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If the Information Superhighway was visible, what would it look like? Would it be organised, like on the telecommunications ads; a streamlined neon circuitry? Or would it manifest as a great, green, greasy fug, threatening to overwhelm all of humanity? My fear is that as we become more and more wireless, to the extent that our bleeping and blipping can drive pods of whales off course, the fearful geometry of our unseen universe will be unable to sustain itself and there will be a kind of information fallout.
This morning, in an attempt to boot up a computer that has been either slow or completely unresponsive, I inadvertently depressed the start button too far. Much to my dismay it disappeared altogether, swallowed up by the hard drive’s innards. Like a naughty child, I knew that I was in deep trouble because I had broken something, but the more pressing problem is that, although we did have the foresight to back up the ailing machine before the cataclysmic event, there still might be stuff on there that we need. Of course we can always import a salvage and rescue professional who will fiddle around a bit and then present us with a couple of discs containing our lost data.
In cases of logical damage, as opposed to physical damage (which I did) where computers have fallen prey to viruses or system failure, there is usually someone who will claim that they can help. Recovering information from defunct or virus-riddled electronic media is a lucrative business.
As we become more adept at retrieving information, so it becomes more and more difficult to get rid of those bits and bytes. When you command your machine to trash a file, it places it in the rubbish bin, which like any other bin has to be emptied. When you empty the trash, the computer usually warns you that this action is irreversible, giving the impression that you will never be able to access that file ever again. Where does it go? When you delete a message on your cellphone is it really gone forever or does it leave an imprint somewhere in your service provider's burgeoning bank of bytes?
When data recovery experts do what they do, they usually do so by finding an image of the lost data, which your computer automatically copies onto your hard drive. The space that the trashed data took up is made available for other data, so it is overwritten. Experts argue about the extent to which overwritten data can be recovered, but from what I can gather, it's pretty difficult to kill electronic information.
When one considers the depths archaeologists have to go to when uncovering past civilisations, or the countless decibels of oral history that have passed into obscurity, our modern archive, by comparison, seems like an endless landfill, that will need more than a Fahrenheit 500 to annihilate.
We record everything; not only important things. We take countless digital photographs, document our daily movements and actions with SMS's and emails and then still print copies in triplicate of digital documents. It is highly likely that most of the keystrokes we make on our computers are being noted in some uber computer, like a Higher Being keeping a record of all our wrongs, rights and indifferent scribblings, for which we will someday be held accountable.
Gone are the days of the shredder, which turns hardcopy evidence of wrongdoing into paper spaghetti fit only for recycling as toilet paper. Today's masters of intrigue have to rely on complex software to erase sensitive information and keep other computers from breaking into their computers in the first place.
In our imperfect world, where privacy comes at a high premium and security is a precious commodity, it would seem that staying anonymous or at least limiting the time we spend on purveying useless information might be prudent. © Debbie smit – The Sunday Independent
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