I think the concept of digital hoarding is very interesting and i would consider myself somewhat involved in this idea. I believe that term to meen one who keeps documents on their computer, that were once important, and refuse to delete them because of the idea that this person 'may need them'. This site i found describes this concept perfectly and this helps to tie into our class discussion last week.
http://www.geeksugar.com/Digital-Hoarding-9793605
Do you think that hoarding is pathological? Other than the fact that it can slow down your computer, is there something wrong here, that is, is hoarding a symptom of something and if so what?
ReplyDeleteI definitely think its pathological. I think it may actually be a form of OCD. I know from personal experience that i hold on to documents that are long in my past i will never need again but when i do decide to clean out my harddrive i do hesitate when i clear out the trash bin. I have never been in a scenario where i wish i had a document that i deleted in the past either but for some reason every time i clean it out i have a hard time.
ReplyDeleteI think that people who hoard documents probably also do the same thing with school assignments that are written and also probably hoard music as well. I had at one point on my old computer over 4,000 songs and one day when i was switching my music to my new computer i decided to check the play count of the songs in my itunes inventory and it showed me that there were about 800-1,000 songs that i have listened to completely 0-5 times. Why did i hold on to those songs? I think the document hoarding, old homework hoarding, and music hoarding all correlate through he fact that they are pathological.
You may be right. What do you think the nature of the pathology is? In other words, what do you think the underlying cause or sickness could be? My best guess would involve whatever being, that is, a fluid and fragile self-identity that a person tries to support by holding onto things that could give it weight or meaning. So a person wouldn't throw things out because he or she wouldn't be sure yet who he or she is. He/she would be afraid of negating something and thereby overly determining (through negation) an identity that is still developing. For example, one doesn't particularly like country music but one doesn't want to delete any country music because one isn't sure that one will remain someone who doesn't like country music.
ReplyDeleteBut this may not apply to stuff like homework. What do you think?
I never really thought about the idea of a fragile self-identity, but i think it definitely plays a big role now that you mention it. The country music example applies to this as well for another personal example. Although a few Garth brooks songs doesn't play a significant role in my life, part of my self-identity that i try to possess, due to conscious or uncurious reasons, is that i like to make people happy. I may never listen to these few songs but many of my friends enjoy Garth Brooks's music i feel that if i erase it because "I" dont like it, it is almost selfish. If the situation occurred where a friend would like to listen and i dont have it because i erased it for a personal reason, it would ultimately backfire in goal of being able to make others happy.
ReplyDeleteIm pretty sure if this happened in real life we would just youtube the song, but this example could easily translated to a greater scale.