Digital Packrats

meganthom writes "According to the BBC, Britons have been hoarding digital data, with many carrying the equivalent of 10 trucks of paper "weight" with them at all times. A survey by Toshiba found that 60% of Brits keep 1000-2000 music files on their portable electronic devices. Do increases in storage capacity appeal to some basic pack-rat nature?"

Comments

As long as you have the space

[antifoidulus]

and can organize it, why not be a pack rat? The biggest problem is of course organizing all your digital data. I used to just stick all my non-spam email in my inbox, then have to use Mail's search utility to find it, but then I discovered the joys of seperate mailboxes. Same goes with MP3s, as long as you can keep them organized on your portable device, who cares if you have a billion(IP issues aside of course). iTunes was my savior there...

Well, DUH...

[mark-t]

Of course it does!

It's a naturally evolved human characteristic to grow and expand and eventually consume every resource that is available to us. Why should data storage be any different?

Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would people bother going to the trouble of deleting things when they have plenty of extra space.

With things like Google Desktop Search and that other one (whose name I can't remember but has just announced their new version), people don't even have to be organised with their files - they can keep everything they want and find it quickly and easily.

Is it pack-rat nature?

[mopslik]

What a strange and often meaningless article.

60% of Brits keep 1000-2000 music files on their portable electronic devices

Is that really pack-rat nature? Portable music devices are popular because they hold lots of songs, so you don't have to drag around your 500-CD collection. I'd say it's more of a convenience issue than a hoarding issue. A better example of "hoarding" would be those people who download every single NES ROM they find on KaZaA "just to have it". I've talked to regular FPS addicts who have ROMs like "Sesame Street" and "Barbie" burned to their ROM discs for no reason other than to say they have X games.

He worked out that one gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) was the equivalent of a pick-up truck filled with paper.

Does this even make sense to compare music files to a truck full of paper?

Backups for big gig drives...

[Chordonblue]

"Do increases in storage capacity appeal to some basic pack-rat nature?"

Maybe. But I wonder how shocked some of these people will be when their 250 GB HD bites the dust. It was bad enough losing 40+ GB to a head crash but now...!