By nature, I’m a frustrated librarian and a compulsive hoarder. My music collection is in alphabetical and chronological order, and my loft is packed with old video consoles and other collections which I know fatherhood will stop me from indulging in, except as family heirlooms in 30 years time!
Part of this is a reluctance to lend CDs and books, even to close friends, for fear of them being lost, or being returned with the spine of the book broken beyond all recognition.
But now access to knowledge and entertainment is instantly sharable from the moment of discovery. From the almost infinite resource of online knowledge I can share findings via links, Del.icio.us bookmarks, or RSS. My tastes in music are logged, and accessible via Last.fm, and TV and videos get distributed from Youtube, the BBC iPLayer, or where ever they’re found. And it doesn’t matter if my friends lose them, and they can’t return them broken. In fact, even if, God forbid, I lost all my saved files and links, I could find most of the memorable ones that mattered in a few minutes with Google.
There’s a popular quote by author and broadcaster Leo Laporte which has spread via shared links:
“I’m less likely to read print lately because I can’t tag, bookmark, and share the stories. Info gathering has become a social process for me”
And it rings true. Print and physical copies are now back-ups, or objects for sentimental value. They’re for those rare occasions that you want to get away from it all.
And that’s why I love links!