Monday, March 11, 2013

Digital cannot win every battle against paper


Everything seems to be going digital but yet, I still find myself at times holding onto what my classmate who sits next to me would call, ‘archaic tools,’ which he asks to borrow sometimes for in-class activities that require writing. Although I love the convenience and efficiency that the digital age brings, there is still something about the good ol’ pen and paper that I am just not willing to completely give up.

To all digital book readers, do you remember the smell of a new book’s pages when you crack it open for the first time, feeling the paper as you turn the pages (and an occasional paper cut), and using fancy bookmarks with tassels? All of this is replaced by the swipe of a finger on a screen or a click/scroll of a mouse.

What happened to writing with pen and paper before typing that paper up? It seems like a waste of time but for me, it is not. Writing with a pen and paper is more intimate whereas, writing a paper on a computer, I feel a sort of disconnect. The font is not mine, there are no scribbles, it just looks too clean. My ideas are not clean and organized so why should my thoughts look like they are? By writing out my ideas and thoughts on paper first, I can clean it up and organize it later when I am typing it up.  

As I was browsing and reading articles on adage.com, I came across a unique commercial for a French toilet paper company that uses slice of life humor to convey the shortcomings of digital.

 

Do not get me wrong, I LOVE digital, but I still feel the need to cling onto ‘archaic tools,’ such as pen and paper, that serve a part of me that cannot be replaced by digital. Same idea is portrayed in the commercial for the French toilet paper company, Le Trefle. Digital can win a lot of battles against paper, but unfortunately not all of them… especially when you are on the toilet!

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