Sitting on my desk is a collection of old diskettes, about to be thrown out. But they are also a philosophical muse.

They are 3.5″ plastic diskettes. I remember the day when computers used 5.25″ diskettes. They were called floppy disks then, because they were floppy. They had a certain sense of importance about them–large black squares, thin like wafers, which you inserted into the computer. You flipped down the lever, and then listened as the drive ground and whined as it read the data. Back in the old days, accessing data was more tactile. Using a computer was a more physical experience.

I was about six when our family was given its first computer. It was a Sanyo. It had no internal hard drive–it required a floppy disk to boot up, or do anything. It had a little monitor with green characters on the screen. I think it had something like three games, which to a six-year-old was the most important feature. But when the games became boring you could just go to the command prompt and type on the blank screen like you were some adult, writing something important.

That was my introduction to computers. Over the years we went from one computer to the next, following the advance of technology. I saw our first computer with an internal hard drive (40 megabytes!) and in which we installed a sound card so we could get real sound. The choice of games was expanding. Exciting horizons were opening up. 3.5″ diskettes arrived, and I saw the dawn of the Windows operating system. I was somewhat belatedly (1997) introduced to e-mail and then the internet.

Technology continues to advance, faster and faster, it seems. I have now been personal witness to twenty years of it–some twenty years since that first Sanyo computer came into the house. Now I have a stack of old 3.5″ disks I’m about to throw out, and they make me reflective on those twenty years.

By appearances I am a tech geek, and there is some truth to it. Having cut my teeth on the DOS command prompts, I have traveled through years of several Windows operating systems to arrive at the point where I am now running my second iteraton of Linux, where there is plenty that would immobilize the average window user with terror, including the occasional Linux command line activity. I have repaired, disassembled, and built various computers. I am comfortable building websites, and have dabbled in setting up Apache and MYSQL servers. I am enough of a geek to appear to have some strange mystic knowledge of computers.

But in some ways I am not a tech geek. My attitude toward computers and technology is ambivalent. I am conflicted. In fact, in recent years I have come to realize I have a downright anti-technology streak that seems to grow stronger as I age. I have a love-hate relationship with technology, knowing first hand the great usefulness of digital tools while at the same time knowing their costs. I find myself trying to get rid of the cost while holding on to the benefits. That is impossible, and the more the world goes forward, the more I find myself wanting to go backward.

The 3.5″ diskettes in front of me tell a story.

I don’t remember how old I was when I saw the advertisement. I think I was around thirteen, perhaps fourteen. It was an advertisement for a computer game creation system. By that time there had been a computer in our house for some seven or eight years, and computer games of some form for just as long. As I had grown older I had become increasingly enamored with computer games. Yes, they were fun to play, but as I grew cognizant of computer games, and the elements that went into making them, the more I began thinking about how I would make them. Computer games became more than an object of fun–they were an opportunity for creativity.

When I saw the advertisement for the computer game creation system it was like a dream come true. My desire of becoming a game creator was suddenly and miraculously within my grasp. Except that, for a boy of very limited funds, the price of the software was exceedingly high. I longed for it, saved for it, could not afford it, until finally (with the help of another similarly infatuated sibling if I remember right) I had the money to purchase the long desired software.

So began my first concerted effort at doing something with real seriousness. I had sunk nearly all my life’s savings into this thing, and I threw myself into the work of game creating with zeal and determination. What I didn’t have in understanding I tried to make up in effort. Oh, the hours I spent slaving in front of the computer, punching pixels (as the parlance goes) to create the graphics for my imagined worlds. For that is what this was really about. These were my imagined worlds, my stories, come to the technological age where they would be brought to life for everyone to see. No longer was I limited to words that would evoke images in the minds of my listeners, no longer was I limited to static pictures drawn on a piece of paper. I could bring worlds to life with action and sound that would powerfully draw the audience in. They were heady dreams, those days.

And nothing more than dreams they were, as it became clear. It also became clear that my real desire was not to create games as such, but to use them to create a story. What I really wanted was to tell a story, my story and was trying to use the medium of a game to do that.

I started small with my game creation, first becoming accustomed to the software I had purchased and exploring its possibilities. My first games were very rudimentary–simple and short attempts. But as I became more confident my vision and desire expanded. I began pushing myself and the software further. The length of time required to complete my games grew longer and longer, and as I reached ever higher into my dream of stories I began to reach beyond what one person could do, or what my software was meant to do. The truth finally came crashing down upon me. What I really wanted to do in creating a game, I couldn’t do by myself. What I really wanted to do, my game creation software couldn’t do. And, even short of what I wanted to do, what I was straining myself to accomplish was such a great labor that it would take me months and months if not years to accomplish–and still be far short of what I was reaching for.

I don’t recall exactly when this realization began, and it took some time for the truth to become fully and finally fixed in my mind. To truly create games requires working with other people. Game creation, of the true sort, is done by teams and committees. How a game will develop is controlled by companies and . . . and the nature of a game isn’t the product of one person’s vision. The appeal for me in creating a game was found in the expression of my thoughts and my ideas. You don’t write a story by committee. You don’t create a painting by consensus. When I recognized what computer game creation really was–a team and company product in slavery to profit and public want, I realized I was not interested one little bit. What I wanted to accomplish couldn’t be found there.

