In the internet age I find myself collecting so much virtual crap it’s becoming overwhelming.  I collect bookmarks, many of which now lead to non-existent sites, electronic documents that I’ll never read again, digital photos that will never see the light of day, fragments of code, whole codebases for ancient projects, notes and todo lists that I never gave a useful name, the list goes on and on.

Have we moved from accumulating ’stuff’ in our houses, such as mail, catalogs, brochures, leaflets etc to the virtual equivalent.  At least with tangible things we knew when the piles were getting to extreme levels and could have a spring clean.  Do people spring clean their virtual collections? 

I’m sick of worrying about migrating my data with me all the time.  I have ancient email that I can no longer read, old format files that mean something to me, like my final year university project writeup, that I just don’t know what to do with.  At least paper feels like it could last our lifetime - I have old CDs that I archived data on that are no longer readable.

What are we meant to do with all this stuff - just throw it away into the electronic ether?  Has information overload caused us to stop caring about our data?

Went to see a really good film last night - The Wave - based on an experiment done by a US high school teacher in 1967.  (It really was excellent, I recommend it to anyone)

It got me to thinking. So you’re supposed to subscribe to the corporate spirit, wear tops with corporate logos on to corporate events, conform to corporate expectations and rituals.  Does this sound familiar?  Ok, so this is in no way as extreme as the movement created in the film or the classroom, but some aspects of the experiment were uncomfortably familiar.  What do employees of corporations get out of the deal?  They get paid, they get a sense of community, maybe a sense of pride - but this can all disappear at a moments notice.

When did corporation become a word that makes you feel vaguely uneasy? In the way when you can’t quite put your finger on something, but your gut tells you it’s not right.

So I went to a concert (Stereophonics if anyone is interested).  It had been a while since I last went to a concert (Cambridge folk festival doesn’t really count) and I observed a new, to me at least, phenomenon.  Very few people were capable of appreciating the moment, of concentrating on the music, instead they were busy taking photos, video clips, browsing the internet, sending messages to friends.

Have we lost the ability to appreciate the moment?

Maybe this is why people feel disatisfied with their life, they are no longer capable of simply enjoying themselves.  Instead everything has to be an interactive social experience leaving no time to actually enjoy the moment and form some real memories.

Are our memories just digital now?  We don’t have the inclination to store them for ourselves, we’d rather store them on the internet or in throw-away exchanges with our friends.

When I suggested this at work I was accused, in a teasing way, of being a ‘Grumpy Old Woman’.  I wasn’t intending to complain, just make some observations.  But it did start to get to me - is this where society is headed?

I’ve found some sites that seem specifically setup for this sort of ‘interactive social experience’:
Crowdfire - a crowdsourced act of digital media creation
tvClickr - a social TV experience

Finally I decided to stop thinking about writing and actually write something.