Tangential but I was thinking recently how odd it is that nothing digital decays.

(Catastrophic loss aside, but that's not the same. It goes from pristine to gone in an instant.)

You open a file from decades ago and it's rendered exactly the same as something from this morning. There's no indication of staleness.

There's no natural pruning or decay. The whole thing begets endless hoarding.

In physical systems there's a natural friction, and it takes time/space/Energy to keep stuff. With digital it's the reverse.

My contacts list is 99% crap, half of it from decades ago.

90% is people I met once (e.g. to buy/sell something), then never again.

I've been wondering if every digital bit of info should have an expiration date. At which point it asks "is this still relevant?" and if not, self destructs.

Or at least renders old stuff as progressively more gross, inviting me to clean / remove it.