So I stopped. The diskettes now sitting in front of me are the history from those years. I poured hours and hours of creative effort into those games. There are files upon files of digital artwork I created for those games–all of it contained on these disks. It is a record of creative effort and energy, and it is gone. It is effectively garbage, so much digital dust waiting to be swept away. Why? Because the record of digital media is the most ephemeral of all records, so uncertain as to be no record at all. The passing of years has corrupted many of the disks so they are not even readable. But even if they remained uncorrupted, in a few years I won’t even have a computer with a drive capable of reading the disks. As it is, I already don’t have software capable of reading the content on the disks, if they weren’t corrupted. The game creation system was DOS based–now I am in Linux. Most of the pictures I created were in a digital format now long lost and completely unreadable. Two years or more of my creative efforts have vanished. The labeled disks in front of me are all that remains in mute testimony to what was, and now is lost.

One could draw many morals from that story, but one for present application is the impermanence of digital technology and the implications of that impermanence. That is one reason I do not like digital technology. It is needy, untrustworthy, and fickle. You are dependent on the whims of others for design, maintenance, and usability. Digital technology is useful–oh, so very useful!–but at the price of freedom and independence. It is a price I find myself increasingly aware of and reluctant to pay.

The idea of digital technology taking away freedom might appear to many as an oxymoron. For those who skim by on the surface of digital technology, the crueler edge may be little noticed. But stop and consider for a moment. For example, compare a typewriter with a computer. A manual typewriter is a wonderful thing. You press a key and the letter appears on your sheet of paper. But in comparison, a computer with a word processor program is almost indescribably more convenient and useful. You can copy and paste text in an instant. You can print out multiple copies in minutes if not seconds. And there is that wonderful thing called a spell checker. As a writer I am most acutely aware of the great advantages of the modern word processor. So, then, what is there not to like about a computer?

The first answer comes when the power goes out. The manual typewriter keeps on working, but the computer is useless. We might reconcile ourselves to that one weakness, but it is only the beginning. This becomes apparent if we ask, “Will you be able to access the files on that computer in ten years?” I have been writing for a little over ten years and the computer I started with is long gone. More than that, the file format used by my word processor ten years ago can’t even be read by my present computer. There doesn’t need to be some catastrophic failure of modern life to make my past work inaccessible to me–the mere advancement of time and technology will render the old unusable. Digital technology is a self-devouring beast that never ceases to hunger. The only reason I haven’t lost what I have written ten years ago is if I (a) printed it out, or (b) converted the files to a readable format by my most recent computer and transferred the files. The first solution is effectively a retreat to the materiality of a manual typewriter, for once writing is printed out it loses all the advantage of being digital. The second solution is no solution at all because in the end every file that is converted will need to be converted yet again in another five or ten years.

The grave never says enough, and neither does digital technology. The due technology demands is the eternal upgrade. I am forever required to upgrade my computer, upgrade my software, and upgrade my files. What was promised to give me freedom has shackled me to its care. If I give the required service to the beast of digital technology, a life of ease and convenience is before me–my every piece of writing is easily accessible. But if I fail to perform my duty, my writing will slide into oblivion, lost forever. So I find myself a slave, held hostage by the very thing that is supposed to serve me. My computer is a ticking time bomb, into which I feed increasingly more of my creative work so that I am increasingly held hostage. The processes of upgrading becomes more laborsome as the heap of files increases, the cost of failure more anxiously avoided.

There are many things which are digital in today’s world–we have digital pictures, sound, and writing. Each faces the danger of oblivion, but as a writer what stands in the forefront for me is the contrast between digital writing and the physical word. If I write a book and have it printed, the resulting product is useful to me and requires nothing from me. I can leave the book on a shelf for a year, ten years, or a hundred years and it will still be readable. I can take it anywhere, and it will still be readable. The book doesn’t require electricity, technology, or money, to be read. It doesn’t require maintenance or upgrades. It sits there on the shelf, waiting to serve me at no cost, requiring no effort for its upkeep. By contrast, a digital file needs a computer, software, and electricity to simply be accessible. All of those things require money. And for the file to remain accessible, continual maintenance is required. Digital writing is searchable, modifiable, and easily disseminated–but the cost for those abilities is real, and lasts only so long as you serve the beast. Falter in your labor and what you have will become only so much digital dust.

In my life there is a constant tension between the digital and physical. I am not willing to give up the advantages digital technology gives me in writing, but neither am I willing to surrender to a living in the moment where all I have written before is quickly lost in the obsolescence of time, so that what was written is forgotten, never to be recalled and reflected upon. I use the digital technology because it is too useful to give up, but I love the written word because it demands nothing of me and I need not fear I will lose what I have created with the passing of ten years–like I have the contents of those stacks of diskettes.