The internet is running out of space!

"Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7103426.stm

I can't stop thinking about this study that reports that the internet could run out of bandwidth by 2010, and wonder how we -- internet users, content creators, and/or librarians -- could help solve this problem. Digital information is "invisible," or so it seems... You upload to the internet and its physically away from you -- Yet accessible as need be. But how much stuff on the internet is junk? I know that I personally have all the images and pages from my old website still hanging out on an FTP site somewhere -- And those images were probably unnecessarily large, as that was before I know anything about correct imaging for projects and webpages. If everyone just cleaned out their Flickr accounts, or deleted old webpages, could we then get another year or two out of the internet at its current capacity? By realizing that data truly are physical objects, perhaps we feel a greater sense of responsibility to the upkeep and care.

Its physics, its kind of string theory, I know, but as I sit here right now I am surrounded by the internet. I can't see it or feel it, but its here, physical, voluminous and completely disorganized. A Tech Director at a former job of mine always wanted to take a filing cabinet, cram if full of paper in dissarray, with materials falling out of it and jammed into the drawers. "This is what the server actually looks like," would be the message. I am sure that the same analogy would apply to the internet.