Remembrance ... in The Future

[chuckles]

Had a deep and ponderous moment....

How will our present be remembered in the Future? With the commemorations of WW1's centenary events I've been completely moved and taken up with whole historical experience and what is owed to these gallant people. That got me thinking ... what in the future?

Lots of memories have been dragged out of Great Aunty Maude's boxes from under beds, sheds and discovered in attics. My photographer wife and I have 10s of thousands of photographs stored away electronically but have very few 'paper' photos. Then, all our communications are locked away in emails, websites, Fora, etc - all secured behind passwords. We have very few 'written' communications between us

So, here's the real question. How will our relatives be able to get to our rich memories and life stories after we've shaken off this mortal coil?

 

[Flightphoto]

They won't - my argument this year after a close friend died, he was 29, had an on the spot heart attack and died, he only ever held photos on hard drives, but the trouble came to light when his widow sold off all his computer equipment and stock (he ran an IT shop) and we all found that we had no paper photos and trust him to look after them, in other words, the photos died with him

All we now have is a few photos from his Facebook account (which is still running)

 

[Flightphoto]

It turned out that she sold all his stuff and did a runner, leaving no record of who he was
Memories are there, but they fade

 

[chuckles]

It turned out that she sold all his stuff and did a runner, leaving no record of who he was
Memories are there, but they fade

Indeed... it seems after 4000 years of having some sort of written record left for posterity the last 2 decades could be lost forever by some electro-magnetic pulse!

 

[gumbo-67]

Would be writing a will and leaving a hard drive with all this info for loved ones and in the will give the passwords in a sealed letter with the will held by the bank or something?

 

[Yv]

one of the things I have promised myself I am going to do, probably over Christmas, is go through all my drives and get a massive order placed for prints. All will be snaps, all of family, friends, pets, etc, and all will be put, in a very old fashioned way into those multi picture albums. As a photographer, one thing I rarely do is get my own pictures printed and this was brought home recently by 2 events. One was raising money for charity by selling a print of the tower poppies, I actually bought my own framed copy too and realised how infrequently I do this unless its for commercial purposes [using as a sample]. The other was showing the mum of one of this years brides a photobook of my holiday snaps from last year. I bought it to see what the quality was like of this particular product so used my holiday pictures as an excuse - when she was asking about books as opposed to albums, I explained that this was actually a very good one, but she would have to see my holiday photos, not wedding pictures. As we sat on her sofa looking through them, she was saying that whilst she appreciates modern digital images, she still wants most of her photos as prints and showed me a shelf full of albums/books of family photos. It brought home something I knew anyway, so yes, I agree, having those memories in something more than digital format is important. The digital format does mean you have backups in a way we couldn't have done so easily in the past, but we should all take whatever steps are necessary to retain those memories and stories for future generations too.

 

[Nod]

I'm a printer rather than a screen viewer so have most of my best shots printed (and plenty of my snaps too!) I also tend to write letters if something's important - a signed for letter is harder to deny receipt of than an e-mail.