14 April 2008

Folks, I have to tell you, my brain is full! Is yours?

Everywhere I look or turn, I have more information than I know what to do with.  Case in point, until recently, I had all of my family’s data scattered across three PCs in four different hard drives.  Now, being proud of my geekness, I recently purchased a one terabyte external drive to consolidate all of our data.

One terabyte!  Do you realize how much storage space that is?  For those of you who are less geeky than me, one CD-R can hold 700 megabytes of data.  Now, there was a time when I thought 700 MB was enormous, especially compared against the 3 ½ inch floppy disk (which held 1.44 MB and was twice the storage capacity of the original 5 ¼” floppy).  That was a big step forward because one CD could hold the capacity of 486 3 ½” floppies.  

Let’s put this into perspective.  My new drive can hold the capacity of 1498 CDs!!! That comes to a total capacity of 728,028 floppies!

So what are we doing with all of this increased storage capacity?

I’m not sure what others are doing but I went back and reviewed some of the data I consolidated on my new 1TB drive.  Let’s see.  There are those hundreds of files of scanned drawings from my kids’ elementary school artwork.  I was surprised at the number of those humorous digital jokes – mostly political – that people have sent me over the years.  Can’t throw those away! I can not forget those “cover your butt” email messages that I saved when I worked for that one terrible boss – over a decade ago.  Of course, we have digitized a lot of photos over the years… they’re dumped in there.  I even came across my Master’s Thesis from 1983 (was I really that boring!).  In other words, I have millions of megabytes of data that I will probably never view again. 

Experts tell us that by the year 2010 (less than two years away), the amount of data existing in cyberspace will double every 72 hours.  Wow!  I don’t even want to think about the impact of all that stuff!  If I do, I’ll just drive myself crazy.  With so much information floating around, how will we find what we really need?  Since Google appears to be the only tool around that can quickly sort through so much data, we will all become slaves of the Google Empire just to survive in a universe of media overload?

And to think, there was a time when we had the opposite problem – finding enough information when conducting extensive research.  I remember, as a graduate student, utilizing interlibrary loans a lot.  But time moved much more slowly then.   Waiting a week for a book or document to arrive from another library was not all that unreasonable.  In today’s world, having to click the mouse more than three times to find information is deemed unreasonable.

Even in the military, with incredibly expensive state-of-the-art systems, the paradigm has dramatically shifted.  In the 1980s and 1990s, I served in the Army as an intelligence officer.  In those days, our challenge was finding rapid means to disseminate intelligence (i.e. analyzed and processed information) down to units that really needed it.  Subordinate units always accused us of hoarding intelligence (do you really have a need to know?) or at best, not being timely enough.  With technology though, subordinate units can now quickly pull down what they need rather than waiting for intelligence to be pushed down.      

Don’t get me wrong.  I do not long for the old days.  Indeed, I love the new days because I have mastered the art of searching (albeit a la Google).  What used to take me hours, days and weeks now only takes minutes.  And I can do all of this from my basement at home while sitting in my pajamas.  No more trekking to the library!

Of course, today’s students take all of this for granted.  Maybe I am a bit of an old geezer because I find this to be unfair.  Why should these young dudes and dudettes have it so easy? And with wireless, they can find anything from almost anywhere!  Heck, the library is no longer the Mecca of Knowledge.  Rather, it is just another social gathering spot.  Will hardbound books someday go the way of the music LP or 45? 

But back to this problem of data proliferation.  With Google, all things are possible.  My searches usually hit the target.  I then save a copy of what I find.  I push one up to my home directory on the network and probably to my local hard drive at work.  Hmmm…. but I need that file at home this weekend so I save a copy to my thumb drive.   But that data on my thumb drive quickly fills up… to the point where I must transfer data off of my thumb drive (usually to a drive on my home system).  But then I realize that I have a SEXY, BRAND NEW, SUPERSONIC ONE TERRABYTE EXTERNAL DRIVE THAT CAN BE MY ONE CENTRAL MECCA OF DATA!!!!!  So I copy everything there.  Fun…. But oh no… I have 5 copies of the same file and I’m not sure which one had my final revisions.  Darn.   Hmmmm… maybe I should buy a second one terabyte drive to hold my duplicates…..

So, are we creating a digital version of our attics and garages?  I think we are.  But that’s OK ‘cause I have Google!  To me, Google is the Wizard of Oz… not sure how or what it does but it gives me what I think I need.

Too bad old bicycles and lawn mowers can’t fit on that drive!