I spent part of my holidays setting up a new computer for my family. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as turning things on and starting up Migration Assistant.
Among other media, I ended up migrating over 115,000 photos. The record of their kids’ entire lives and beyond. Did I mention that there hadn’t been any backups done in several years? (Long story...)
They got very lucky. The old computer’s power supply died shortly after I’d started working on the upgrade. The computer was too old to repair, but we retrieved the hard drive. It could have been much worse.
I admit that during some of my more stressed and less charitable moments, the thought that it would serve them right if they lost all of it crossed my mind. Still, not being aware of how terrible their digital maintenance is wouldn’t have made the loss any less devastating.
Even once everything was migrated and backed up, I remained cynical. With that many photos, they could probably have lost large swaths of time or events and not even noticed. Did I really need to dig through every folder to ensure the contents were moved over and organized? Of course I did.
Many of us have similarly huge piles of digital stuff documenting our lives and surroundings. How much of it actually matters to us is completely subjective at any given time.
Weirdly, though, not having this digital detritus seems odd or questionable nowadays. Imagine going into witness protection and not having a backlog of social profiles. Who are you? Or googling a prospective date and getting no results. Hrm.
These are questions borne of the digital revolution. When a roll of film only had 24 shots on it and you had to pay to develop all of them, the average person didn’t have “burst mode.” When a video camera was nearly the size of a small car, we didn’t record entire birthday parties, or concerts.
And yet, while we’re left with dusty boxes of slides, albums of yellowing prints, or shelves of VHS tapes (and quite possibly nothing to play them on), which haven’t been looked at in years, heaven forbid we should lose a single one.
My family has more than 5,000 photographic slides, which were hand-dipped by the remediation company to clean and preserve them after our house fire many years ago. I really hope Mom finishes digitizing them, because the odds of me ever doing it are… not great. Nor are the odds of me even keeping all those slides. That said, my parents are still alive.
I recall podcast interviews with people who’ve lost loved ones, and who’ve mentioned that among the most precious things they still have are a few voice recordings. The humble voicemail elevated to the status of sacred relic. Loss colours these things differently.
The contents of our closets and bookshelves are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s also all the media we’ve strewn across our social accounts and uploaded to platforms, both actively used and abandoned.
We produce content endlessly without a thought of doing anything else with it after that. Facebook enables you to download everything from your profile – every photo, comment, and contact. But so what? Why? Are you really going to sit on the couch in your dotage and show your grandkids pictures of lunches you ate decades ago? (Perhaps this may be useful?)
We’re beginning to see issues with successive generations not wanting all the trappings of domesticity that the Baby Boomers and those before them accumulated. I have a feeling that media will be the next unwanted legacy. The “good china” of the future.
Problem is, with media, there are still gems in the piles, and we do want those. It’s just that finding them will be a huge pain in the ass. The only stuff people will want is what features those important to them. Not random beaches or cathedrals or avocado toast.
Aside from Swedish Death Cleaning, for stuff there are already companies that will deal with houses full of unwanted possessions in cases where there is no family, or just no one who wants it or wants to deal with it. At least eradicating hoards of digital media doesn’t send anything to the landfill.
Technology could assist us here. Use robots or other machines to digitize physical media. Increased demand would drive innovation to improve systems and drive down costs.
Software could help determine what’s worth keeping. Check for photo quality or save the best of a range of similar images. Identify and tag recognizable faces of friends and family. Sort different sources or items with poor metadata into proper chronological order. Flag and delete pictures that include people no longer welcome in our lives or memories (or perhaps the risqué content) before family members stumble upon it.
Other media are trickier, though. In the last year I killed off an old WordPress blog and moved away from using Gmail. I could download/migrate the contents of both. Did I have any need for 99.99% of any of it? No. But did I know what I might need/want in the future? Also no.
On a perhaps darker note, our media archives and digital trails can be very useful to others. Just not the folks you might think or, or want to have access. We already know much our data drives the revenue of big tech companies. This information paints an incredibly detailed portrait of who we are, which can be used to sell to and manipulate us.
Law enforcement loves social media, particularly Facebook. It’s a treasure trove of information about suspects and associates… at least for those people who don’t seem to have a basic grasp of privacy settings.
They also use digital forensics in investigations. You don’t even need to have incriminating photos or video anymore. Your smartwatch or automated home assistant can provide plenty of information about where you were or what you were doing.
Ultimately, just creating less of this stuff over time and curating it better would help. So would not recording everything in the first place. I can’t tell photos of European cathedrals apart, but I recall vividly what the Costa Rican rainforest sounds like, how a sunrise over Balinese rice paddies feels on your face, and how a New Zealand ocean breeze smells. I remember who experienced them with me.
The Petition for Presence has the right idea. Just be here.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached @melle or me@melle.ca.
