Cult of Less?
Most of us find getting rid of junk and clutter therapeutic and liberating, and for some, digitising and relinquishing our books, photos, videos and music represents more than a contemporary spin. Our newly-emptied shelves and pared-down lifestyles might resemble some kind of minimalist utopia, but if we continue to access these things in their new formats, are our lives any less cluttered? Does the mere act of transferring our possessions from a physical to digital environment really equate to some form of spiritual transformation?
August 18th, 2010 at 7:43 am
I’d suggest that my digital clutter is just as burdensome as the clutter in my house, maybe even more so because there’s no limit to how much of it I can keep. The fact that something takes up no physical space doesn’t mean it can’t fill psychological space. About once a year I make a point of “clearing out” my various devices to free up some of the psychological space. The most notorious culprits are the documents / videos / audio files I download, thinking they might be useful one day, stored in some Miscellaneous folder…and then immediately forgotten.
August 26th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
michael: ur right abt the psychological space. think it’s a gd idea to do housekeeping once a year. so much trash we accumulate just cos it’s easy to digitalise. clearing out would also cut down on scanning time.