In this increasingly digital age we live in, it is hard to see any reason to keep our old VHS tape, CDs, DVDs, and soon Blu-Rays when we can digitally stream music, movies, and video games on the internet. To many of us, disposing of these outdated forms of media frees up a lot of living and storage space, and keeps them from collecting dust in an attic somewhere. However, I'm here to argue that those old forms of media may just have a "second life" within them.
One of the best reasons to keep old physical forms of media is to act as a "backup" if something goes wrong with you streaming service and/or if your entire media library is deleted by accident. This actually happened once with my iPod almost a decade ago. I had to re-buy some of the songs I bought off of iTunes, but luckily most of the music I had on my iPod were from CDs I already owned. All I had to do was burn my CDs back onto my iPod and I was able to save most of my music library.
Another reason is for preservation. In my previous article, I discussed why preserving art was so important and what it means to a culture and an artist. Preserving our old physical media so it can be stored and/or transferred digitally is what keeps pieces of art from disappearing within the eroding waves of time. This has become especially important when it comes to the video game industry.
The preservation of old video games has been abysmal. Old video games have disappeared or been forgotten by time do to a lack of effort when it comes to preservation or a title holder, for whatever reason, decides to pull a game from streaming sites (like what happened to "The Simpsons" Arcade Game.) In some cases, the only way to play a game is if you still have a physical copy or if you buy one online.
The constant running thread in all of this is the questionable reliability of digital media. Any number of things can go wrong and its nice to know that the media that you bought isn't gone forever due to a hardware malfunction or company servers going down. However, that doesn't mean people should be overly paranoid about digital distribution.
Digital media has allowed a greater market place to open up for media and has allowed those who could normally not afford all the hardware that comes with different forms of physical media to enjoy them all on one convenient device. Digital media is at the forefront of media distribution in our modern world and it's how we spread awareness of a piece of media's existence to others.
Both digital and physical forms of media need to be present in order to accurately preserve media for coming generation. Preserving physical copies helps guarantee a piece of art's survival if something goes wrong on the digital end. This is an important thought to have before you consider throwing out those old CDs or video games you have.
