Why I Won’t Use Delicious Library
Delicious Library is a very cool way to store a record of your physical belongings. It’s a nicely polished digital card catalogue for your books, DVDs, CDs and videogames. I’ve downloaded it, played with it, and come to the realization that it targets a life I no longer live, a life with a lot more ’stuff’. Delicious Library is a new tech way to keep track of old tech goods, but I’ve found that old tech goods are disappearing from my life. New technology along with a shifting philosophy is leaving me with dramatically less stuff.
Why I Have Less ‘Stuff’
- I don’t need to track my DVDs because I use Netflix.
- I don’t need to track my CD collection because all my music is digital and already managed by iTunes.
- I keep videogames around for the time that I play them and then they end up on ebay (with a few exceptions).
- Last but not least, I have transitioned over the past couple years from a fairly large book collection to a very small one filled only with essential reference and sentimental volumes. I get most of my books from the impressive Seattle Public Library and on the rare occasion when I do buy one, I generally just hand it off to a friend who might enjoy it.
I seem to have gravitated to a life where I’ve found myself cherishing not the object itself, but the experience gained. There used to be a correlation between the object on my shelf and whatever warm fuzzy feeling in my head, but I seem to have moved straight to the feeling and knowledge sans the object.
I realize now that this has become less of a commentary on Delicious Library and more about how technology combined with a new philosophy has made my things nearly transparent. This transparent availability can be seen in how Netflix negates a desire to create a DVD library. Every title is available to me, it costs less overall and it leaves me with added room in my apartment. Similarly with music, I sheded all my CDs roughly a year ago when I realized the transition to digital music had taken place in my life some time ago. The cases and sleeves all went out the door with only a few pieces of rare vinyl remaining. This transparent availability will only continue to expand as the companies enabling it become more pervasive.
Delicious Library has a number of secondary features that are really nice and I encocurage you to check it out, but if it’s primary use isn’t compelling to you, you’re probably not sticking around for any secondary features. Delicious Library will no doubt find a home on many people’s Docks, but for my life it’s a cool toy that just doesn’t fit.
Sidenote: I appreciate anyone who has a healthy sense of design, and these guys certainly do both with their application and the Delicious Monster site. The flowers and ferns remind me of my Jungle Mikro Man.
Permanent Link
I agree, and I hope D’Library decides to include users in its focus and not just collectors. I’m a big public library fan myself, so while my shelf collection is small, the list of books I’ve read gets longer. I’d love to have an elegant way to track books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, with a place to record my own reactions or reviews.
The other thing that interests me is connections. “Garden State” got me plugged in to “Frou Frou,” who led to “Jem”, went to hear her live show and met up with an old friend who said, let’s go see a movie sometime. Making connections between albums and books and people turns data into stories, timelines. That sounds real cool to me. Hoping it sounds cool to them, too.
Down with stuff. Up with nomads.