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Remember when the reason for having a computer was because it was supposed to make you more organized? The mountains of paper cluttering your life would dissolve and you would become more efficient. I canıt speak for you, but with every new iteration of computing power and operating system, the mess around me gets deeper and deeper. I donıt feel more efficient these days. In fact, I feel considerably more disorganized and notably less in control of it all. I certainly have more information at the tips of my fingers, but damn if I can find it in less time than when it was in that old metal file cabinet.

The last time I felt like there was a happy medium between computer performance and societal orderliness was eight to 10 years ago. I think it was back in the days of the Pentium I and the maximum hard drive capacity was about 2 GB. That was enough memory so you could run decent software and archive daily document production but not so much memory that you filled the hard drive with superfluous drivel. Consciously, you always thought about managing the hard drive space so you didnıt run out. You never had so much of your life on your computer that you couldnıt live without it, you still used paper exclusively for many things, and file backup was under your personal control.

My problem, and perhaps yours too, is a conflict between organizational method and a pack-rat mindset. In the days when storage was an issue I limited the amount of evaluation software I installed. With every package wanting itıs own 100 MB of drive space, it was either triage them on a regular basis or quickly delete them after evaluation. These days I have at least 50 programs I hardly ever use and about 50 that I do. They, and all the generations of upgrades, eat up lots of drive space. But, who cares? Weıve got loads of room these days. Of course, the only way to remember whatıs installed and how it works is to run the software, wade through the help files, or print out the userıs manual. That accounts for at least one of the big piles of paper in the corner. When I used to ignore all the extra programs Iıd only keep the few manuals that were important. Complicating it even more are the endless piles of printouts. I swear that every key press for the last 10 years must be stored on my computer. I know the contract I was working on three weeks ago is there someplace, but where? Because programs now save every version of every document everyday, I canıt find anythingıat least not easily. More often than not, I end up printing out files when I store them just so I have a backup I can find or at least to see what I named the file when I stored it. The end result is that my life is on the hard drive. Itıs also in another pile of paper scattered across my desk, on my bookcase, and still spewing out of my printer.

In fact, for a paperless society, Iıve never used so much paper. You might think you can just save the 10-character link to that extraordinary Web site you just found, but if it is truly that amazing, youıve probably also printed the page and saved its 500-KB HTML homepage for reference. Itıs now one more pile of paper and one more folder on the hard drive.
The most significant change for me has been picture takingıor more importantly, picture storage. I have the usual shoe boxes full of family Kodak moments and archived photographs of our Westie growing from a cute puppy into a ferocious guard dog (if wagging your tail and licking perpetrators to death works, that is). Today, however, like many of you I also have a digital camera. It has redefined the shoe box.

Originally, when I had 1- and 2-megapixel cameras and small hard drives I was frugal about digital picture taking. I reserved 1 or 2 GB in ıMy Picturesı but really considered it as ıin process.ı When the folder was full, I archived it to CD-ROMs and erased the hard drive. That was when memory seemed finite. To complicate things more, I recently switched to a 4-megapixel camera. Resolution creep has increased my 300-KB picture files now to 2 MB-plus and saving pictures to a CD-ROM is becoming a losing proposition. Itıs easier just leaving them on a fast hard drive.

Picture-taking mentality has changed too. Rather than the 12 or 24 posed film shots, now we shoot a couple hundred and ıtune for best picture.ı The idea is to take pictures of everything and only print out the significant ones later. With a high-resolution camera it doesnıt take many 500-MB picture sessions to put a big dent in the hard drive (and, of course, we never erase the pictures we donıt print!).
Needless to say, my life is in constant conflict with increasing computer performance. It certainly doesnıt make me feel more organized nor has it reduced the blizzard of paper surrounding me. To some extent I have to blame my pack-rat mentality. Just like the thousands of pounds of old hardware and computer parts on the shelves behind the Circuit Cellar, my computer has become an archive of my electronic life. Unfortunately, rather than consoling me by its appearance of centralized organization, the fact that all of this is on one hard drive only increases my anxiety.

In truth, the greater issue for the present is my penchant for collecting all things significant or trivial. In an age when so much enterprise and information besiege us, it canıt be as simple as just going on a data diet. For me, it will be defining a happy medium between an accumulated life on a hard drive and the various methods used to organize and sustain it.

December 2001