Out with the old in with the New: Non-Digital to Digital.
There has been a considerable increase from non-digital mediums that have converted to the digital world in the last decade. One of the oldest is that of “mail order brides”, the term is a reference to an old medium, which was eventually adapted to the internet. When this whole operation began, it started out as potential females (almost all being from a foreign country) that listed themselves in magazines and catalogs in the early 1970’s up through the late 1980’s. Ideally they put their contact information in these catalogs in hopes of attracting foreign men (preferably Westerners) that would “save them from poverty and hardship”. Nicole Constable, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, studied and interviewed people’s experiences about this controversial subject. She wrote the book, Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “mail order” marriages, where she conducted extensive internet ethnography and face-to-face fieldwork in hopes of learning more about the realities of finding a suitable marriage partner.
Within her research Nicole was able to meet and interview three women who told her of their experiences of being a “mail order bride” their names were Moira, Netty, and Faith (Constable 28). After spending time with them and getting to know them personally Nicole realizes they’re different from the other women in the catalogs. Nicole writes, “These women were not desperate, economically or otherwise. They did not write or respond back to anyone. They were not pressured by families, brokers or economic circumstances to form relationships with foreigners, and none of them were eager to leave their local communities” (Constable 28). A popular nowadays “mail order bride” medium that seems to have gone completely digital is the site www.rosebrides.com/about one of the many sites that helps you find your perfect wife.
Within the last two decades this old medium has now formatted onto online dating sites that will actually list potential suitor’s information for free. Of course if you want personal information like a phone number or address you need to pay a fee or subscribe. In any case, I have found an online community that has gone from physical to digital in the past twenty-five years, that is the classical card game solitaire. My grandpa actually taught me how to play this game when I was just five years old. He never liked the idea of playing solitaire on the computer for some reason, he was old fashioned that way. Solitaire is sometimes referred to as a patience game. It’s designed to be played by one player, most games begin with a specific layout of cards called a tableau, and the object is then either to construct a more elaborate layout.
Since I knew at a young age how to play the game physically I was excited to play the game through the computer. Playing solitaire on Windows 95 was thrilling to me back then. Nowadays you can actually play solitaire online against other players (www.zigiz.com is a popular solitaire multiplayer site) for fun or competition.
The solitaire industry is similar to that of the mail to order brides community. They both were eventually adapted to the internet from an old medium. Both have adjusted to a digital world where their consumers and customers love how both mediums have evolved.
