5 ms·

> “Every time I look at an old mail, I feel weird, like I prefer the memory I have of a thing than the accurate recording,” he told me. I do have to say when I

by avenoir 10y ago

> “Every time I look at an old mail, I feel weird, like I prefer the memory I have of a thing than the accurate recording,” he told me. I do have to say when I and my ex broke it off, reading that first conversation logged in my Facebook chat between the two of us was a total bitch to swallow. Everything was there. Every single word. Nothing's faded into distant memory. There we were 2 years ago happy that we've met each other. Here we are now - complete strangers to each other. It is definitely a weird feeling.

groby_b 10y ago
It gets weirder as the weight of the past accumulates. There are some bad experiences I have only recorded in analog form. Throwing out that "evidence" was extremely liberating. There are others that exist online, forever. A constant record of horrible experiences, never to be dulled by the fog that's cast over distant memories. As a result, I've pretty much left the online services where these memories are preserved. These days, I write letters. Actual paper. With an enveloped sealed with wax, using a signet ring, because I'm a romantic ;) Pictures I love are printed and hung. It feels more... well, if not human, certainly humane. (I'm still active online. Obviously. Just more judiciously. The more personal it is, the less likely it is online)
- ashark 10y ago
  Digital memories are so nice in many ways (backups so a fire doesn't destroy them, with care they'll more or less never degrade, they take up little space, and so on) but they're also burdensome—they seem to multiply endlessly since storage is dirt cheap and takes little space, so that it becomes difficult to sift through to find what you want, favorites that you look at again and again (as in the case of photos) rarely arise because there are just so many, ensuring it's all backed up, finding a way to make it organized, and doing those things without handing all your data to private spy agencies all take time and ongoing effort. It's difficult even to find time to edit the record so it's manageable—and can you, anyway? Can you delete 95% of the photos of your kids, or that loved one you lost, or whoever? Even if you know the idea of looking through them for pleasure or nostalgia brings on anxiety because there are so many, and you never got around to tagging everyone in them or adding those notes you wanted to, and oh no you've forgotten most of what you were going to write, and so on? Looking at them becomes or reminds one of work and you'd actually enjoy them more if there were far fewer of them, but can you delete them? What about your email archive from 20 years ago? You know there are emails you'd love to read again in there, but now you need to find a program to read the file, and go through deleting the 99% you don't care about at all, and there's still a lot, so now you're going through one-by-one to decide whether "hey, wanna meet for lunch?" from a now-dead loved one is worth keeping. And you've got several "misc/laptop_backup/documents/old_files_from_zip_disks"-type directories to go through one of these days when you find the time (will you, ever?). All this for a bunch of junk that will plummet in value to anyone as soon as you die and have nearly zero value to anyone in the world (except maybe as raw data for some damned machine learning program) at most 150 years from now. And when you die you'll burden your friends and relatives with the same data management mess you've mostly-failed to deal with—on top of their own.
  - gglitch 10y ago
    Yes, this is a problem, and can be significantly generalized. In the information age, one cannot define oneself without deciding what channels/sites/content/streams/data one is not going to try to manage or keep up with.
M_Grey 10y ago
I think it's a strong argument for a kind of "diary" style of record keeping, rather than the highly literal one we use for everything now. It may also go some ways to explaining the success of something like Snap.
rudimental 10y ago
The User Experience of a Heartbreak is an interesting thing to ponder: http://ux3.us/ http://ux3.us/ Article about it: https://www.fastcompany.com/3036536/this-is-the-user-experience-of-a-heartbreak https://www.fastcompany.com/3036536/this-is-the-user-experie...

by avenoir 10y ago

groby_b 10y ago

It gets weirder as the weight of the past accumulates. There are some bad experiences I have only recorded in analog form. Throwing out that "evidence" was extremely liberating. There are others that exist online, forever. A constant record of horrible experiences, never to be dulled by the fog that's cast over distant memories. As a result, I've pretty much left the online services where these memories are preserved. These days, I write letters. Actual paper. With an enveloped sealed with wax, using a signet ring, because I'm a romantic ;) Pictures I love are printed and hung. It feels more... well, if not human, certainly humane. (I'm still active online. Obviously. Just more judiciously. The more personal it is, the less likely it is online)

ashark 10y ago
Digital memories are so nice in many ways (backups so a fire doesn't destroy them, with care they'll more or less never degrade, they take up little space, and so on) but they're also burdensome—they seem to multiply endlessly since storage is dirt cheap and takes little space, so that it becomes difficult to sift through to find what you want, favorites that you look at again and again (as in the case of photos) rarely arise because there are just so many, ensuring it's all backed up, finding a way to make it organized, and doing those things without handing all your data to private spy agencies all take time and ongoing effort. It's difficult even to find time to edit the record so it's manageable—and can you, anyway? Can you delete 95% of the photos of your kids, or that loved one you lost, or whoever? Even if you know the idea of looking through them for pleasure or nostalgia brings on anxiety because there are so many, and you never got around to tagging everyone in them or adding those notes you wanted to, and oh no you've forgotten most of what you were going to write, and so on? Looking at them becomes or reminds one of work and you'd actually enjoy them more if there were far fewer of them, but can you delete them? What about your email archive from 20 years ago? You know there are emails you'd love to read again in there, but now you need to find a program to read the file, and go through deleting the 99% you don't care about at all, and there's still a lot, so now you're going through one-by-one to decide whether "hey, wanna meet for lunch?" from a now-dead loved one is worth keeping. And you've got several "misc/laptop_backup/documents/old_files_from_zip_disks"-type directories to go through one of these days when you find the time (will you, ever?). All this for a bunch of junk that will plummet in value to anyone as soon as you die and have nearly zero value to anyone in the world (except maybe as raw data for some damned machine learning program) at most 150 years from now. And when you die you'll burden your friends and relatives with the same data management mess you've mostly-failed to deal with—on top of their own.
- gglitch 10y ago
  Yes, this is a problem, and can be significantly generalized. In the information age, one cannot define oneself without deciding what channels/sites/content/streams/data one is not going to try to manage or keep up with.

M_Grey 10y ago

I think it's a strong argument for a kind of "diary" style of record keeping, rather than the highly literal one we use for everything now. It may also go some ways to explaining the success of something like Snap.

rudimental 10y ago

The User Experience of a Heartbreak is an interesting thing to ponder: http://ux3.us/ http://ux3.us/ Article about it: https://www.fastcompany.com/3036536/this-is-the-user-experience-of-a-heartbreak https://www.fastcompany.com/3036536/this-is-the-user-experie...