TTL Poll: Deleting Posts/Comments

Right now everything on the website is permanent. You cannot delete your profile, your posts, or your comments. I'm sure this has been noticed by you all. You might have wondered my motivations for this:

Did he forget about it?
Is it too advanced for him?
Does he not feel like it?

As evidenced by the existence of this post, no, I did not forget about. As for it being too advanced for me, I can assure you it is not as I am the most skilled programmer on the planet (do you not see this website?). Do I feel like it? I don't know... let's talk about it.

My sister sent me a link to the Nine Dots Prize which offers a $100,000 award as well as a book deal for the best response to the question: ‘Is data failing us?’. I've been thinking about this question since and about what it is really asking.

Is Big Data failing us? Yes. Next question.

Whenever I was running Linux as my sole operating system I formed an interesting relationship with my personal data, one both intimate and detached. This was due to the fact that I regularly had to do full reinstalls to fix whatever thing I had messed up that week (use a virtual environment if you are programming in Python... trust me). I was routinely losing everything, but I was okay with it. I knew what I was losing and time and time again I chose to let it go. Anybody that has heard me talk about a computer has heard about my relationship with my personal data. Here are some quotes of mine on the topic:

"everytime my computer dies i lose all my data" 2:37 PM · Oct 27, 2023
"you guys are too attached to your data... my computer regularly has full malfunctions idec" 4:27 PM · Feb 20, 2023

Here's the question I have been asking myself these days, was my data failing me or was I failing my data. Could this come down to how we choose to view our data? Is our data our children or our trash? I think it is something between this; An extension of ourselves.

Heidegger uses the term readiness-to-hand [Zuhandenheit] to talk about tools/technology. Readiness-to-hand refers to "the kind of Being which equipment possess—in which it manifests itself in its own right" (Being and Time I.3.15). We cannot grasp anything ready-to-hand by simply looking at the object, but we must use it: "The hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' of the hammer" (Being and Time I.3.15).

When viewing technology through this lens of functionality, the question presents itself of what happens when it breaks? Heidegger introduces the term conspicuous to describe the state of the object following unusability (Being and Time I.3.16). When an object becomes conspicuous, the characteristics of what Heidegger calls presence-at-hand are "brought to the fore" (Being and Time I.3.16).

What happens then when we look at data through this perspective? If anybody knows about unusable, dysfunctional, conspicuous data it's me. So what has been "brought to fore" upon these instances where I lost all my data? What was I left looking at? The broken hammer is a stick and a rock, what is the broken data?

When the data is functioning one could view it as an extension of the hippocampus or whatever part of the brain scientists say holds memories. I don't see it this way. When i want to remember something i remember it, when I want to keep a file on the computer I keep a file on the computer. When the data breaks what does it become? Depending on the case it can become corrupt, inaccessible, or just outright vanish. Is it worth distinguishing between these cases? Probably but I don't feel like it.

When data is working it doesn't mean that it is good. It doesn't mean that it is insightful, thoughtful, useful, useless, negative, bad, stupid, whatever. It simply means that it is there and it is mine. When it is broken it is either not there or not mine.

All those times I lost my data, I was leaving my shoes out in the rain. The only reason it was not mine was because I let it go. Who is to say I ever even saw my data break? I didn't break my hammer, I sold it. Insert more mixed metaphors here.

Should I have let my data go? Should I let you all let your data go? What will happen if we keep it long enough to see what happens when it neither ceases to be there or ceases to belong to us? What will we see then?

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With all this said do you guys want to be able to delete your TTL blog posts and comments