Week 4-MBA 6101- Digital Dark Ages

Digital Dark Ages

This post is reviewing and commentating on the article Let's Avoid the Digital Dark Ages, with Non-Toxic social media by Dr. Todd Kelsey.  The Dark Ages were a period of time where little cultural and intellectual advancement was made. While today that is far from true, there is a fear that all the data and advancement that we have made as a society will not be stored properly. Thus, we are losing all the information and insight that we have worked so hard to gain over the last few decades. Personally, majority of us have information on smartphones and social media that are forgotten about. This data will be unsaved if a phone is not transferred or if the social media account is deactivated. I unfortunately have to delete photos on my iPhone when I don't have enough room to store them, causing a loss of data as well as memories. 

Social media has turned from a great tool to reach out to new and old friends to a marketing powerhouse where users are inedited with ads, toxic algorithms and media driven perceptions. While a lot of the data is on social media, there are ways to keep information in a healthy manner that will keep us out of a digital dark age. One of these ways is data vellum, which is continuously keeping data, even if the physical hardware is no longer available. This would save all the photos that I used in my example above.

Another way to manage data is data archeology which is the preservation of data. This would be similar to a library, where all my information and data is stored for future use. The last way to manage data is not utilizing toxic social media which uses algorithms and AI to market to users. 

I agree with the comments that Dr Kelsey made. It is important for businesses, societies and individuals to have a save space to keep their data to be used for future use. For me, I upload my photos to my computer once a month or so, but I should upload it to a personal cloud. That way, if my computer dies, I can still access my photos.