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05/20/2004 Archived Entry: "storage"
Thoughts on space/storage encouraged by the Gmail hype lead Matthew Kirschenbaum to wonder if we will ever delete again.
An interesting Phillip K. Dick-oriented proposition. A time when all information exists and nothing is deleted. And by all information, I mean every thought, anxiety, wish, idea, belief, perversion, fetish, need, etc. circulates in endless streams of databases so users/writers can mine them for work. A giant library of information built out of every thing we have ever imagined or dreamed. The entertainment industry, the government, academia, writing students (of course) obtain access to these deposits of information and sample whatever they want for whatever purpose they want. Every idea exists in an infinite amount of forms. Why? Because all I have to do is imagine the idea differently, and it is now stored in a new version. What Engelbart imagined at the level of textual comparison, I see as something bigger and broader, something far more dangerous and simultaneously far more exciting.
Plagiarism? Not a concept anymore in the global emotional/cognitive database.
Replies: 1 Comment
I immediately thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins' decision to destroy all his poetry when he entered the Society of Jesus. Would anyone today see blog deletion as an act of spiritual sacrifice?
And the ease of deletion (just hitting a button) might take away the pleasure of ripping or burning pages and pages.
Posted by John @ 05/20/2004 10:16 PM EST