On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, McFadden, Mike wrote:
> Maybe we should realize that the "unimportant" stuff may really tell
> people in the future a lot about us.
That is exactly the point. I think someone already made the argument that
if we intentionally leave stuff behind for future generations to "know"
about us it may well be biased towards a more "ideal" representation of
who we want to be rather than who we really are.
Or maybe the argument was that if we had a limited amount of space to
archive stuff we would only put into it the more important things, and the
mundane would be left out.
At any rate, the important things of the past are usually what we find
today anyway, since that is what people usually put the most time and
effort into preserving.
If upon everyone's death they took all their personal papers and
photographs and archived them in some place, that would be really useful
to future generations.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 10:49:10 BST