Digital ephemera is impossible. Every note, every draft, every email and text and message is saved without me knowing it, waiting to be recalled at the darkest hour.
Even itunes records the last time i listened to a song. One year ago today i was listening to (smog). How is it helpful to know this? How can it do anything but root me in a past that should only be meaningful as a prefixed segment of a narrative called MY LIFE NOW?
What will it mean in 25 years when i can still recall, at the slightest touch, every single word of contact i ever made via the internet? And because this is the norm - because it is erasure instead of saving that requires action - what would it say about me if i 'chose' to forget? The internet has in every way flipped the natural meaning and value of saving.
And i am scared.
Near the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa oasis. (because every post deserves a picture.)
2 comments:
eh, i don't think saving everything is exactly the same as remembering everything. if you don't remember an email you wrote two years ago, then you're not going to go looking for it in your archives.
true, this body of info allows you to go browsing through different periods of your life. but i wouldn't say that that impulse (that is, wanting to be reminded about the details of the past) is any different than the one that drives you to keep a journal...or to keep endless scraps of paper and become a king for it.
you want to remember stuff the way it happened.
it's the same thing, just more of it. and now it's about everyone.
you really don't like change do you?
lol,
or maybe this guy and his film from 8 years ago sees it how it really is
http://vimeo.com/457221
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