the price of “free” unlimited storage
we all got used to having instant access to the internet with all its marvels and (even more so) profanities. and we all, as good netizens 2.0 are happily uploading our daily lifes into the maelstrom of the never ending digital story.
but this all comes at a price. and it is a price that most people are unaware of. the ever growing stream of data is hosted by ever growing server farms all over the world that consume power and pollute our environment at a rate that already rivals that of international air traffic. and even if companies like cisco, microsoft or google are looking into running their server clusters on environment friendly energy (something that sadly enough again is only of real concern outside the US of A) , it won’t be enough.
but, and here comes the good news jingle, there is something we all can do about it. the internet explodes with mediocre content on photo and movie galleries like flickr and youtube that needs hosting, just then to be scanned and crawled and tagged so that it can end up as entry 2,504,391 on google.
i’m not saying that we should stop uploading whatever content pleases us. web 2.0 is in itself a liberation. but do i really need 500 pictures of aunt nancy and me online? or 2000 pictures and a feature length movie of my cute cat anton? Let’s just think about it for a minute because info pollution will eventually turn into environment pollution and we all will have to pay the price.
you can’t groom a (digital) garden without a little pruning now and then. happy uploading!