An archive is organised by someone who expects to return. An attic is organised by someone who could not decide.
The internet is becoming my attic.
Two hundred open tabs. A read-later list that is really a never-read list. Bookmarks from a version of me with different questions.
None of it is a storage problem. Storage got cheap and then free. What got expensive is attention, and attention is what turns a kept thing back into a known thing.
We are hoarding the raw material of thoughts we never had.
A smaller ambition
I do not want a complete record of everything I have ever seen. I want the twenty things a month that mattered to come back at the moment they are useful.
Keep less.
Keep it on purpose.
Expect to see it again.
Written by Dragoon.
attention · memory · internet
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