Digital Destruction

Posted on | November 30, 2010 | No Comments

I was talking with a woman the other day whose husband is losing her job because “films don’t use film anymore”. Yes, I responded, another case of digital destruction.

She was intrigued with the term so we discussed it a bit more. I take no credit in coming up with name but the conversation did make me wonder how I picked up the term and how it should be used. Of course I was familiar with >Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of “creative destruction” which is used by free market economists to rationalize the economic penalties of new innovations. Karl Marx had also used a similar notion to refer to the destructive tendencies inherent in capitalism. At the conclusion of our discussion I told her I thought “digital destruction” can help us understand much of what is going on in our global economy.

Although at times I have been quite positive about the changes brought on by these technologies, I don’t want to discount the destructive aspects of the microprocessor revolution and its impact on real people. As someone who monitors the effects of media and IT I knew I wanted to pursue this notion of the destructive aspects of digitalization. So this is the start. I created this writing category and a Google search quickly found the following presentation which I thought began to address my friend’s situation and provides a powerful array of images.

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