OAKLAND — As the goods in our daily lives transform from analog to digital, it's hard not to wonder: Where did all our stuff go?
We take photos, but the leather albums remain empty. The music collection bulges but requires no space next to the stereo. When "War and Peace" lives on electronic reading devices, it can no longer serve as a doorstop or a sign of being well-read.
This dramatic change has upended the media business, offering new ways to find audiences yet undercutting decades-old methods of making money. Even as it has empowered the likes of Google and Apple, the digital transition has hobbled record labels, pushed newspaper publishers to the brink of financial ruin and threatened film and television companies.
But the shift also has happened at a more personal level. In the home, we are torn between the ingrained urge to collect and the newer desire to feel light and mobile, said Aimee Baldridge, author of "Organize Your Digital Life," a recent how-to book from National Geographic.
The average U.S. consumer owns 792 digital songs, 672 digital photos and 666 digital videos, according to a 2008 study by the Consumer Electronics Assn. In the next five years, this is expected to at least triple.
"People are overwhelmed, and their lives are cluttered with things and information," Baldridge said. They "are looking for ways to simplify. Digital technology seems like a way to sweep things clean. But often it complicates things."
The drama has played out in my family, changing the ecology of our home and our experience of culture. The towers of CDs have been razed. Bookshelves are trimmer -- new purchases go into our Amazon Kindle e-book reader. There is no movie collection piled up beside our television. Why should there be? We have iTunes to download films.
When we do get DVDs, they're whisked back to Netflix as soon as we watch them, or we gather around the computer screen to take in films via the company's "Watch Instantly" streaming video service.
Photos, music, books and videos disappear into the black hole of our computer's hard drive, where we forget about most of them. Many of the framed photos around our house are from before 2000, when the digital camera became king. The online newspaper doesn't call out to be read like its printed sibling did lying on the breakfast table.
