What important stuff are we NOT recording in the present day?
Asked by
albert_e (
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December 10th, 2010
In many fields, we sometimes feel that our ancestors have not left a very good record of their activities, history, sciences, etc. to help us get a complete picture.
I wonder what kind of measurements / records that are possible with our present day technology, are we NOT recording today—because we don’t YET realize they could be very valuable in the future?
This question also applies at a personal level—what kind of memorabilia / notes would our next generations, or we ourselves in our older age relish?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts…
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8 Answers
Great question! For me, personally, I don’t take enough pictures. The ones I do take mostly exist in electronic form, with no notations. Not exactly ideal for future generations. I really should do something about that…
I don’t think there’s much information like that.
What comes to my mind is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, other wikis for everything, personal web pages… We keep records of next to everything these days. Including whole libraries’ worth of data nobody is ever going to give a flying duck about again.
In this age, I’d expect that the only things not recorded are things nobody knows and things that are deliberately kept secret.
And maybe things only very few people know, if those people don’t take notes.
I think that people do not record their true thoughts enough. There is nothing like the diaries of ages past.
There is way too much data about all of us. From utility bills to tax records to credit card records to photos, video, music. There is more than enough information. Someone who wanted to learn about your life could spend their own lifetime doing so.
And now, all the new information is being recorded digitally, so you no longer need huge file cabinets to keep it.
What I think might be left out are real life conversations between people. The conversations where they talk about substantial topics—unless it is videotaped, I think they get lost. I think those conversations could be quite interesting. Other than that, I can’t think of anything that isn’t already over covered. I wonder how many pictures of the White House there are.
I’m a bit obsessed with recording things actually… I will have to give this some more thought… I know that I should record the things my son says to me more often than I do…
I think there is a danger that we may be saving data that may not be retrievable. We keep changing the way that we format data and we have to make sure to save the way of reading the data along with the data.
I don’t record enough of my friends’ words – some day very soon in the near future, they’re going to change the world, I just know it.
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