Rubbish, I say! (The Dangers of Content)

Ok, so this is tangential (isn't it all?), but an interesting coincidence. Just last week I gave a presentation which reference the photo from the man from Brooklyn a few years back, who was buried in his own apartment by stacks of newspapers, magazines and books that had fallen and crushed his leg. Many bags of trash later, and some agonizing minutes later, they were able to recover the fellow and get him the hospital, where aside from temporary fears of a need to amputate, he apparently has made a full recovery.

And today, in our own (for us locals that is) Boston Globe newspaper (which is rare enough that I even read the cover), another article, describing a fellow (90 years old) in Norton, MA who also fell prey to a serious (physical) information overload problem. When paramedics arrived, all they could see was his head above the mountain of debris in the house. (see full article) Needless to say, the house has been condemned, and the family has been asked to clean out the house to see what the structural situation is from years of piling.

My favorite bit from the article:

Halko's son and daughter-in-law arrived, and as they looked on, Norton firefighters formed a 14-person chain to pull the barely conscious and dehydrated Halko out of the mountain of debris. He was sent to Attleboro's Sturdy Memorial Hospital, where he was determined to be in stable condition.

There was so little room to maneuver in the house that they had to pass him from one person to the next to even get him out of the house. Wow.

Now, perhaps with your enterprise content, the situation isn't quite so dire, although even moving your own information piles out to a service such as Iron Mountain, or similar services, isn't quite cleaning up your mess. What smoking guns lie in those archives? What beneficial content is literally buried that neither you nor anyone else will ever be able to benefit from?

Personally, I'd prefer to be buried in electronic information - while it may be mentally taking, at least you don't run the risk of being crushed!

What's your take? How are you dealing with paper versus electronic information? Are they
mountains or molehiles? Do you know what you're keeping, what you're actively using (or wish you could)? Let me know what you're thinking - and if this Boston Globe article frightens you (for it's similarity to your working life), or amuses me (because this couldn't possibly happen to you), I'd love to hear your stories here.

Comments

[heather]

Well, my physical piles are much smaller than my electronic ones. Because my emails and online files aren't physically intrusive I actually collect MORE of them - my secret horde. While electronic clutter might be more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing, it is still destructive in that we feel the need to hold onto just as much electronic clutter - shifting our mess from one environment to another. AIGGH!

[Dan Keldsen]

Heather - oh I hear you there, and the crash in storage prices certainly doesn't help people to break themselves of a digital hoarding mentality. At least you're not likely to suffer a broken leg from your digital information though... unless there is something incriminating to any mobster friends you might have! ;)

In all seriousness though, we discuss some of these topics in our upcoming Market IQ on Content Security. How do people value content? What is worth securing, or is otherwise "digital cruft?" Stay tuned - shipping in 2 weeks... will post a pointer from here as well.