I Want to Do a Digital Reset

Here’s the thing - I’m on the Internet since 2001 and on computers since 1999. With that I mean I have “my” own files. I played games on computers since 1993.

That’s a LOT of time. Lot of time to grow old. Feel old.

I’ve been playing with thoughts on some kind of digital reset lately. Lately = for months or years.

Also me: hoarding and downloading files.

I’ll be open here, I think I’m some kind of digital materialist. I identify with digital files I copied from somewhere or created.

However it is mixed with a desire to preserve digital history. Lately I started to embrace the thought not everything digital will survive. In addition I think it shouldn’t, just like in the real world.

In the real world only fragments of culture survive. I don’t have event history in mind, but material history - furniture, technologies, tools, art, books, …

Everything changes and old must die or transform. Only a tiny bit can withstand the time.

The problem is, I’m also a minimalist at the same time. I like to live light. Especially in real world. In digital world to have many files doesn’t hurt so much.

Files on a local computer can be deleted and I do that regularly, but what about all those data scattered on the internet? Registered accounts and cloud saves, notes, data, images, media, gameplay statistics, comments. All these data of mine live life on their own.

Quite impossible to tame. And that’s what I don’t really like and would reset.

As long as I’m in control, I don’t really care so much about how much data I have or where they are, because I can delete unnecessary stuff in a couple of hours or days.

Files and data without a purpose are sad. And because they are not sentient, we give them the purpose. If I created or remixed them, they are my children. If I copied them, they are my responsibility.

Well, or corporations give them purpose too when they happily use our digital creations under global non-exclusive license we gave them.

“But hey, you just want to change your past”, somebody can say. Yes, not and not really - too many information is slowing me down. Cruft which is not needed anymore. Artifacts of the past. Temporary byproducts of living and thinking.

While it’s nice to have a couple of permanent things in the life, new adventures await and new horizons can be reached.