What if bits and bytes smelled? And what if they smelled bad? And what if they had the capacity to carry viruses – no, not the email kind but biological n’er-do-wells?
Somewhere out in that vast and ill-defined world we call “digital space,” there’s a lot – and I mean a lot – of refuse. Imagine it having a physical nature, something that took up physical space like old toasters or meat that has gone bad. What if it had rats?
I don’t think I’d care for it.
I call it “The Great Digital Landfill” because that is really what much of the Internet is, just as it is much of what we keep on our computers – used and effectively worthless docs, pics, emails, programs and who knows what all else. There is no pressing need to clear any of it up because there is so much capacity (or so we suppose, if and when we think of it).
But what if it smelled bad? What if digital material had “best before” dates and, once the a date was passed, whatever that item might be it would begin to stink out the joint? I think we would likely put our minds to “cleaning up” with a bit more alacrity.
A very quick Google search reveals that “digital landfill” is not an uncommon term. Some of the material found is about the electronic trash we create and some is … well, a little odd (not unusual on the web). There are actually two aspects to this:
- The trashed hardware (cell phones, laptops etc.)
- The trashed content (emails, docs, pics etc.)
The first of those, hardware, is the serious one because it actually is physical and it is a very real problem. I believe I’ve seen documentaries or news reports of entire islands in Southeast Asia completely buried under technological trash, but hopefully that is just a nightmare I had due to spicy food prior to bed.
The second one, the digital content that has expired and is no longer useful, is just clutter. I sometimes wonder how search engines plough through it all. On our personal computers, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has done a search and been discouraged to find page after page of results.
I’ve even found documents on my laptop that I couldn’t remember if I had written them or someone else had.
Imagine, however, this scene. Arnold, a student, has just been called to a meeting with Professor Axel. It goes like this:
“I’ve been going over your work, Arnold, and I have a question. Did you write this?”
“Umm … yes! Yes, I did.”
“When?”
Arnold’s eyes dart side to side. “The weekend. Saturday night! Yes. And I finished it up Sunday morning.”
Professor Axel frowns. “That’s strange. Your submission has a very distinctive odor. An unpleasant one.”
“I … I ... I hadn’t noticed."
“Really? That’s strange too … since it’s stinking to high heaven! This damn thing is at least three years old!”
Poor Arnold. Caught cheating because digital material goes bad and stinks.
Yes, I think our attitudes toward all those emails in our Gmail accounts, all our stored documents, abandoned blogs, not to mention all that discarded hardware, would definitely alter if technology and the content we produced with it would just smell bad after a certain period of time.
Maybe that’s the challenge? Maybe we need to make technology that stinks.
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