Monday, February 7, 2011

Do we really need all this stuff?

Back when the term "pack-rat" only referred to a person hoarding physical items, resulting in ugly (un)organized clutter.


 Daily practices have been redefined through the use of technology. Common definitions have been redefined through our use of technology.

 An article in the New York Times talked parents taking a new approach in dealing with clutter. Physical clutter. Parents were no longer wanting to keep their children's artwork. One mother in particular noted that she would scan her children's images into a file on her computer and then go through them later with her child in the future. Still maintaining traditional ways of keeping memories.

So rather than keeping physical clutter, parents have learned to transfer tangible products into a virtual storage space, otherwise known as an external hard drive, usb drive, compact discs, and etc. I have a fairly new desktop, and I've utilized my computer's memory comfortably, without worrying about memory. My computer is about 500 GB, and popular external hard drives often provide 2 TB of memory. The idea is that my computer can be stored in that external drive about four times. Who needs that much memory?

And although many of us do not use the services provided by Public Storage and may have a clean garage space (with minimal clutter), when it comes to taking up virtual space, the idea is as pleasant as keeping a dying pen lying around my desk-- just in case . Should I keep my old high school European History notes? Why not, it may come in handy someday.


By no means am I worried about a virtual landfill. That would be ridiculous. But to create such products to cater (after creating needs) to a market who (for the majority) probably does not need such an exorbitant amount of memory, is definitely something I wanted to address.



Check out this video on Dropbox, which is where I got my Public Storage idea: people are encouraged to pay up to $20.00 a month to keep their files in a virtual safe space.

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