Tony(as Commander Obvious)'s Three significant digital age changes

Three (Obvious?) Digital Age Changes

Because I have lived my whole life with computers pretty much (my Dad was the head of research and development in a computer company and I grew up with computer chips as chew toys) I focused on digital online changes. The three that I selected have had a profound impact on my life and probably on yours as well.

It may seem obvious to most but for me I cannot imagine going back to a world without Google. I remember searching (should I say stumbling?) through the web without it, and it was difficult to find websites without the exact web address. I remember typing in long lines of backslashes, percent signs and dot somethings and if you think links don’t work now sometimes…eyugh!

The search capabilities of Google have helped me with research for papers, finding restaurants, and even with my writing. If you saw my Prezi poem, you may have noticed the allusions to the Bible and the mini-parody of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” within the poem. Searching for references for my work is too easy now with engines like this and as I mentioned earlier in my post about . I wonder if this skill will become less valuable in creative writing since, soon enough, it will become obvious that anyone with Google can refer to another work within a written piece.

It may also seem obvious that social networking sites have radically changed most of our lives. People that, in the past, I might not have spoken to for years due to distance or schedule differences comment on my facebook all the time…sometimes, I miss the distance. I also love playing fantasy football with my friends. As we have gotten older, married and have become fathers, we are less likely to gather together on Sundays and bicker about our favorite teams, players and coaching decisions. Fantasy football creates that space virtually. Every Sunday during the season, I know my friends are watching with me to see how their players do, and we post our insults to our pages and have a great time.

My third obvious change in how I live my life in the digital age is ecommerce. I have purchased items from all around the world: books from France and England, shelves to hold them from Mexico and I love to search ebay’s collectibles for gifts for friends and family. I gave my brother an autographed copy of the script of Pink Floyd’s The Wall last Christmas, a Tennessee Williams autograph for my wife, and a copy of the rare film, The Stranger for a professor and friend. New York shopping is really accessible, but the internet never sleeps! I could never complete my poetry project in any reasonable time without being able to hunt for items like "Allie’s Mitt" and the book Hopalong Cassidy. There is a bittersweet rumination I have about this particular change: I like the fact that ecommerce gives smaller businesses a chance to thrive against bigger corporations. I watched Borders and Barnes and Noble drive my favorite bookstores out of business and now I find that those smaller stores working online bankrupting Borders. It may be a satisfying bit of poetic justice, but the truth is the experience of hunting through those stores will never be replaced.