One of the things I loved to do in high school was look at my friend's media collections. No matter how much we had in common, their music, movies, books and video games always reminded me of our differences(in a good way). But it wasn't so much what they had, as much as it was how it all looked together.

Did they have have bookshelves, boxes or stands? Vinyl, Cassettes or CDs? Video Tapes or DVDs? And most fascinating of all was the arrangement. A collection might be sorted alphabetically, by genre, or by content. Or maybe by some arbitrary system that only made sense to them. Regardless, it was always interesting. People's collections and arrangements created a distinct signature as unique as their own fingerprints.

But the times are a-changin'. Everything has gone digital. Now we use e-readers, MP3 players and hard-drives. There's no need to wonder about bookshelves, vinyl or video tapes anymore because everyone is using bytes. And how we arrange it all is limited to our software's sort options.

We're in an awesome new era and technology has paved the way. I can put a thousand songs in my pocket and an entire library in my bag. It's convenient, transportable and I love it (it would've been a pain bringing all my CDs, DVDs, tapes and books with me overseas!). But compared to their pre-bit predecessors, these new digital media fingerprints have less personality. And that's something technology can't replicate.