Essay: The digital death of collecting

I’ve always been a bit of a collector. When I was a kid I collected every M*A*S*H playing figure and vehicle. With the advent of CD's I collected music and built a library of nearly 2,000 albums. I collected media of all type really. Laserdiscs were still some of my favorites. I recorded every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and built my own collection. I’m also a completionist but that is a different thing. So this essay on collecting and how algorithms and digital tech impact it resonated with me.

My lostness comes from the sense that our cultural collections are not wholly our own anymore. In the era of algorithmic feeds, it’s as if the bookshelves have started changing shape on their own in real time, shuffling some material to the front and downplaying the rest like a sleight-of-hand magician trying to make you pick a specific card — even as they let you believe it’s your own choice. And this lack of agency is undermining our connections to the culture that we love.

As I read this I kept thinking of identity, a topic I keep coming back to more often lately. Perhaps a sign of aging? In my experience growing up and becoming the person, or identity, that I am was heavily influenced by collecting. What music do you surround yourself with? What books? What magazine subscriptions? Your interest takes you there, and the collection helps stabilize as you grow up.

Now with a rental economy versus an ownership economy, you lose the collection. You cannot collect what you rent. Maybe that is a good thing as it allows your identity to not be so influenced by those things? Or maybe that is a lost value, leaving us to float in a sea of algorithmic recommendations. Unmoored from a foundation.

I know for me the boundary line here is books. I've ceded much of my music and media collecting, but I still collect it digitally and own much of it. But books feel too important. Too meaningful. I don't want an algorithm reorganizing my books. I feel value in a few bookshelves populated with the books that have grounded the development of me.