Digital Collections: The New Obsession

Some people collect rocks. Some people collect stamps. Some people collect Barbie dolls or photographs or action figures. For some, the art of collecting is an unimportant hobby. For others, it's an obsession, one that requires an insane attention to detail, inhuman knowledge of the subject in question, and vast amounts of time with which to scavenge, research, organize, catalog, and preserve. But when you're done, you have a nice collection of something.

Where mere collecting crosses the line into the territory of obsession, healthy or otherwise, is up for debate. What about when the thing you're collecting is intangible? In today's world of high-speed and high-tech, some of the most important things to anyone are intangible packets of data stored on machines and flying around the world through wire and through the air. In some cases, these untouchable bits and bytes are the object of obsession for collectors.

For instance, with the advent of affordable digital cameras, amateur photographers and collectors of photographs began storing their collections on disks or on their home computers. This, at least, is a hobby progression that makes sense. As photography in general switches over to digital means, it stands to reason that storage methods for photographs would follow. Most professional photo studios today will give each customer a CD with some or all of their pictures on it. (But you still have to wait a few weeks for the prints.)

The next step in digital collection is collecting pictures that you have neither taken nor paid for. Some people collect copies of pictures from the Internet. Comics, funny pictures, and beautiful landscapes are a few examples. They're not technically your pictures, and since you probably had to copy them from a webpage, the resolution will be too low to print them out. So they stay on your computer. Or in your email inbox, if they came as part of a chain message. Many of them do. Some people save these pictures, or emails, and never think about them again. Others categorize them and store backup copies on properly labeled disks. Whether that's obsessive or not is a matter of opinion.

Other types of files are sometimes collected in the same way - anecdotes, news reports, financial documents, e-books, wallpapers and screensavers, and so on. For computer gamers, there's very little data that's more important than that special weapon upgrade that took 78 hours of leveling to achieve. Then there are sites like Neopets and GaiaOnline that encourage users to collect pixelated items for their virtual pets or avatars, things that have no real value and yet take on a value of their own by virtue of being collectible. No matter what it is, it's all one quick hard-disk wipe away from oblivion, whether that's your hard-drive or the servers at the individual companies. One could argue that actual photographs and other collectibles are one house fire away from nonexistence, but at least you can hold that ceramic lighthouse in your hand before it all goes up in flames.

That's not to say that computer data is unimportant or worthless, far from it. Universities and hospitals store important information on computers now. All of those personal financial documents you have are certainly important. And any collection, no matter how silly it may seem to someone else, is important as long as it gives joy to the collector. Like anything in life, collections must be kept in perspective. It's not worth your life to run back into that burning building for that shoebox full of baseball cards. And it's not worth having a heart attack over the system crash that deleted your game and the ultimate weapon upgrade that you worked so hard for. Whether you pieced the pixels together yourself or paid for the privilege of putting a new item in your items list, you should be careful not to let a bit of healthy obsession turn into something more unhealthy.

I'm not being judgmental, by any means. I collect pixels and virtual items and pictures as much as any Internet junkie does. I'm just doling out some helpful advice that I intend to follow myself. It's important to keep things in perspective. In the meantime, I'll add this article to my collection.