Digital generation

Digital photography is a blight to the art form. That's what a handful of significant adults in my life have told me, anyway.

With the spread of this "digital trend," we as a generation have lost the romanticism and tradition of, for example, the darkroom.

Granted, transfer by USB port doesn't require a dark and brooding developing lab filled with mysterious solvents in trays and soothing red lamps. But at what point before the mid-1990's could you send an hours-old shot of your family to all your friends?

Film photographers have a point too, though. Would Dorothea Lange's images of abject poverty and anguish from the Depression era pull the viewer in as well if they'd been captured on a memory stick? Could Ansel Adams, the master of balance and light, have produced an image with the rich luminosity of "Aspens" using mere pixels?

I suggest that the rise of technology in our lives is not a loss, but a trade-off.

When was the last time, for example, you heard someone argue that e-mail takes business away from our government's postal service? It's absolutely true, yet not the end of the world. Email has largely replaced the circulation of personal letters, decreasing the number of the U.S. government's clientele. But with message forwarding, the invention of the list-serv, and nearly-instantaneous delivery, e-mail has accomplished some things the postal service may never have.

It's also worth mentioning that our postal service even constructed a website to address the rumor that a 5 cent surcharge would be collected for each e-mail sent on the Internet. The alleged Bill 602P that would put this into action was never even created.

Anyway, some low-level jobs have also been gradually replaced by their computerized equivalents: where once Ford's assembly line full of human employees stood, now there's a digital idea being implemented by robotic arms. It's true that many workers were laid off during the transition, but the price of your favorite automobile would be radically increased without digitally-controlled manual labor.

And what about instant messaging? Some loss of intimacy and personability must have occurred with the rise of Facebook and Livejournal, because how often has it happened to you that your friend's screen name came to mind, but not their first name? Yet at the same time, today the deaf have a bridge across the language barrier, and every student writing a book report has spell check.

Admittedly, all of these things have the potential to be flawed. Microsoft Word is telling me that "personability" isn't a word, but Webster's Third New International Dictionary tells me a different story. Take that, Word.

Where once there was a paper panic, now digital files are slowly replacing paper documents. Newsprint is appearing online, and who's to say the Internet won't be the death of media's morning hard copies?

And finally, as the victim of a Startac cell phone having gone off in class, I can say with certainty that this invaluable staple of a college student's communication has its downfalls. Do you have any idea how obnoxious cell phones were even before the discovery of ringtones? Some even say they cause brain cancer and can ignite gas pumps while your car's ignition is on.

Maybe, then, it's worth considering that the digital age blight isn't the old school or the new age, but intolerance of the way the other guy lives his life.

So perhaps we shouldn't be exasperated with film photographers - their process is slower, but they have more control over what they do, and possibly get more enjoyment out of doing it. Meanwhile, there's no good reason to condescend the digital folks - I mean, what happens when the CVS photo shop is closed and you've got the perfect shot that needs to be sent that minute?

Perhaps we shouldn't be so critical of the college student who lives for his computer, for his e-mail. Because it's important to keep in mind that he probably loves getting paper letters just as much as you do - there's a tradition and romanticism there that doesn't happen with getting e-mail, and everyone has an appreciation for that.

And yes, I acknowledge that cell phones are obnoxious nearly everywhere you hear them. But what about that story where the professor picks up the student's ringing cell phone in class, and gets the hospital on the other end, telling him that "his" wife is having a baby?

This new trend is, like I said, just a trade-off. Just another change felt by another new generation.