How much would you pay to hold a thing in your hands?

[bodlon]

This morning, whilst making tea and toast, I started thinking about tangible things.

Part of the conversation in my head was about some digital photos I took last night. Part of it was about the post I’d just clipped to the mailbox. Most of it was about how our material culture has changed. If I want to share ideas with someone far away, I type them out in Gmail and click send. The last tangible photograph I’ve been given was part of a friend’s holiday card from last year. The portability is nice, but there is a part of me that longs for solidity now and again.

It’s possible I’m romanticizing the world I occupied 5-10 years ago, where I might have actually used a film camera to take a photo to keep in my wallet. It’s also possible that I’m onto something.

So I thought about it a little bit more. How many words can go on a post card? The back of a photo? Surely somewhere in the 100-500 range, depending on the handwriting or the point size.

And then I started thinking about some other cyberfunded art projects. (Fortunately, by this point, I’d taken the basket out of my tea tumbler so that I wasn’t stewing my tea.)

Would you pay to hold a thing in your hands? To get a card or a letter with a 100-500 word story and a photograph that you can touch in the mail once a month? How much? How often?

Think about it and get back to me, World.

~*~

- A friend and writing partner pointed me to The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood’s Winter Writing Festival, which starts January 10th. It’s a bit like NaNo, but a wee bit longer, and you set your own terms. Also, prizes!

- The New York Times is comparing Jon Stewart to Murrow. It’s an interesting comparison, but ultimately not one I’d make. Murrow was not a Fool. When human beings get too full of themselves, too distracted by status, theory, rigid ideals, and sophistry, a Fool — like Stewart — shines. When Order gets out of hand, the fool deploys Art, and often a memo re: the Emperor and his clothes.

- The world’s most coveted painting, complete with missing panel and crazy history of theft and near-destruction. (That book, incidentally, looks wicked interesting.)

- Target: still making donations to anti-gay politicians. Wal-Mart is still much larger, and much worse in that many of their policies are still overtly discriminatory in ways that Target’s are not, but the gap between these two evils feels a bit narrower at the moment. Target? You’re on notice.

- I was kind of interested in Kinect before, but I think this just cinched it for me. Of course, I also have to resurrect my gaming rig as well. Maybe a goal for mid/late 2011?

- Medicare will now cover end-of-life counseling. Here’s why that’s a good thing. It’s also a second good argument against believing freaked out Tea Party rhetoric about HOSHIT DEATH PANELS (the other, of course, being that it’s that same Tea Party implementing actual death panels).

- Another book I’m keen to read: Coming to the Edge of the Circle. Memo to the academy: more of this, please.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Thinking about it for sure. It's a good idea.