On The Tactile in Arts

I had a terrible time explaining to my friend and co-worker why I had purchased a Super 8mm movie camera instead of a digital handicam. I showed him some Youtube short films of passing cars and pedestrians shot on 8mm. Over and over, I repeated the shot of pedestrians crossing in front of a store, as the light from behind them created silhouettes.
It has a better feel than digital, I explained. Digital just looks like shit, imperfections are better than artifacts, grain is better than pixellation. I tried but couldn't explain.
It reminded me of the Boards of Canada talking about how they swore they could hear the difference between analog and digital reverb in music recordings. This is a group who produce some of the finest electronic music out there - some of the most endearing and the most intelligent - completely in analog.
This is a debate that in no way resists the progress of technology. But what if technology just makes us lazy? The hardest part to explain to my friend was that processing the film would be astronomically expensive - something to the tune of $10 a minute. Why limit myself? I'm sure not rich.
And what of the photographer who shoots only one image a day - exposes only one negative. Isn't this the kind of discipline we should cultivate in order to maintain photography as a craft? No longer would we have to argue that it isn't simply the one picture we've taken out of 14 billion that captured light and form perfectly. It was all the work we put into one image in one day - or three minutes for $30.
No more fucking around.
Somewhere between work ethic and the warmth of analog is a comfortable place that favors puppets over CGI and hammers over keys.