Yesterday, in the process of digging out some toys with which to entertain some visiting kidlets, we came across this great old box of Jen’s Lego:

I had never known that, beyond the cool over-sized Lego people,  the box contained some great old catalogues.

Bam – nostalgia hit!

First, there was the coolness of seeing ads for Lego kits with single-digit catalog numbers (new sets are approaching the 10,000 mark in numbering).

Even funnier was seeing what I can actually remember being the aspirational technology of the Lego world back when I was 7 or 8.

That’s right, never mind your fancy-pants, newfangled, bluetooth-enabled programmable Lego Mindstorm Robots. Back in those days, I was drooling over the prospect of a 3-way motorized engine for my Lego… complete with a wireless wired remote control! (about 8 inches of wire, from the look of the picture).

I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. I think it started with an oncoming birthday and the realization that getting older means gaining an ever-larger pool of nostalgia to dip into.  Every day, the interwebs are making easier to dip into that pool. Chances are, you can look up a video, scan, or some kind of media to satisfy whatever memory you are trying to indulge. That instant access is undeniably satisfying.

I can’t help wondering, however, if that kind of universal access to is also somehow cheapening our experiences. I do worry that (both individually and culturally) as we gain bandwidth, we are losing storage capacity. Because, assuming there is no catastrophic global loss of digital information, we are really filling in all the nooks and crannies of that universally accessible universal library.  We’re not just talking about ubiquity of information, we’re talking about persistent ubiquity. How much care do we take to savour something that takes no effort to find?

Most of us have experienced the letdown of digging up a treasured memento (whether something as personal as a love letter or as common as Welcome Back Kotter) and finding that it doesn’t come close to measuring up to our memories of it. So what does this mean in an era where we may conceivably never lose access to all this ephemera in the first place?  How about the generation whose treasured memories and experiences are either posted online immediately, or are taking place online in the first place? How much are we outsourcing our memories to digital media? How many of the last 100 photos you took have you had printed in hardcopy? Any? How much is nostalgia (and memory in general) reliant on tactile, sensory or experiential elements?

I’m not saying this is simply negative, but it does feel a bit like we’re putting putting all our eggs in one basket. I’m pretty sure it’s one aspect of a fundamental change in the way we think and interact, and I’m not sure is a net positive for the human experience.

Of course, fretting about change and what the younger generation is nothing new.  I seem to remember reading something about it on the Onion one time…

For a variety of reasons, I have lately joined twitter, and have spent much of my time with it trying to decide whether it is anything other than inane.  I think one of the things that rubs me the wrong way about it is that it demands spontanaeity. I have nothing against immediacy or spontanaiety, I just don’t want to associate those traits with writing.

It has been interesting trying to figure out what is going on with the whole phenomenon. It has forced me to start blogging (which is cool), which has in turn led me to discover two very different blogs, both of which I have really enjoyed reading.  One of them is written by an old friend – it’s very personal, very journal-like and really reflects her personality. The other is written by Wil Wheaton, who has become a really interesting, funny and successful writer. Wil (who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek back in the eighties) writes about many things geek-related.

Between the two blogs, I am left wondering what the point of my own writing is… how personal do I want it to be? Compounding the issue is “who is going to be reading this?” Does it matter if my professional contacts learn that I spend more time reading reviews of board games than watching sports? Can I write about friends without their permission? 

All of these questions tie in to the tie-ins I’ve been creating online. Between myself and my workplace. Between facebook and twitter. All of these connections require me to think (way too much) about what I post where, when, and why.  I’m not sure I like that.

It’s all kind of fun, but I really find myself wondering if I’m not just killing my own attention span.

Finally, as someone who has always prided myself on brevity, sometimes trying to constrain my trademark sparkling wit to the absolute wall of 140 characters is frankly just a pain in the ass.