It's okay!! "What are my children or any potential grandchildren […] going to do with the 400 pictures of my pet that are on my phone?" Nothing, they don't nee

It's okay!! "What are my children or any potential grandchildren […] going to do with the 400 pictures of my pet that are on my phone?" Nothing, they don't need it. You sit your grandkid on your lap and look in their eyes and tell them stories about the family dog. They'll be happy to listen, they don't gain much by seeing your 400 photos. I guess it's a natural human impulse to try to leave a mark for the future. But the future will be okay, they don't need our crap data dumps. There's way more useless fluff being generated than what needs to be preserved. People survived when there was no photography. Yes, preserve your wedding photos, a few important life events here and there, that can be fun to look at for your kids. The full camera roll on your phone? Who cares? Let's not burden the coming generations with all this stuff. The future is theirs, not ours. For the few things that you want to preserve, make high quality physical prints. Their huge benefit is that they don't break silently. It's utterly obvious when looking at the physical object that it still "holds your data", as opposed to an HDD, DVD or tape which you need to put in a machine to check if it's still readable, which you won't reliably do. Analog printouts are a very robust preservation format. They can burn, but DVDs and HDDs aren't fireproof either (backup printouts are a solution too). Yes, prints may degrade in color, but it's a transparent process. But overall, forests need to clean themselves by fires, there needs to be a clean slate. I don't want to know who my great-great-grandparents were. I don't want their family photos. Maybe they were bad people, criminals etc. Maybe there was domestic abuse, trauma, tragedy etc. I don't need to know. I want to live my life with the people that are alive in the now. I don't want my ancestors to haunt me from the grave. And I don't want to haunt my descendants.