The 2015 television series Mr. Robot features one of many scenes where the protagonist, Elliot, completely wipes his devices (‘eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg’; Season 1, Episode 2):
This scene is appealing for several reasons.
In the first instance, as with the rest of the show, it focusses on producing an accurate representation of what such a process would look like in real life.
More broadly though, there is something inherently refreshing about the concept of this hard reset, alongside the reassuring knowledge that it’s possible to restore the digital environment required; things that weren’t important enough to remember aren’t restored, for example, which feels much cleaner than the common approach of having a monolithic digital setup that is copied verbatim between devices (likely facilitated by a paid third-party). Although the character of Elliot would likely restore his environment purely from memory, for me support is needed to achieve this clean-but-restorable setup, in the form of infrastructure as code (IaC).