Gigabytes of hard drives kept filling up to the brim. We would stare longingly at movies and music albums we couldn't acquire simply because we ran out of disk space. We spent hours agonizing over what to delete to free up space or figuring out how to compress files more efficiently. Then they introduced cloud storage, which has now become the backbone of most modern services.
At first, we started uploading our personal files to these services. Then media streaming services began sprouting up everywhere. Slowly, we deleted the movies and music we actually owned. We sold our hard drives. We threw away the CD archives we had spent hours burning. And just like that, we became able to access everything from anywhere.
Then AI emerged and rapidly became incredibly capable. At first, we used it just to ask questions and get answers. Then we realized we could generate music and videos with it.
Before long, AI-generated music started flooding streaming platforms. Now, when I search for Guns N' Roses on YouTube to listen to, instead of the original, I get a bunch of AI-generated mixes featuring them and similar genres.
You open something up to listen, and sure, maybe a G'N'R track plays, but it is an AI-remade version. The songs that follow are the same. Yes, the rhythm might be identical, but what I feel is no different than drinking a glass of soda that has gone completely flat.
And I realized that accessing original content is getting harder by the day.
If things keep going this way, reaching original content will soon become nearly impossible. This feels even more alarming when you learn how aggressively AI companies scan and digitize original books, treat their physical forms like squeezed-out orange peels, and then discard or destroy them—making me understand the true value of archiving more than ever.
And today, I feel luckier every single day for still holding onto my MP3 archive.