Zach's Response to "The Life and Death of Media"

I found Sterling's article to be interesting, but there were a few things within that bothered me. The writer had a bit of an interesting tone throughout the paper, which, while I'm sure the incentive was to establish suspense in some way, I was ultimately annoyed by it. Sterling takes an overtly tragic tone when discussing the ephemeral nature of technology-driven media - he treats these cast-aside machines as forgotten children rather than examining and appreciating what they were: tools. Every iteration of the typewriter was to ease the recording of text, and since word processors now exist on computers with printers to accompany, their utility is obsolete.

As a dancer/choreographer, I work with a medium that may be the most ephemeral of all: human movement through space. Dance exists in the space it occurs, for the duration it lasts, and ends. While videos and written accounts may exist, they are both sorely lacking in terms of capturing the true kinesthetic value of a live experience. If we are to accord with Sterling, however, dance must too be susceptible to a release from the world of living media. The movement of the body may exist as art and/or entertainment in nearly every society worldwide today, but who's to say we won't one day be immobile creatures with metal carapaces?

The section of the article that gave me a pleasant surprise was the bit about the quipus. The idea of a media that can handle nearly every aspect of life is a entrepreneurial dream. The iPhone is getting there but it isn't nearly as shock-proof. The author also goes on recognizing how short-lived the modern day computer is, but then questions the rush when pushing the media forward. The hurry is directly due to the knowledge and acceptance of its inevitable death.

The article was thought-provoking. However, perhaps due to it being a few years old of just the particular writer's voice, it felt very self-indulgent in many of the assertions. Where the author got to by the end wasn't wrong or radical by any means, just the way he got there was a bit convoluted and felt a tad to much like"reaching" for me.