Cyber Garbage
Cyber Garbage is a term coined by me to indicate the following: “the unnecessary bits/bytes of unwanted information in the form of photos, documents, videos, audios etc. accumulating in the cyber world” exactly the way garbage is accumulating on the earth. We do have mechanisms to dispose the earthly garbage.
Recollect that in the olden days in our villages, the amount of garbage produced was far too less and so the garbage disposal methods were few. Now walk into New York streets during night and get bewildered by the amount of garbage produced, and try to understand the garbage disposal mechanism. These are the statistics of NYC Garbage. DSNY is collecting more than 10,500 tons of residential and institutional garbage and 1,760 tons of recyclables every day on its 6,500+ miles of streets. NYC businesses generate another 9,000 tons of material daily, which is collected by private carting companies.
What is the business proposition in garbage disposal! Just see this, http://nycgarbage.com, nobody can be more fascinated by garbage than this guy, who runs this website. We can talk about the business generated out of cyber garbage removal later, may be some other time.
We are at a stage when the cyber garbage is still minimal. But it is going to be huge soon. I want you to understand the problem in two different ways, one is the primary garbage bits and bytes of info being generated on the cyber clouds, and the secondary garbage is the containers that store the primary garbage.
Primary Cyber Garbage (PCG)
The following are the categories that fall under PCG.
The bits of information that is collected and not used, or will not be used (Unwanted Cyber Garbage Produced – UCG). For example, you have been doing a research paper and have downloaded lots of images and saved them on your system. You use some of them and don’t delete the others nor do you use them ever again.
For Unintentional Cyber Garbage Produced (UGP), consider this example. You are taking photographs and shoot the same object many times, expecting one will be the perfect shot. And you never delete the other ones that you do not want.
Here is a fine example of Uncontrolled Cyber Garbage produced. An image is shared from WhatsApp to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to Pinterest, and to other sources – copies of some books, pictures, etc. lying on many destinations.
Secondary Cyber Garbage
The more the PCG, the more is the SCG. But the SCG problem is easier to solve than the PCG. While the SCG is handled at the physical level, the PCG needs to be handled at a logical level.
What happens to cyber garbage, when it is let go (grow)?
What it means to us and the world. Please go thru the link
http://inhabitat.com/infographic-how-much-energy-does-google-use/, and imagine what it means to generate the cyber garbage. Please also read this https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/technology/google-says-it-will-run-entirely-on-renewable-energy-in-2017.html?mcubz=0, Google consumed as much energy as the city of SFO consumed in 2016.
What can be done?
We need to have purging algorithms for reducing the PCG. It is a problem that can be solved by AI+imaging+BiGData+Analytics. The algorithm shall be proactive than reactive. For example, when I start my phone, some system-prompted action shall take place and say that it is deleting (purging) some of the data on the device, cloud and the accounts connected on the cyber clouds periodically.
Conclusion
Like the www.nycgarbage.com, there may be a business opportunity, but in days to come, this will be a bigger problem than it can be handled. Futran Solutions is working on intelligent-image-compacting algorithm.
