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I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who keeps all that stuff. A few months ago I went back through some old chat logs to find the first time that I chatt
by stevenp 15y ago
I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who keeps all that stuff. A few months ago I went back through some old chat logs to find the first time that I chatted with my best friend, and it was a lot of fun to relive that part of my life.
I think people don't realize that the volume of digital artifacts we're creating is going to be staggering when we look back at them a century from now. That's one of the reasons I like to check in places. I imagine what it would have been like if my grandfather had traveled the world with Foursquare in the 1930s -- maybe I'd be able to visit the pubs where he drank in Copenhagen, or the port he arrived at when he met my grandmother in Glasgow.
My life might not be that exciting, but I'm definitely leaving a trail behind. My grandchildren will wonder why I checked in so much at the Palo Alto Creamery. :)
- mistermustard 15y agoIt's strange (interesting?) how an online presence preserves a person beyond death. When someone passes on, their Facebook wall becomes both a snapshot of what they were last doing and an impromptu digital memorial as people leave their condolences. Somber, but thought-provoking.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThe trouble with saving all your chats is the sheer volume! I used to keep all my text messages, and log all my IM conversations. Until I realized I had 2,000 text messages on my phone, mostly worthless out of context, and megabytes and megabytes of IM chats. Unless you triage your conversations regularly, logging everything just results in a gigantic mess you will never revisit due to the stunning volume of your archives.
- gerggerg 15y agoWhat about search?
- eru 15y agoEspecially with search engines becoming better and better.
- clistctrl 15y agoThe thing is, while it is a lot of data in the grand scheme of things it is a fairly trivial amount of data. Terrabye hard drives can be had for less than $100 today.
- sliverstorm 15y agoOf course, I don't mean to say it is a difficult amount of data to store.
- kennymeyers 15y agoI think people underestimate the value of this material being stored in a searchable, historical database. Whether it's Gmail, Facebook or some other service, it's subsequently one of the best and scariest aspects of all these services. It can lead to horror stories, but it can also lead to automated memories and materials such as the above. What an interesting world we live in.
- clistctrl 15y agoIt's fun to think that while foursquare may seem fairly trivial today, 100 years from now, it's historical record.
- Splines 15y agoThis is where I see value in color.com (seeing photos of the past at your current location), but it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem.