Editorial

Earlier this year, someone sent me a link to an article at 404 Media (the journalist-founded digital media company “exploring the ways technology is shaping – and is shaped by – our world”) called The Digital Packrat Manifesto. It was more than just a catchy headline.

It starts out lamenting the recent decision by the world’s largest ebook retail ecosystem (you know the one) to build a technological moat around the reading material you enjoy via your device or app. Now they assert that this dynamic is no longer one of buying-and-selling but of access licensing. You can’t take it with you when your Kindle dies, unless it’s to another Kindle – you certainly can’t download them to your computer or read them on anything else.

With ebooks, unlike when the word is printed on paper, you don’t own what you paid for. But, the article notes, this is only the latest instance of this sort of behaviour by big tech.

Ours used to be a world of the physical, and the books (and vinyl, CDs, DVDs, Bluerays,…) you bought were yours, to hoard or sell or gift or throw away as you saw fit. Since the dawn of the mp3, that’s all changed. Today, the idea of digital media being consumed but not owned is now accepted more or less as the default. Film, TV, and music are the all but sole domain of streaming services, in which creators and consumers are treated as little more than the input and output points of perpetual content dispensers.

Streaming platform subscription models grant access to a menu of material that is subject to adjustment at any time, including the spontaneous vanishing of things from your watchlist as rights expire and are picked up elsewhere – or, on occasion, when social or political factors fall out of alignment with the parent company’s business objectives.

The threat of such disappearances may now hang over your reading list as well.

But on the other end of the scale, you have the digital packrats: people who maintain private archives of the digital media they have bought in the past, rather than drinking whatever is dispensed for them from the streaming tap. To quote the article directly:

Digital Packratting is the antithesis of this trend. It requires intentional curation, because you’re limited by the amount of free space on your media server and devices – and the amount of space in your home you’re willing to devote to this crazy endeavor. Every collection becomes deeply personal, and that’s beautiful.

…

Sure, there are websites where you can find some of this material, like the Internet Archive. But this archive is mine. It’s my own little Library of Alexandria, built from external hard drives, OCD, and a strong distrust of corporations. I know I’m not the only one who has gone to these lengths. Sometimes when I’m feeling gloomy, I imagine how when society falls apart, we packrats will be the only ones in our village with all six seasons of The Sopranos. At the rate we’re going, that might not be too far off.

Read the article, it’s a great rabbit hole of links in itself. But to bring this editorial at long last to the point I wanted to, two lines really stood out for me from that quote. The first:

…this archive is mine. It’s my own little Library of Alexandria…

This is how I feel about Mythaxis Magazine. And I think the analogy is stronger when applied to the online magazine scene, particularly those made freely accessible by default.

From the flood of stories that are offered to us whenever we open for submissions, zine editors curate those that really speak to us, and that we think will speak to others as well. We preserve the few we can make space for, and keep them where they can be found by anyone who comes looking. We’re tying to make a public good, hopefully forever.

There are more great stories out there than all the zines currently in existence can possibly include, and still more get written every day. That means there’s a huge space for new editors and zines to step into, unique and diverse curations to be lovingly slaved over, and – hopefully – new like-minded audiences waiting to eagerly coalesce around them.

My experience of interacting with other editors has always been rewarding. Much like my experience, as a writer, of interacting with other writers; as a reader, of interacting with other readers. The lines between creator and consumer are fuzzier when the work is done at the same personal level as the enjoyment of it, and the editor stands with a foot in both realms. The battles and concerns that drive the streaming media machines are not what drive things here.

We need more online magazines, and I encourage anyone who might want to edit one to try. I’ll close on the second line that spoke to me, which I think also applies right here:

Every collection becomes deeply personal, and that’s beautiful.