More than infinite?

Infinity is a word that implies no limit. "Unbounded time, distance or quantity."
Here's the symbol for it - looks a bit like a sideways 8:   ∞

I use the word infinity today to refer to the amount of data that we are collecting and creating on our personal computers. Lots of it is original material, but the original content is nothing relative to the copies of files that proliferate all over the web.

For example, I spent much of the data sorting, comparing, renaming and organizing photos I have taken over the past 15 years. In total, I had about 50,000 jpg images when I started, and just over 30,000 when I finished. I erased more than 60 gigabytes of data, much of it due to duplicate files that I myself have knowingly or inadvertently created.

How many duplicate files do you have on your computer(s)? Do you know?

On the Mac I have at home, I found some new features (to me) in the Finder called

• Search For All Images = 130,119 images 
• Search for All Movies = 256 items
• Search for All Music = 1456 items

This is on a computer that's rarely used! But it does hold several copies of each of my photos. When I checked our family laptop, I found:

• Search For All Images = 30,790 images 
• Search for All Movies = 96 items
• Search for All Music = 7508 items

I was astonished. Where are they all? Where did all the music come from? I guess from my many many CDs because I haven't purchased or downloaded more than a few dozen music files.

Is my collection large? I think not. After a bit of searching I found a guy who claimed to have 1.3 million images, managed with Picasa on his local machine.

Sheesh! I've hardly got anything by comparison ... and how many are duplicates? I don't know. But I will try to find out. In the meantime, here's an infinity pool, so-called because you can't see a limit or edge to where it ends...