Essay: The digital death of collecting

That’s what Benjamin described when he wrote, “The phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it loses its personal owner.” Just as collections require permanence, they also need individuals, whose voices and tastes they express. The mass of Spotify isn’t actually a collection; it’s an avalanche.

For Benjamin, the importance of collecting stemmed from its endurance and persistence, a longterm commitment that the collector makes to the collection. “A collector’s attitude toward his possessions stems from an owner’s feeling of responsibility toward his property,” he wrote in his library essay. Benjamin would have detested the era of algorithm... See more

In the digital era, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we have long had physical relationships with the pieces of culture we consume. We store books on bookshelves, mount art on our living-room walls, and keep stacks of vinyl records. When we want to experience something, we seek it out, finding a book by its ... See more