On the Production of Compact Discs
Information is stored in CD format as a series of microscopic burns. The unblemished disc, useless in its current state, is irreversibly charred with millions of tiny wounds until it is assigned order, meaning and utility based on the organization of its injuries. Hundreds of millions of identically-scorched discs are mass-produced in factories devoted to this purpose, and then they go out into the world to be used until they are forgotten, obsolete and soon unreadable.
But CDs are fragile things, and they can be damaged beyond that damage which defines them and thus have their identity erased even before they are outpaced by the march of progress. CDs can break. What becomes of these scratched and shattered discs? What becomes of the information within, of the libraries locked away behind the cracks and scuffs? What is the fate of objects with no use?