It looks as if our history is disappearing.
Change is inevitable, but I also think we need to document in some fashion the way things are on a daily basis, so that in time, we can look back and see exactly how things have changed.
I think of this as I google my old high school, which was torn down a number of years ago. There are not as many pictures as I would have expected. And those are often poorly documented as to year or the people in them.
In many ways, the internet has become our collective attic, storing memories and photographs. And like many items in the attic, not curated or fully documented. With time, the ability to do that decreases as people pass and memories fade. Over time, names escape us, as do dates and exact details.
Yet, we upload more pictures in a day than were taken in the the previous 50 years. Sadly, we do not often include details - choosing to focus on ambiguous or clever captions. Missing too are the documentary photos of places we used to go - many of which don't exist any more.
At one time, newspapers were the repository of our history, along with the documentation as to date, location and people involved. But, as storage costs rose, and corporate owners cut budgets, many of those resources ceased to exist - either destroyed or donated to another organization - who may or may not have had the time and money to properly store and document what they had, let along try to digitize it so it would be available at a keystroke.
I wonder what future historian will think when they search this time period of lost opportunities and endless selfies.
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