I grew up during a pretty big technology transition so I have old artifacts, old letters,mix tapes, VHS tapes that physically exist with me stored away in boxes left to be occasionally sorted and viewed providing a nostalgic comfort when seen. But how will my digital artifacts hold up 30 years from now?
When emails first started I used to print friends emails out and save them in a folder mixed with other precious hand written letters but of course this stopped. Life sped up and I couldn't keep up with all the memory hoarding. Now social media seems to do a job sorting this for us but at what cost to our memories?
For instance will a site we invest so much of our memories fold or get sold and all our memories get shut down... digital artifacts are tricky ...like all my so called important files at a time held on syquests or Zip disks are gone now lost in a techno void. You can archive them back them up but they feel so different than a physical item you can sort through and ponder or hold. They feel far more fragile and quickly outdated and unusable. We get locked out of our own past.
Memories seem like they can much more easily vaporize and get lost in dead urls, deleted profiles sold off sites - all ghosts in the wires. I have already lost digital artifacts on a dying computer, a sold off web company shut down etc. I think much like a motor the more we speed it up the closer we come to burn out. Convenience of communication has made us at times feel like ghosts with dropped calls and missed texts and no reception left in a filter bubble hidden, ignored ,unfriended or simply deactivated or shutdown.
I just wonder how our memory will exist as digital artifacts in the future if they will be obsolete or held hostage by some corporate entity...what will be left? I am still opting for old fashion physical memories mixed in for good measure. ;) I think about this because I feel the importance of memory provides comfort to us as we navigate through life but in this increasingly virtual landscape will they be there to recall when we might need the comfort?
End transmission.
till next time keep dreaming yourself awake,
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