The camera is a metaphor

A digital SLR camera has an important difference from a traditional SLR: the film that moves along after it is exposed in a traditional SLR has been replaced by a sensor that stays in place. This means that dust can become a bigger and bigger problem in a digital SLR, because it continues to accumulate on the sensor over time rather than moving along as the film in a traditional SLR advances. I ran into this with my new camera, and settled on an affordable cleaning kit from Copper Hill Images. You take off the lens (which you can do with an SLR, unlike with a compact digital camera), lock the shutter open so the sensor is exposed, and swab the dust off the sensor using a soft pad on a stick and a drop of the right sort of cleaning solution.

Does a similar kit exist for cleaning the digital records of our lives? Dust and detritus no longer cling to a single frame of film or a single commercial relationship. The permanent record that schoolchildren fear has become a capricious reality for adults. Credit records, medical histories, spending habits, blog posts and criminal records, calling patterns and e-mail traffic, insurance claims and travel patterns, all mixed into a real witches' brew of error-ridden databases where negative information piles higher and higher with no natural expiration date. I wonder how many people we will be shunning in 10 years, or 20, as the dust accumulates.