alt Hacker NewsI've always thought that the hippie environmental types wanting data (music) stored as plastic was ironic. "I prefer my music to be made of petrochemicals and trees, the way it ought to be." I get it, but I still think it's funny.
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Not sure why petrochemicals and trees ie hydrocarbons are any more or less absurd than the silicon, metals, etc quarried and mined from around the world needed to store information digitally in data centers (or mobile devices).
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.
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Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.