As the world becomes populated by "digital natives" and daily activity centers around our collection of apps, let us never forget the lessons learned in history from the Age of the VHS tape...
This was an age where "bootlegging" had nothing to do with resolution quality because you were happy just to have a glimpse of the movie. In fact the lesser the quality, the better you could hone your viewing skills. This was a time when putting together your compilation tape took hours with considerable reflection and a keen control of the pause button. But this entry is not to romanticize about the past.
I post this blog to illustrate a moral point. The VHS tape was our last best vestige of the degradation done when making a copy of a copy. In our common digital age, copying is nearly undetectable and in most cases acceptable or even worse expected. With the environmentally sensitive, they call it "recycling." And for the economically wise, it is called "re-purposing." In fact we have become experts in copying that you can no longer tell that it is a copy. And for those targeting the digital natives with their iPhone myopia, you need only to update the application with the latest trendy icon to garner the greatest hits. This common functionality has taken over common sense morality. We've breached the "feels good, do it" parameters of individual preferences and entered a society where duplication is a moral norm, especially when it goes "viral."
To end on a lighter note, I turn to entertainment: I worry that we are loosing real quality in favor of high definition. How many more remakes in television, film or music do we need before we realize that viewing the same ol' same in 3-D is still viewing the same ol' same. Or do people really think this is how we make a "real classic?" Nowadays I wonder if "nothing new under the sun" is literally becoming reality. Personally I prefer the inspiring low-res black & white TCM classic over the expired digitally-enhanced HBO video on-demand. Remember at least with a bootlegged VHS, you would immediately recognize the fake for what it is---not the "real thing."
