'The challenge is not how to get at the news, but how to keep the relentless deluge of information at bay'.
BBC Radio 4. 11.55am 17 September 2010.
And the last thing we should be doing with this deluge of information (generated by ourselves and/or others) is to worry about how to store it.
The last thing on Noah's mind was, 'I need to build a dam to store all this rain'. He wanted to save humanity (and all animal kind) from the deluge, so he made a big boat.
We don't need more repositories and storage devices we need boats that can keep us afloat on this digital ocean, rather than being sunk by it.
From Our Own Correspondent. BBC Radio 4. 11.55.52 am
Annual Summit of 150 World Leaders. Special Gathering to look at the state of world poverty. $100b still needed.
Bridget Kendal reflects on where she was on 6th September of the year 2000.
She was at the UN where the UN Secretary opened the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, there were 100 Heads of State, three Crown Princes and getting on for 50 Prime Ministers ... all gathered to consider the challenges of the year ahead.
'I can tell you where journalists like me were', she says, sounding like Joanna Lumely c 1977, 'burrowing through tapes and tangled wires, struggling to find out about speeches being made in the assembly above, at the time the largest gathering of head of states, computer connections not working, no wireless hand-held devices to help you out, it makes you feel quite hot and anxious just to think about it ...
A decade later', says Bridget Kendal, 'covering UN summits is less of a technological battle, the challenge is not how to get at the news, but how to keep the relentless deluge of information at bay.
If you are looking at ways to store 'the deluge of information' you or others are creating, if you horde every picture taken, every word written then you are trying to build a dam.
Like Noah, you need a boat.
An e-boat.