used to be, a user bought a thing and a thing was a discrete tangible item which, at the moment of the transaction, passed physically from the seller to the user and remained within the user's physical control whether idle or in use.
i am thinking of my (encoded and compressed audio recordings of musicians using musical instruments alone or with other users to perform specific sequences of sounds within the convention of) music.
used to be the listener bought an object encoding such recordings (i think one can actually still do this in some cases) and, when combined with the appropriate actuating instrument, reproducing them audibly on command, which, at the moment of the transaction, passed physically from the seller to the user and remained within the user's physical control whether idle or actuated by the appropriate instrument. (the listener bought an actuating instrument separately, which, likewise, remained in the user's physical control).
then recording and encoding and actuating technology developed, growing together according to the law of the superposition of the computer, which turns out to describe a sort of universal actuating instrument.
oh, it does not actuate the grooves in wax or magnetic signatures of a ribbon of cassette tape, although those objects -- and a great variety of their actuating instruments -- remain. it actuates a digitally encoded information object that exists as a sequence of digits abstracted within the physical structure of some object: it could be such physical object as a compact disc, but finds frequent expression as part of the physical memory structure of the same universal actuating instrument that will actuate it, when called to do so, or of another universal actuating instrument connected to that one in a network of such instruments.
the network happend too. it took the network to reveal to all but the most astute futurists the vast spectacle of the vertiginous landscape of the immanent superposition of computing: a universal actuator is one thing; all the universal actuators efficiently connected is an incomprehensibly, unquantifiably, algorithmic near-infinitude of things-so-close-to-"everything"-that-it-is-kind-of-silly-to-distinguish-them! or, at least, potentially so.
for a time, the user bought the universal actuating instrument, and bought a connection to the network, and, using that instrument through that connection to the network, bought (accessing and using a different set of instruments connected through a different set of networks concerned with a different sort of encoded information) the digitally-encoded information object corresponding to the recording of the performance of user's specified piece or pieces of music, which was transmitted once as a digitally encoded object of a particular informational volume to be stored (and accessed) within the physical memory structure of the user's universal actuating instrument, which, in turn, remained more or less within the physical control of the user.
now that i have bought thier universal actuating instrument (and its many peripheral devices), and subscribed to their bandwidth access fees, They want to sell me the item, and instead of transmitting it to me once for local storage and access, wish to hold on to it for me in theirCloud of distributed universal actuating instruments' exciting, dynamically-distributed memory, making it available to me whenever and wherever i may want to access it, and i, or whoever pays for the bandwidth usage on the network from which i do, will pay for the bandwidth used every time i listen to the digitally encoded information object that i have bought.
i will still buy that thing, like in old times, and i am promised access to that thing in the manner and fashion of owners of things, but i will not have a physical object encoding the thing i have bought, i will not have interaction with the digitally encoded information object except playing the file in its prescribed format, and i will pay for the bandwidth of each transmission of the digitally encoded information object when it is actuated on my instrument.
i can see the utopian efficieny of such a scheme, envision a world where every copy of the grateful dead performing morning dew in europe in 1972 is one copy of the grateful dead performing morning dew in europe in 1972, distributed among physical memory structures all around the world and simultaneously available to everyone who wants to listen to the grateful dead performing morning dew in europe in 1972 anywhere in the world at any time! oh, utopiofascist efficiency, i hear thee click and whirr!
but i don't like the hidden fee. and i don't like concentration. i smell some subtext impinging on music and video intellectual property control.
also, i listened to this interview with this democracy now correspondent, jihan hafiz, who was recently on one of those boats of reporters and activists trying to sail to gaza:
Well, they contacted us at about 1:30—excuse me, 12:30, 1:00. And we knew that they had arrived, because all the communication had shut down on our boat. The satellite phones didn’t work, as well. There was no internet. The BGAN, the satellite BGAN I’ve had to communicate with you and also to check email or to do any kind of updates, was no longer working. And so, we figured at that point that they were around. And then, of course, they made contact with us. And the Israeli navy asked us our—what the course of our—or where our course was headed,and, when i'm (inexplicably not wearing my press credentials in a clearly visible place on my body while) riding in a boat trying to break a naval blockade and anticipating being boarded by the israeli navy and all the electronic gear has simultaneously stopped working, during that time when everybody is alternately freaking out and stashing their herb and rehearsing their civilly disobedient strategies, i'm going to need to hear some of my (digital information objects encoding compressed audio recordings of musicians using musical instruments alone or with other users to perform specific sequences of sounds within the convention of) music!
(. . . and . . . so . . . can't risk depending on a signal that may easily be jammed any time the israeli navy, or the similarly-outfitted military force of another state or transnational entity, wants.)
and daffodils.