It was the very late ’90s, and I was staring at a music collection of over 200 CDs, asking myself the question:

What now?

At $16.98 apiece, this collection had once been worth over $3,000. Now? Practically worthless. My once-prized collection had been rendered obsolete—its music floating somewhere in the cloud. The Digital Revolution had arrived, and with it, the final goodbye to analog. Cassette tapes gave way to CDs. CDs were now giving way to files stored invisibly in cyberspace.

We called it iTunes back then. Today, it’s just the cloud—a shapeless digital void where physical media go to die.

From Napster to Nowhere

The transition was swift. Everything that could be digitized, was. Entire aisles of music and film were replaced by downloadable formats, remastered editions, and bonus tracks. Blockbuster Video—once on every corner—became a relic of the past.

Napster, that infamous file-sharing pirate ship, set sail into mainstream consciousness, forever changing how we consume music. A single MP3 file could be downloaded, duplicated, and distributed freely. Why pay $16.98 when you could get it for free?

The entertainment industry panicked. Profits tanked. Copyright laws scrambled to keep up. Physical packaging, marketing, promotions—all gutted to keep costs down. Broadband speeds increased. Video files joined music files in this new era of sharing. The entire home entertainment industry was disrupted—and Hollywood began bracing for its so-called inevitable demise.

Three to five years, they said. That’s how long we had left before the final nail in the coffin.

Enter: The Third Digital Evolution

Flash forward to 2021. The pandemic delivered a merciless blow to already struggling brick-and-mortar stores. For the second year in a row, mass closures dominated headlines. Online sales surged. Streaming became standard. Convenience beat nostalgia. This, I believe, marked the beginning of the Third Digital Evolution.

By this point, we had already survived the leap from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to external hard drives. Now, we were deep into cloud storage, 5G speed, and AI-curated playlists. Moore’s Law told us the speed of processing would double every 18 months. We were generating far more data than we could ever need—more than we could ever use.

And just like that, we had arrived at the Fourth Digital Evolution.

Too Much of Everything

Facebook. Google. YouTube. TikTok. Pandora’s box had been opened. A storage war raged quietly in the background—millions of videos, songs, selfies, tutorials, and remixes uploaded daily.

We don’t just live in the Information Age—we’re drowning in it. We’ve reached the point where content fatigue is a real thing. We don’t have a content crisis—we have a filtering crisis. Too many options. Too many versions of the same thing.

I mean… do we really need 15,000 YouTube tutorials on how to make a balloon arch? Or 10,000 covers of Madonna’s Like a Virgin? Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

1000 years from now, will future generations even know Madonna sang that song? Or will it just be another remixed, remastered file in a long-forgotten playlist?

What Makes You Different?

In a world where everyone has the power to create, how does one stand out? What makes your voice different? What gives your content purpose?

These days, standing out isn’t just about creating—it’s about curating, innovating, and pushing past mediocrity. The truth is:

From CDs to Light Chimes

Which brings me back to my CD collection. Instead of tossing it, I turned it into art.

I called them light chimes—nine original sculptures made from those “worthless” CDs. When exposed to light, they reflected rainbows across the room. Several spun, creating dazzling shows on nearby walls.

The prototype debuted at an underground after-hours event I produced called The Secret Garden, a private gathering that followed my departure from Empire Nightclub after a disagreement with ownership.

For that night, I took a massive 3ft BBQ pit grill, tied each CD with fishing wire at varying lengths, and suspended the whole thing above a DJ booth I built in the center of the garden. Twinkle lights were woven through the structure, which hung 25 to 30 feet in the air.

DJ Jason Jenson headlined the night, and the unforgettable Nazhoni T. Foxx—Club Kid, Drag Supermodel of the World, and my dear friend—delivered a legendary performance. We lost John (Nazhoni) to COVID-19 early that year. This night, this art, will forever remain a glowing memory in the hearts of those who danced beneath what was described as My Digital Universe.

From Secret Garden to Premier Venue

After the event, the structure was dismantled. I repurposed the materials into nine individual art pieces, each sold to collectors.

The property? It’s now a premier special event venue in Orlando called The Acre.

From Secret Garden to The Acre Orlando—but that’s a story for another time.