Unnatural: The Spiritual Cost of Digitalization and the Death of Physical Media
I love used books. The dusty covers, well-worn pages, and distinct smell. Whenever I travel to a new city, I prioritize visiting at least one used bookstore. For several years, I’ve even taken a multi-day road trip, exploring dozens of independent bookstores in a chosen region.
All books tell stories; but used books also embody stories. They tell a history of the people whose lives they have intersected with and enriched. Many have thoughtful notes in the margins, or leftover travel tickets doing double-duty as bookmarks. Some contain heartfelt personal notes, capturing a forgotten moment in time when that book was a meaningful gift from one person to another. These personal histories are often no less captivating than the tales contained within the books’ covers.
This year, my annual bookstore road trip was set against the backdrop of the announcement by Sony that, beginning in January 2028, it will end its production of physical discs for its PlayStation consoles and go entirely digital. In a press release, the company stated, “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.”
Nothing Natural About It
I believe books will be the final holdout on the digital takeover, since unlike film and music, there is a tangible difference in the user experience—holding the cover and flipping the pages—but I’m saddened by another casualty in the bloody digital revolution. Most troubling to me in the press release is the word “natural.” Perhaps “inevitable” is justified, but there is nothing natural about the digitalization of physical media, or life at large.
Imagine telling someone from 1000 years ago, or 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago, that moving our daily activities into an invisible and ethereal digital “cloud” was natural. If these historical listeners possessed the ability to comprehend the statement at all, it would be only through the lens of a dystopian sci-fi tale, an undesirable, dehumanizing, and destructive—perhaps apocalyptic—outcome.
The irony of the Sony statement is that the word “natural” itself is defined by a connotation of the physical world. After all, The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is filled with skeletons and fossils. The “natural” has some connection to the physical reality of life.
An Incarnational Faith
The Bible reveals that man was created from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7), and woman from man’s rib (Genesis 2:22-23). Whereas the rest of creation was accomplished through the spoken word, when it came to humanity, God used physical materials. Scripture says, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
The difference between a digital or physical copy of a video game is not the equivalent of deeper spiritual realties, but it reflects similar tensions. Throughout the history of Christianity (and most world religions), there has always been a balance of the physical and the spiritual. Certain gnostic traditions of Christianity emphasized the spiritual at the expense of the physical. Yet this is an abuse of scripture and God’s design. The apostle Paul urged Christians to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).
The biblical writers frequently give attention to physical matters, whether it to honoring physical bodies and guarding against gluttony and drunkenness, or using our hands and feet to meet physical needs of people around them, not merely ministering to their souls. Scripture declares of Jesus, “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Christianity is an incarnational faith. In Christ, the immaterial become material; the invisible became physical as the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
Lost in A Changing World
The digital revolution is anything but “natural,” even if it now seems inevitable. For as often as people bemoan the digitalization of the world and the death of physical media, it is a quantifiable fact that more customers choose digital games over physical discs and use streaming platforms over Blu-ray discs. On my bookstore road trip, I purchased plenty of hardcopy books, but I utilized ChatGPT to help generate and arrange my itinerary. My library contains hundreds of physical books, but I also own a Kindle for the convenience of reading at times when hauling around a 400-page tome is untenable. In other words, even the staunchest holdouts are caught up in the flood and swimming in this digital ocean.
The bible is clear that we are to live faithfully in the time that God has placed us, to be present “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). To utilize digital technology is not an unforgivable sin and has been used in meaningful ways to edify Christians and grow God’s kingdom. It is not wrong to embrace the good, so long as we don’t lose sight of what we may have lost along the way.
For example, how different is money perceived once coins and bills were replaced by credit cards and smartphone taps? How different is the worshipful act of tithing in church when, rather than placing physical money in an offering plate, it is merely an automated transfer from our bank account? The same money is offered, but do we feel the weight or meaning of that sacrificial act? When our lives become filled with the impermeant and invisible, then we lose our grasp on the physical world.
Will playing a PlayStation video game digitally, rather than inserting the physical disk, topple the pillars of society or the Christian church? No, of course not. The act is trivial in a vacuum; but it does not exist in a vacuum. It is another pebble in a landslide toward an increasingly disembodied, digital existence. Perhaps Sony is right, and it is futile to try and hold back this devastating rockslide. But that doesn’t mean we have to embrace it with open arms. Is the digitalization and loss of physical media convenient and inevitable? Perhaps. But one thing it is not and will never be is natural.
