<story><title>Remembering a relationship, one chat at a time</title><url>http://www.good.is/post/chat-history/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanielBMarkham</author><text>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 &quot;word processor&quot;&lt;p&gt;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 &quot;life processor&quot; that would collect these traces of our former selves and allow us, after death, to somehow more actively participate than we&apos;ve ever done before.&lt;p&gt;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&apos;re &lt;i&gt;my&lt;/i&gt; thoughts. Shouldn&apos;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>corin_</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Shouldn&apos;t my descendants be able to easily browse and use them?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not so sure... there&apos;s a lot of things I&apos;ve written that, looking back a year or two later, I wish I hadn&apos;t, yet alone other people reading them too.&lt;p&gt;And I&apos;m not talking about the generic big examples that people talk about like &quot;that picture of you on facebook throwing up&quot; or anything, just small things, whether it&apos;s an MSN conversation where I over-reacted and acted like a complete dick, flirting with someone on MSN in what is later obviously a really embarassing way, or that time I told my friend that my mum/child/brother was boring/annoying/whatever me.&lt;p&gt;And of course secrets, whether they&apos;re ones I want to keep from certain people, or something private that I don&apos;t want anyone knowing, but for some reason wrote about in a not-for-public-eyes personal diary sort of way.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know how much there is that I don&apos;t want other people seeing, but I know I&apos;ve seen old stuff I&apos;ve written/said/done/made that I cringe at now, and I&apos;m sure there&apos;s plenty more that I just haven&apos;t noticed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Remembering a relationship, one chat at a time</title><url>http://www.good.is/post/chat-history/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanielBMarkham</author><text>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 &quot;word processor&quot;&lt;p&gt;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 &quot;life processor&quot; that would collect these traces of our former selves and allow us, after death, to somehow more actively participate than we&apos;ve ever done before.&lt;p&gt;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&apos;re &lt;i&gt;my&lt;/i&gt; thoughts. Shouldn&apos;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lylejohnson</author><text>&amp;#62; It seems to me that somebody should invent a &quot;life processor&quot; that would collect these traces of our former selves and allow us, after death, to somehow more actively participate than we&apos;ve ever done before.&lt;p&gt;All I could think after finishing the article was, &quot;I sure hope she has those messages backed up somehow.&quot; Too many horror stories of Google locking up someone&apos;s account with no hope of getting it back. (And yes, that could happen with any service provider, she just happened to mention that she&apos;s using Gmail).</text></comment>