new win32

my computer got a virus today... it started acting funny and then just progressively got worse from there, now I can't even log in to windows...

normally, I'm pretty apathetic about things. I accept consequences fairly readily (unless they're consequences against my character) and just shrug and move on. It's not the best way of dealing with things (one should not be so completely uncaring about things) but it is a way that has worked for me for a while... today, I can't be so accepting... all of the digital files of all of the images I took my first few quarters at SCAD are on that computer, I would lose almost a year's worth of work... but more importantly than that, I risk losing journal entries that I wrote almost every day for a few months shortly after restarting my life... those entries are what I am having the most difficulty accepting the loss of... oddly enough...

but aside from that... the potential loss of these files reminds me that in today's digital age, a lot is stored on our computers. nowadays, it wouldn't be surprising to hear that one's entire life is stored on several discs or jump drives or on their computer... digital cameras create digital files which are then posted to websites and blogs, facebook and flikr... rarely do these things ever see the physicality of paper (maybe this is untrue, but in my personal environment of friends and colleagues I have yet to see a majority of family snapshots and the like make it from a memory card to print) and I have to wonder... when we're gone, (we of the digital age where the printed photograph and handwritten letter are swiftly becoming novel things of the past), when our facebooks are long since forgotten and other social networks have taken over, when our passwords and logins are no longer remembered or even thought about, what will be left for our grandchildren to discover? what memories will we leave behind for them? gone will be the days of discovering old love letters hidden in a trunk in the attic, gone will be the days of looking thru cracking albums with older members of the family and marveling at the good old days... what will we have left to leave?

I miss the physicality... not just because of what I may be losing now, but because nothing in the digital age seems as permanent... files corrupt, images lose their quality, items are deleted, passwords forgotten and whole pieces of our lives are lost... vanished without a trace... what will become of our memories? what will be our cracking old album to our grandchildren? will we have such a thing? or will our grandchildren simply have a different concept of who we once were?

what will happen to the words I post on this blog when I am no longer here or no longer keep up with it?

does it matter?

am I overthinking the need for memories? for the passing down of identity from one generation to the next? am I over valuing the experience of being able to read old letters and look through old albums? will the children of tomorrow care?

I went to a flea market recently where a vendor was selling old photographs of random strangers... family portraits and snapshots taken so long ago, no longer in the hands of those that would know the meaning behind them or the memories attached to them. In one, a young man holds up a prize fish... dogs sit in the backyard... a pre-teen girl poses awkwardly in a child's dress caught in that middle ground of not being a child, yet not being an adult... their stories lost, the memories no longer matter, the snapshots have become more of an antique novelty than a piece of family history and memories... what happens when these too are gone? what will be the "vintage photograph" of the future?



I hold on to so many things - receipts, rocks, random pieces of paper and other objects... and when it comes time to clean my room I always have such a hard time getting rid of these things I have no place for and yet can't seem to part with. Each item holds a memory for me, a story about a moment in my life and I feel like each time I dispose of this thing, this trigger, I am throwing away the possibility of ever remembering that time in my life again. The memory will fade back as it always does and without that small object to serve as a reminder, I lose it...

I am okay with fading away... all of us do eventually... but I want to be able to leave something behind for my children and my children's children to hold and to look back on... some piece of me to pass on as my grandparents did... my children and my children's children will not be able to connect with my grandparents as I have, but the items they left and the memories held within each snapshot have held an important role in who I am and I want my children and grandchildren to be able to say the same... but I'm not quite sure how to make that possible...