Vannevar Bush makes an excellent point in the reading when he says,

“publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.”

It succinctly expresses the idea that these days, thanks to social media and ever increasing phone/internet capabilities, absolutely anyone can be a publisher of content at almost anytime.

With over 7 billion people on earth and counting… thats a hell of a lot of content! Bush is not wrong when he says, “summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate”

An example that brought this home to me personally was one of my Instagram posts. I put up this picture of my bracelets and ‘hashtagged’ it #boho. less than a minute later when I tapped on the tag to see other photos like it, I found my image was at least 50 pictures down. In less than a minute, that many people had uploaded a photo and those are only the ones who used the same tag as me… scary.

Where does it all go? What happens to deleted content?

A 2013 news.com.au article says it doesn’t really go anywhere…

“Just because you move a file to the trash doesn’t mean it has actually been deleted.

And even once you empty the trash, the space inhabited by the file isn’t actually emptied. When you hit “delete” that file doesn’t disappear. It is simply marked as empty.”

Michael from YouTube channel VSauce explains that “the file’s home becomes available real estate but the file itself hasn’t actually moved out. Only the pointers have gone away.” ”

Though Bush sets out to talk about the research for scientists in a post war period, I think he raises an excellent point about “too much” content and its ever increasing number.

So I think its a good start for talking about your own profiles on the internet.

What have you put on the internet or other’s have put on the internet that you wished wasn’t there or that you’ve tried to delete?

According to the article, there are several ways you can try to properly delete something from a computer.

1. Overwriting – keep adding new information to the file until it can’t be recognised

2. Shredding –  literally tear the computer to pieces

3. Magnetising – also completely destroying the computer.

However, with each of these approaches it would seem hackers and the technically gifted can still retrieve information from these damaged files and computers.

Lesson to be had… don’t put thing up that you don’t want someone to see.

It is quite common these days for employers to run a check of all your online profiles, any material you have ever put on the internet so keep in mind that seeing as things can’t be deleted and you could be checked up on at any moment… keep it clean!