Another thought came to me was that we have all this vibe coded software in the worst of examples where the viber — or whatever you call the person who is creating the thing — has no idea what nuances exist as the software integrates with third-party interfaces, APIs, MPCs, or whatever the heck. And when those introduce deprecations or breaking changes, no one will have any idea what happened, particularly as you imagine that vibe coders are not watching these things or subscribed to notifications of this sort at all. So then you have the need for the equivalent of a plumber come around and figure out why your toilet's clogged up, noticing entire tree trunks have found their way into the plumbing and has to rip it all apart. Or somethign.

The idea that we may have these manufactured-to-order or off-the-shelf digital twins that contain an enormous amount of experience data, knowledge, secrets and such — very much like our digital devices do today — raises the intriguing question: what happens when we want to move on to the next model, or the next edition, or some fancy new digital twin service provider comes along. Or, the service that managed the current digital twin goes out of business, or the service is no longer available. Or, the digital twin is compromised in some way. Or, we just want to get rid of it. Or, we want to upgrade to a new model. Or, we want to change our mind about the whole thing. Or, we just want to stop using it. Or, we want to sell it. Or, we want to give it away. Or, we want to donate it. Or, we want to recycle it. Or, we want to throw it away. Or, we want to do something else with it.

Now what?

Like the processes — both formal and informal — by which we destroy or make inoperable things like old laptops (I just keep all my old ones..they'll be good for something) or drill through old hard drives (I just keep all my old ones..you never know when you want to find an old something-or-another that never made it to the cloud.) Here's where the decomissioning service comes in. A kind of service bureau — perhaps roaming around in a mobile truck; perhaps a municipal service like a recycling center — that manages the breakdown of the data structures, the data sets, the data flows, the weights, the past experiences, etc.

At the same time, I can imagine the black market for this data, just as our leaked data makes it into weird dark nets today. Perhaps the first cases of identity theft of this sort will be the result of digital twin data that wasn't properly decomissioned or mutilated. In which case, we start appearing as facsimiles of ourselves doing all kinds of ruination.