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So, after my last “technology is changing my life and I might want to get off this ride” S.O.S. post<\/a>, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m truly anxious about in 2010. <\/p>\n \nWhen everything is available, what is special (and how on earth are you supposed to find it)?<\/b> Everything is forever and yet nothing is forever.<\/b> Keeping up with how technology is changing our lives feels like a marathon I am about to lose.<\/b> I am a *music* *journalist*.<\/b> UPDATE<\/i><\/b>: The future, or the journalism part at least, solved<\/a>! Classical music, however, seems destined for a bumpy ride<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, after my last “technology is changing my life and I might want to get off this ride” S.O.S. post, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m truly anxious about in 2010. When everything is available, what is special (and how on earth are you supposed to find it)? We’re drowning in a sea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe’re drowning in a sea of choice, and though we learn daily how to more effectively deal with our new reality, it’s still often a source of significant stress and anxiety. How can we even begin to discover things to love and admire when wading through this much stuff? I find myself perversely shutting down to new experiences as more and more of them present themselves.<\/p>\n
\nIn our digital lives, there are no magazines to recycle when all the articles are online and no music collections to move when it’s all in the clouds, yet servers fail and things disappear, sometimes with witnesses to sound the alarm, sometimes without comment or explanation. Though I have letters from middle school, every email I sent before 2005 no longer exists.<\/p>\n
\nAs technology increases the pace of our lives, will a backlash come? I can’t help but imagine a coming trend in which a group of people very consciously makes the decision to unplug themselves from this culture of constant digital sharing. There will be stories about these people deleting all their social networking accounts<\/a> and turning in their smart phones. People will praise and disparage them with a shocking intensity that reflects their own personal struggles with these changing social paradigms.<\/p>\n
\nSometimes I feel like I’m standing with a foot on the deck of two different sinking ships. Right now pretty much any venture that counted on selling copies to pay the bills looks like a toppled game of Jenga. As we begin 2010, we remain in a period of redefinition and recalibration, but we seem to be getting a better handle every day on how to develop even as<\/i> problems and their solutions continue to morph and change before our eyes. The fun, if we’re optimistic and flexible about it, is in figuring out how to restack these blocks into a relatively stable form: distilling things down to what is essential about these pursuits, and coming to terms with what is merely disposable (and dated) window dressing–the superficial, if comforting, shells that we continue to cling to at our peril.<\/p>\n