Photographs

  Blogs posts and photographs are important stuff, not just important realtime, but important over time.
  First a story...
  I sold my Berkeley house last year. It's the second time I sold a house. Each time I sell a house I fork off a storage unit. It happened the first time, when I sold the house in Woodside. I was spending $300-plus per month to keep the stuff I hadn't sorted through to figure out what I absolutely had to hold on to.
  The second time, with the help of a friend, I did the sorting-through process, and this storage unit only costs $45 a month. The stuff I absolutely couldn't bear to part with were mostly notebooks and letters and a big box of unsorted photos. In the box, photos of friends and lovers, children and family members, most of whom are long-gone. Even if they aren't gone, our youth is gone. Memories that, even writing about, make me emotional.
  I know I'm supposed to live in the moment, always -- so sue me -- I find it satisfying to remember the people I care about. And the events that were important and the experiences we shared.
  Ask Kodak. They made a huge business out of these emotions. Now it's Canon and Apple.
  That's why I'm willing to put a lot of effort into being sure that my photos and blog posts, the ones on Flickr and here on scripting.com, are safe.
  On the other side, the tech industry, understandably, doesn't place a high value on organizing and preserving my digital past, or yours.
  So there's something we still have to do, something we, as users -- will have to do for ourselves.