Shattered Glass and Digital Information

I recently knocked down a glass picture frame, and accordingly the glass in the frame shattered and spilled everywhere on the floor. Outside of disappointment about the picture and frame, the clean up was tedious. Glass shatters in a wildly unpredictable pattern without any respect for the human capability to find each piece of glass. At first the going is easy, one picks up the biggest shards of glass and throws them away, but at some point you find yourself on the floor straining your eyes to see the small, small shards of glass that you missed previously. Inevitably you find a few slivers of glass, sometimes the hard way when they cut you, and this only leads you to question yourself, "have I found them all," "did I miss one," "will I ever find all of the pieces?"

I suppose this is why the shattering of glass is such a frequently invoked metaphor during life crises. There come those times in life when the rule book of daily living is thrown out, and we find ourselves facing what we had never really anticipated, and accordingly we find aspects of our lives strewn about amidst places and people in ways that shock, horrify, shame, and anger us. In the end we are left wondering, can I ever account for all the pieces and put them together again?

It strikes me that digital information is also a bit like glass, and accordingly when it is mismanaged it has the characteristic quality of shattering and dispersing in ways that make it difficult to put together again. Though many of us put an abundant information on the Internet, we still do so with certain expectations that it will not be used in ways that hurt us. In this manner, while we do not maintain an expansive zone of privacy, we nonetheless maintain a standard of confidentiality. This standard of confidentiality implies a degree of trust for those we invite to know aspects of ourselves. When this trust is violated, and aspects of our digital identities are exploited, stolen, slandered, or otherwise maimed in significant ways, we find ourselves forced to pick up the pieces. But pulling together all of the bits and bytes of information about ourselves that may be strewn about on websites, blogs, twitter, or other applications, is as difficult as finding those small, small slivers of glass that we strain our eyes to see when picking up shattered glass. In the end, we are left wondering, can I ever find all all the pieces to put back together again?

I think the metaphor works, but it does strike me that digital information can sometimes be even more difficult to work with then shards of glass. For instance, data can be quickly replicated and shared in ways that finite glass cannot. Additionally, digital information often has an inscrutable character to the typical web consumer, that is, it exists on multiple levels of digital existence (one that is apparent to the public, and another that involves the underlying code and the world of programmers). Similarly, digital data is constantly being archived, backed up, and funneled into every corner of the Internet and computer world, and thus quickly extends beyond the finite control of the finite web user located here and now.