Cyber Junk

Space Junk is a term used to describe the garbage created during space exploration. This may be parts of broken satellites, a bolt dropped by an astronaut while on a space walk, or entire satellites that have ceased to operate. Most of this stuff will eventually fall back into earth's orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. But what happens to Cyber Junk?

Millions of people are creating their own content on the web through social networks, blogs like this one, and countless other mediums. What happens to all of the stuff we create? How long will articles that I write on Helium.com be active? When will this blog go away?

I started thinking about this when I got to work this morning. I had an e-mail from Plaxo reminding me of a birthday that is coming up. I usually enjoy getting these so I can send a funny e-card to the person celebrating a birthday. Here is the content of this morning's e-mail.

Needless to say, I am extremely aware that my sister would have been 26 on 4/21 of this year had she not died in a car wreck in August of 2006. I contacted Plaxo to find out about getting her account deleted. Their initial response simply suggested that I change my settings to make sure that I would not get anymore alerts from her account. While I agree that this would work, doesn't it seem odd that Plaxo would not want to get an account off their system if the person is no longer with us?