A lot has been said (including here) about all we're gaining from the technological revolution in communications. But we're losing something, too, which is epitomized by Snapchat:
So one of the top ten apps in the world, Snapchat, has taken over all phones. The one app that gives you the opportunity to take a photo or video and send it to your friends for up to ten seconds and then POOF, it’s gone for good. Now, stepping it up a notch they created a feature to add a ‘story’. A story allows you to create a whole time line for 24 hours, squeezing in as many photos and videos at once. Then once again, it’s gone after.
What we're losing is - what shall we call it? Collective memory? The permanent record? We are so caught up in the present and so focused on the future that we're letting the past slip away.
As the story notes, it's a generational thing. Those of us who are a certain age (and that includes people a lot younger than me) can escape the present by bringing out our memory aids - albums of photos, stacks of long-ago letters from loved ones, hell, even the old album covers with the coffee stains on them. But young people (dang it, it's those kids today again!) are growing up without a sense of privacy and no idea of what real intimacy is. They're just sending everything out into the cloud and -- poof! - it's gone. I used to think the saddest thing about them was that when they approach middle age and start waxing nostaligic over their song it will be some damn rap monstrosity. But now I think it's the fact that when they start reminiscing, they'll have nothing to really remember.
