should be able to book GP appointments online now", and a mere 20 years later we can (depending on where you live) finally do it. It's so much better.
I would not go back, and I don't think anyone else would if it really came down to it, despite any virtuous anti-technology mantras they might pretend to believe.
