When I read the first part of “The Manilla Envelope” it made me think about a problem my high school had in transferring our google profile, which caused many of us to lose our digital documents from the past four years. At the time, we were annoyed, but it went away quickly. It was not like any of us had been writing a novel we cared deeply about–sure, we worked hard and were proud of that–but we also found that we had little care for the various essays and assignments we were forced to complete. I think in the modern world, where everything–in fact, every moment–is digitalized, we are losing sentiment for physical objects in physical reality. Watters question of privacy seems more important to me than his question of what has permanence. Is there ever a private digital space, and who has access to these spaces and why? The section on the Indie Web made me think of all the recent talk of AI being the next best thing, and based off the way people used to talk about the internet, it’s probably true. The fact that we’re seeing the rise of industries like bitcoin and tech oligarchs running the country means we are unfortunately not, as Watters pleas in the end, moving towards digital democratization or freedom, but rather seeing a the beginning of total machine control.
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