Data is now multiplying faster than we can understand what to do with it. WALRUS has appeared, this thing based on Sui, a decentralized storage for large files, videos, images, everything heavy. Now everything has become more convenient, because you don’t have to trust one big server in someone’s cloud. But you may ask, what worries me the most about such things?" I may be wrong, but it only works under certain conditions that are rarely mentioned.
Data can lie forever. But the people who are supposed to care for it cannot.
They are already talking about 400+ zettabytes of global data by around 2030. And most of it consists of "cold" terabytes: recorded once, opened once every five years, but needs to be kept. Companies are already groaning under storage bills. Magnetic tapes are aging, disks are dying, clouds are getting more expensive. And now there are DNA storage solutions on the horizon where one gram can hold hundreds of petabytes for millennia. Science fiction? Yes. But it is science fiction that is already working in laboratories. This moment is often described differently; in reality, the essence is slightly different.
And here is the question that doesn't let me rest: who will sort all this out later?
Because attention is not elastic. We are already drowning in notifications, feeds, recommendations. Digital fatigue is not just a trendy term. People are turning off notifications, deleting apps, setting "do not disturb" for a month. And in 15-20 years, there will be tens of times more data. Who will review it? Who will decide what is important and what is just digital waste? I don't fully understand if users are ready for such changes.
In medicine - genomes, MRI, medical history. In finance - transactions from years ago. In science - raw data from experiments that no one has processed. All of this needs to be kept "just in case". And "just in case" is expensive. And not just in terms of money.
WALRUS and similar decentralized things promise that data will be always available, without intermediaries. Great. But who will be responsible for making sure they don't turn into an eternal digital graveyard? Who will sit down in twenty years and say: "Let's delete this, because no one needs it, and let's keep this"? Who will even know what is there? It is still hard to say how quickly the market will digest this.
Regulators are trying to squeeze everyone into frameworks - GDPR, data protection laws, fines. But the laws are written by people who themselves can no longer keep up with the volume. And data is growing.
I think the scariest thing is not that something might disappear. The scariest thing is that everything might remain. Forever. And no one will know why it's there. And no one will have the strength, time, or attention to sort it out.
So when someone joyfully says "the data is now eternal", I think to myself and the simple question arises: are you sure that this is good? @Walrus 🦭/acc #walrus $WAL
