Core Post #5 (Mahnoor)

There were several claims in the Hogan piece that I found interesting. Rather than thinking about Hogan’s articulation of the problem – the environmental cost of maintaining the digital infrastructure of the Internet – I wanted to consider one of the solutions she offers: “Rationing information will become a necessary step given the current expansion rate of data, a model currently set to fail because it denies its own limitations” (9). Rationing is often an action taken in an environment of scarcity. One rations food if there is a scarcity of food. In the case of “rationing information,” the information itself is present in excess, but it’s the tangible/material (and paradoxically often invisible) resources which are scarce. It’s strange–for most of the time I’ve been in this class, I’ve been unnerved by the pervasive, invasive collection and use of data. However, in considering this suggestion of “rationing” information, which would certainly challenge the tyranny of big data, I find myself similarly perturbed. What metrics and criteria would be needed in order to determine which information ought to be preserved and which should be dragged and dropped into the proverbial trash bin? What is worth keeping, and what are we okay with losing to history? I suppose that’s always been the difficulty with constructing archives. And due to the fact that storing digital data is so corrosive to the overall health of the environment, this question that pre-dates the digital becomes entwined in a cost-benefit analysis with global stakes, or perhaps it becomes irrelevant because the "model [is] set to fail." And of course when it comes to the practice of self-archiving, which Hogan calls an “everyday obsession,” the issue is further fraught with considerations of how self-expression and individual user behavior fits into this global calculus. I really appreciated Hyejoo’s thought-provoking post, and agree that media that is not viewed or interacted with is a kind of material waste. Though I also think that “this duck has the coloration of a root beer float!” is an incontestably delightful video subject and probably a somewhat meaningful one for the video creator. 

Another claim by Hogan may be relevant here: “My reading of the issues raised by these questions has been that the disconnect between the materialities of the Internet and the culture that develops from it reveal a cycle of waste that is not only about devices and technologies but also about identity and meaning-making” (5). I think that, throughout the article, Hogan effectively explicates how there is a disconnect between the Internet’s immaterial appearance and its material reality. I suppose I want to ponder the part of the waste cycle that is “also about identity and meaning-making” a bit more.