I have recently experienced a death in the family, which has started me wondering about how our digital persona’s will live on.
I personally spend alot of time on the internet, a couple of hours a day at least. Spending my time reading email and rss, writing a blog entry (ocasionally 
), particiapating in online discussion (Stack Overflow at the moment), buying stuff, reasearching stuff. There is just soo many things that I rely on the internet for.
But at what point do these things dissapear, with the cheapness of media maybe what we create will exisit on forever. This webpage may not as hosts come and go like my first provider, but you can still see entries from there, not very pretty ones, with the internet archive.
It just goes to show that there really isn’t anyone who produces on the internet will ever trully die and therefore no one should be lost to history no matter how small your percived contribution was.
Just makes you think doesn’t it.
Certainly interesting to think about the implications of our digital lives. If you don’t know about it already, read about the mylifebits project at Microsoft. I think the more important question is — what legacy do you want to leave for the next generation, and how are you going to proactively communicate that to them? How are future generations going to get to know you as a person? Do you want a machine to do it? That’s why we created http://www.famento.com, it’s a place for you to record and share your life stories.
December 12, 2008 @ 1:15 pm