Everything that can be is being digitalized, the weight of commerce and received wisdom (at least some received wisdom) asserting that this is progress, and very much for the best. Digital technology is going into everything: water bottles, car keys, pets and running shoes. You can wire your house so that it can report to you on its energy use, humidity and security. You can buy a library of digital books, and query the author directly via Kindle’s built-in @author feature. Queues form outside Apple’s flesh-and-blood stores for the release of each iteration of its products as if Megan Fox and Jack Nicholson were working the red carpet. Users become tribal over iOS (Apple’s mobile system software) and Android (Google’s competitor with the smiling robot face): which is better, which is faster, which ecosystem is more authentic? We habitually replace our desktops every three to five years because the capabilities of the new machines are so far in advance of the ones we have (whose capabilities most of us do not use) that the software no longer fits into the impoverished motherboards of the older computers.
