28 November 2010

The Dark Alleys of the Webspace

just a thought that crossed my mind a moment ago: a fleeting thought about something I noticed around me and I wrote it down in a diary or a notebook and kept it for posterity. The only trouble is that the habit does not persist and the notebook has more empty pages than full. Then, many years later, I rummage through my belongings and find that special notebook and choose to either fill those empty pages or dispose it all off!

What happens to web spaces that we once so ardently occupied and contributed to? They continue to float like spaceship garbage in zero gravity with no lookers or takers. I transitioned from Orkut to Facebook a few years ago and left my Orkut Account to die a slow death. The social site Hi5 went through the same treatment , before Orkut came into the picture. And the same holds true for Messenger applications, blogs, web pages, photo galleries and videos.

Imagine the kind of clutter we create everyday in this space. In 2009, over 126 million blogs were tracked by blog pulse. Assuming that only 70%* of them still have activity, we have 151.2GB of space turning to "ghost spaces" each day with no one to edit, update or create new posts. We have always been in the habit of utilizing resources from a region like a parasite and moving on since the advent of the industrial age. With the virtual space now opened to us we only make it worse!

So may be you should go back to your blogs and galleries, profiles and web pages and see what you have left behind and maybe make something of it!

* as per standard statistical probability.

1 comment:

  1. Well the pattern is not limited to the webspace ofcourse... It has after all, descended from the old habits of accumulating things. But what could be the reason behind this human behavior of holding on to things? Well, the way I look at it, it surely begins from attachments, which roots from the fear of losing... All these small things add to our identity... of the "I" that we have built up over the years.

    But Kenneth, you have put it down in an intriguing, simple yet straight-forward manner in your post.

    Keep writing.

    Thanks and regards,
    Arpita A. Dessai

    ReplyDelete

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