2nd january 2004
I was thinking about some organising and sorting of files on my computer the other day. Before that I was looking through photos, arranged in folders by day, date and month. I also started printing things, old emails and notes to myself, beginnings of essays and stories, diary type musings. And then I looked at this machine, this unreliable contraption of electricity and sand, magnetism and lasers. All transitional, when it’s off it’s gone. But not the hard disk.
While other components – ram, processor, graphics card – govern much of the performance of the computer, it is the hard disk that we store ourselves on. It persists when the power is off, data made permanent by magnetism. I am astounded by the volume of these disks, the thought that I can store hundreds of gigabytes of data within an object roughly the size of a paperback book. Like much technology it is remarkable; like much technology I feel it is overlooked.
People at work sit down to a spreadsheet, people at home sit down to a game, to an email program. Whatever it may be they are purely interested in the functionality of the beast, it is only an issue when the megabytes are running low. The rest of the time stuff is written to the disk with gay abandon. But it is only when you begin to think what some of this data may mean to you that you begin to consider the implications of this.
Firstly, and most obviously, there is the impermanence of the data. It can be deleted, overwritten, destroyed. This does not happen often. My hard drive got fried by a power surge once. I suspect it would have been recoverable by a specialist, only the operating electronics broken – not the disk platters where the data is stored. But this would have cost money. Luckily I had everything backed up – or so I believe, would I know if I didn’t? Backing up is a necessary evil, but it removes the elegance of the drive, this idea of everything stored in this metal box. It is also an alien concept from non-digital life – we do not buy two copies of everything we own in case one is destroyed by fire for example. Actually, it is probably the case that important documents have always been duplicated in case of accident, but not to the same extent as digital data. The point though, is how this feels. If I lost the contents of my drive it would be like losing my memory, years of words and pictures gone in the blink of an eye. Tragedy.
This leads to my main wonderings about the little disk at the heart of it all. How long until it does become our memory? Sitting at my computer, flitting through the files I feel like I am browsing a library of me. My photography, my words, internet sites I’ve visited, music I like to listen to, emails, university projects… it is all here, and I want to keep it all. Some people delete old files, but I want to keep it all, build on it, create a library of me, a disk where you can perform an archaeological survey of how I used to think. Each time I get a new disk the capacity is increased exponentially, the old data is copied again and I begin to create more. Each time the creation expands to fill this new space (bigger photographic files, more music), and soon it is time to repeat the process.
And this is what I want, a disk containing it all. But more than that, I want a disk connected to me, to augment my memory. At the moment the library of me is crude, only words and pictures. I want to record it all, the thoughts and events that happen. So much data that I’ll never be able to look at it all, but it will be there. My database of memory, searchable by keyword whenever I feel the need. I become like the purely electronic life forms in Greg Egan's Diaspora, able to consciously explore how their brain works, to plumb the depths of their memories to the end of time. It will be a revelation. Nothing will be lost of the self, you will be able to explore and enjoy everything you have ever been.
So where are we now? Not so close to recording thoughts, but I already feel like my personal library of me is going somewhere. But I am still dubious about ease of use and formats. I like to print things out for a sense of permanence, in effect making my library more traditional than it should be. I am quite lax about scanning things into the library, but how else to augment my photos and writing? Newspaper clippings are so much more manageable when scanned or downloaded than in a scrapbook. And as for keyword searches, only windows search facility comes close, and it doesn’t work with the pictures and their numerical filenames. Organising these memories is a full time job in itself. Apparently the next version of windows is to be built around a more database style file management system, so we will be able to file in this searchable way. I could probably do it now, if I had the knowledge/time/software… but I don’t know if I can be bothered.
I read an article in the G2 today about iPods. Some of their features sound like this. You have a massive capacity for music, and the ability to create playlists, rate songs etc. It brings some of this potential to portable music. Not the grandest of things, but it’s a start. Not unlimited in size, but big enough for now, small in physical size and exquisitely elegant. Expand its functionality and we’ll be well on our way. What surprised me were some of the comments in the article. Some people have gone mental over it, and devote inordinate amounts of time to filling and fiddling with it. Others seem to believe it has mystic properties and knows which of 102 madonna tracks to play at any given moment and mood. Most seem to just want to fill it with shite. One naysayer (Catherine Sullivan, music writer) says: “It’s just a gadget that appeals to people who want access to everything… They think it offers limitless potential, but our lives need editing, or it ends up like digital TV – hundreds of channels and nothing to watch.”
Partly I agree, in some ways our lives do need editing. But this is no gadget, why should access to everything be bad? Sure, edit it, but at least know that you have potential for anything. Why delete something that you may want to listen to in 10 years’ time? Should we stop the internet then? Burn down libraries? These things that offer us everything if we can find it, if we can edit out the crap? Today I saw a blog about knitting (“a knittastic day today…”), to my eyes incredibly bland, but to someone else interesting. Editing in this electronic age shouldn’t mean deletion, shouldn’t mean removal of potential. It should be about being in control of that potential.
And this is what most of us lack. Either from lack of effort or lack of computer knowledge, we cannot yet harness this revolution. We need computers like those in star trek, computers that are clever enough to do the editing for us, do the donkey work given a few simple commands from us. As it is the slog is hard, I baulk at the thought of spending all day reorganising my files although I know it to be necessary. The iPod article also quotes Paul Morley, from his book Words and Music: “The physical presence of the popular song is gone. It’s time for the next thing. No disc, nothing spooled or grooved, no heads to clean, no dust to wipe, no compulsive alphabetising. Nothing to put away in shoeboxes or spare cupboards, and be embarrassed about. A chip inside us and inside the chip a route to all the music that there ever was.”
Expand this definition to cover everything that makes me me, all the data
that I generate and create, and that’s where I want to be.