The Digital Graveyard

Cleaning up the clutter

The house could do with a good clean, but it's the digital world that has my attention at the moment. Since we acquired our first computer in 1985, developments have been rapid. Accounts long forgotten lurk in a kind of digital graveyard, and I've decided it's time to lay several to rest. Over the years I was an early adopter of many sites and apps, each promised something useful. Those accounts largely free, had their uses but their moment is now long past.

Do you honestly know how many accounts you have accumulated over the years on sites that no longer exist? If you have a password manager you may be surprised what's still lurking therein. I found three saved passwords for sites that had vanished entirely. Then there were the others, one account now occupied by a casino, and another quietly taken over by a more respectable firm.

I was reminded of an earlier digital life today when I logged back into a long forgotten SlideShare account. I had not used it for 12 years but it still held a range of presentations I had uploaded and shared.  I took a screenshot to mark the occasion, then deleted the content and the account.

As I grow older I feel a growing responsibility to leave behind only what will genuinely be useful for my descendants. The digital world is cluttered enough without my adding to it indefinitely. I'm working to clean up my corner.

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

Digital Litter

Where have you been and have you cleared away your rubbish?


As the end of the school year fast approaches for those of us looking forward to summer holidays, a certain amount of frenzy is generated as many endeavour to "clean out" what is no longer useful.


In libraries this may involve, weeding and stocktaking, in offices all over a certain amount of paperwork is re-evaluated and discarded as unnecessary. But what about those digital mountains you have created along the way? Do you have a personal archive policy, do you truly evaluate what is worth keeping for posterity as opposed to what is simply inhabiting server space all over the world? Our digital carbon footprint grows each year as the cost of storage for the personal user disappears, but do we need to retain all these files?

Whilst we focus on teaching students digital literacy and the value of a positive digital  footprint, do we often neglect our own trails of detritus? Do I need bookmarks in 3 online spaces, what about all those cute curation tools I've used to accumulate content over the years? Yes, some of them used to create hotlists for lessons, compile and gather useful URLs, have faded into obscurity. But what about those I dallied with for a year or two but now I rarely revisit?

Weird stuff by phernologist
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phrenologist/3026661706/

Time to take responsibility and clear out the litter. How many blog spaces have you played in and how many new tools did you sign up for, visit once or twice then decide it was not suited for your needs? Where is that early video you made that is no longer relevant? As I advise students to clean out their files on the school network, so too am I taking stock of my digital spaces. I'll be deactivating some of those accounts and hopefully clearing out some space both digitally and in my mind.