Tangible vs. Digital

Even though Cottage Country is going digital with the sad but staedy penetration of high-speed Internet access and satellite TV, it is still pretty much an analog world.
If you look around many cottages, you’ll see tangible, non-digital things such as books, magazines, newspapers, a TV that, if you’re lucky pulls in the CBC, and a radio. And if you’re wondering where VCRs and all those VCR tapes go to die, many of them will be found in Cottage Country.

Without the Web and a 500-channel TV universe, it’s a different world. Books that would be ignored get pulled off shelves, old movies are watched, boardgames played, walks taken and talks had.
It makes me wonder what the digerati would do if the Web was suddenly knocked out of commission for an extended period of time. With no Web, e-mail, Twitter and Facebook would we look longingly at our now less-interesting computers, and start to call each other on the phone, write letters, read more books and go for walks?
As life gets more digital, the analog world is brushed aside as antiquated and less useful or valuable. Not that progress is a bad thing but some parts of the analog world are worth keeping.
Then again, we’re still reading books and newspapers, and listening to AM radio so perhaps there is still hope for analog.