Remembering a relationship, one chat at a time
When I go to write a letter, I use some software that allows me to put together words on a semblance of a page and then print it. The tool is called a "word processor"When we live our lives, we leave all these digital footprints and clues all over the web. It seems to me that somebody should invent a "life processor" that would collect these traces of our former selves and allow us, after death, to somehow more actively participate than we've ever done before.If nothing else, it would be a central repository of things that we left behind -- words, images, songs, memories, etc. Yes, I know GMail and Facebook do some of that, but a lot is in chat, on blogs, in comments (like this one), and spread all over the place. After all, they're my thoughts. Shouldn't my descendants be able to easily browse and use them? I would think that with a bit of computational magic, there could be all sorts of new things coming out of our thoughts after we pass on -- if only there was a central repository of data to start with.I liked this article a lot. It reminded me how important the traces of our digital lives are. Or rather, how important those traces can be.