The Dangers of Miniaturization

I've lost it. My flash drive, that is. This is my second flash drive; the first I permanently damaged the tiny little memory of by failing to properly eject it. In my defense, hardly any of my *other* removable USB stuff requires officially "ejecting." So there.

But now, this one has gone missing. Apparently permanently. Perhaps lost in a parking lot somewhere, or in the bowels of my car. I've looked high and low. The good news is that after the previous fiasco, I've learned to back up back up back up.

The bad news? Well, in addition to being out 30-something bucks, I'm wondering if this is such fabulous technology after all, after I've been so gung-ho about it to my classes and colleagues. And what might this mean for the future, as we make other stuff smaller? Will I begin to misplace everything? Or will we just make it all small enough to implant under the skin, so I can't possibly lose it? I'm imagining the inside of my left forearm with a series of devices: storage of digital files, music stuff, satellite receivers... Of course, we'd need "off" switches so's we could get off the grid now and again. Where might we put that....