8 - The Good New Days: Avoiding the Digital Scrapheap

How will Mr. and Ms. Everyman thrive in the year 2062? I've discussed some of the themes they will deal with as second nature in 2062. Here are my answers. If you don't like them make up your own. You'll be living with the results anyway. It's your life.
The first and most important to remember, is that you can't do everything. What you choose to leave out and how you choose what to leave out of your life is as individual as you are. Some people will just do it at random; others will use other people's review to pick and choose with. But at the current growth of information, by 2062, you won't be able to view it in 500 years, much less a lifetime. There will be all sorts of social/cultural implications to that, but that's a different book, one I don't want to write.
The next thing in importance to remember is that, over time, razor blades cost far more than razors. What I mean by that is that the costs of buying information will cost more, in the long haul, that the cost of the hardware to use the information. So controlling costs in buy information is more important than controlling cost in buying the hardware to use the information on, even though the hardware cost much more for a single purchase. Whatever you invest in information, remember to back it up, and put a back up somewhere else rather that the place you use it. That way come fire, flood, wind, or theft, you still have the data you paid for. It becomes the cheapest insurance policy you can have.
Avoid DRM whenever possible. In the long haul, it will go away, because the producers will finally realize that the cost of adding to information exceeds the losses they have from not having it in the first place. But that'll take another decade, or so. But DRM blocks you from backing up your information, making you pay more than once for it. That's a total waste of time and money. 
Despite the razor/razorblade problem, don't be afraid to spend money to spend money in new information. You, too, are a patron of the arts, just the same (if not as much individually) as the Getty Museum. Today needs to be documented every bit as much as yesterday, and it's your dollars that will make it so. And I said buying, not stealing. Creators need to eat just the same as you. However, if an advertiser want to feed the creator, there's nothing wrong with taking the proffered freebie. 
On the other hand, there's a huge free world of information in the public domain. Smile and enjoy it. It is the intellectual patrimony of civilization.
Whatever your choices, you should have that information for your lifetime. And in the Digital World, it won't take a warehouse to store it. Small and cheap, easily transportable and simple to use, you'll live in a world that Kings from the Middle Ages would have drooled over, and abdicated to just be able to live in. A world of endless entertainment, almost free. 

How can you ask for more that that.....