Most of us seem to have a sense of duty toward our digital possessions. From a young age, your parents probably taught you to care for your belongings and treat them with respect. It almost feels like a moral obligation to meticulously upkeep our digital environment the same way we tidy our physical surroundings.
But this attitude makes no sense in the digital world. Trying to preserve every last bit of data is like a hoarder trying to keep every old trinket and empty pizza box in their home. Most of this content appeared without our consent, and therefore we can archive it away without a sense of attachment.
I know archiving everything and starting over can be a scary step. You might have spent years thinking about how you wanted to organize all these files, and now I’m telling you to dump them all into the Archive? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you to do.
Remember: you aren’t losing anything. If you really need something from the past, you are always free to dive into your Archives and resurrect it. I’m guessing, however, that you’ll do so far less than you expect, if ever.
The truth is, search technology is getting better every year, and the most likely way you’ll access your files in the future is through increasingly advanced search algorithms. Artificial intelligence is also on the way, which means that in the future you’ll probably just ask an AI to search through all your old information and find what you need. That’s why any time you spend meticulously organizing your stuff is likely to be wasted.