Second only to "Seven Dirty Words", "A Place For My Stuff" is perhaps comedian George Carlin's most famous comedy routine.

In the early 80's at the dawn of the Reagan era when personal consumption became not only fashionable but patriotic, Carlin satirized our insatiable need for more - as in more "stuff". You know stuff? All that stuff they sell at the mall and WalMart. Clothes, DVDs, CDs, books, containers to put our stuff in leading to bigger houses to put all those plastic tubs of stuff in, etc. etc.

The point holds up today and in fact expands into the virtual world.

Data storage is cheap and plentiful. Everyone from Google to Microsoft wants to store your digital stuff.

In fact it's so cheap and so plentiful, heck why should a business ever destroy anything? Archiving and search has never been easier. Solutions are getting better in that department everyday. Keep it all! Store it all!

We are drowning in data, folks!

And while digital information may be virtual and intangible, the data centers and servers that store it aren't. They take up space (sort of like all those McMansions housing all those plastic tubs of mall stuff) and they eat up precious energy resources.

Something to think about. Go green and conserve. Less stuff, including less data. Put this on your list of "to do's" for the new year: an information audit. What does your business really need to keep and what can it chuck as it goes?

Data storage may be cheap up front. But like everything else, there is a price tag at some point. It won't be so cheap, either.