Containers. Curation. Cleaving. Continue?

E80: On preserving memories and Intellectual Property, endings and beginnings

Technologies keep iterating and aging. Floppy discs, chargers, and connectors keep changing their design. How do you maintain access to your own memories and information … twenty years from now?

“Ahhh … he had the cutest toothless grin in that photo. Let me save this entire set from his buggy birthday. It captures the look on his friends’ faces as they bob for worms … priceless! Oh, I love this one of them practicing yoga. I’ll save that one from the NYC street fair. And that photo of the kids on the pier with the Twin Tours in the background. This one of her twirling in her tutu. And that one where they buried themselves in the pile of autumn leaves. We were exhausted from all that raking - but look at their smiley faces peeking out!”

Two major parts of my life are closing their doors to me at the end of March:

• Writing in Community - I entered this writing accountability platform on June 1, 2020 in the middle of strict Covid lockdowns (remember those?) I wanted to create a consistent writing habit. I had no idea I’d be talked into becoming an author. A treasure trove of daily notes, one published book, and many friends later …

• Shutterfly - the careful container where I store(d) digital copies of all my photos tracking my kids growing up since 1999. In that world of ‘Before’ - that transition moment as the world migrated from prints on paper to digital - where other photographers, more progressive than me, would share their digital photos of our family.
  It was a particularly useful technology on our trip. I’d upload a selection of our photos to an SD card, get to an internet cafe, stick coins in the machine, listen patiently to the ‘grrrr’ of the internet modem while they uploaded to Shutterfly, then hard-code HTML links to digital postcards (like the one below) to accompany our barebone blog — so our extended family of friends could “Flat Stanley” the world alongside us in 2004.

Kerala Postcard

Before I lose access to these platforms I have to rescue all this content, pulling back these old memories into my own containers to preserve them.

@tiltthefuture @tiltthefuture

Focus, Karena. FOCUS.

For all my wonderful people who saw my tweet on the weekend and responded with positive encouragement, this was what I was busy doing. I had to focus while archiving visual memories dating from 1999. And written ones from 2020. All without losing myself in the timewarp of returning to those actual moments.

It raised a variety of topics for me. I’m not going to burden you with all of them. I’ll start the conversation here. Please feel free to take this to the comments and continue to explore them.

Containers. Connection. — we need to store our memories and work somewhere
Curation. Content. Questions. — because archiving raises second-order questions
Covid. Cleaving. Continue? — Truly, it’s not about archiving, is it?

Containers. Connection.

I like working directly on the cloud. Today, I write on the platforms where I publish. The substack editor for this newsletter. The Discourse editor for my Writing in Community (WIC) work. I like this. My work follows me seamlessly across different continents, from desktop to phone to laptop.

But what happens when I lose access to these platforms?

There was a time before.
Before Internet everywhere.
Before Instagram and Snapchat.
Before WhatsApp video conferencing.
Before Facebook.
Before we bought our first digital camera.

In the “Before”, there was no cloud. We mailed physical photos with notes handwritten on the back to our parents across the ocean, so they could watch our children grow: their first toothless smile; that crazy Halloween costume. [I always had an envelope and international stamp handy.] We saved our half-written programs, special notes, and our precious presentations to a floppy disk or a CD-ROM. And carried them around so we could continue working at a different desk or at home. I still have one of those little compact 3.5” blue ones on my desk with the letters I wrote to my Grandma describing my first home, telling her about my fiance, announcing our baby. And no way of accessing any of that information — because computers do not have floppy disk readers anymore.

Connecting ideas like Shutterfly and the cloud came in to fill the space between the before and the after of digital everywhere, all at once. With their promise of unlimited access and storage forever.

How do I preserve access to my intellectual property? As these different platforms age out or change their subscription models (Medium is one example that comes to mind) how do I ensure that I maintain access to what I have been working on?

My current solution: Own access to your intellectual property. I’ve retrieved all our pre-digital era photos. I’m copy/pasting all my WIC dailies to a Word doc on my desktop. I periodically download all my newsletters to my website karenadesouza.com. Then I copy all the content into Roam so I can search my published work with ease as I write book two.

Curation. Content. Questions.

Should I copy everything? Or should I curate? It hurts to leave words and photos on the cutting room floor. I have photos on Shutterfly dating back to 1999. And WIC dailies that started in June 2020.
This is why I needed to shut off Twitter and focus.

I noticed that our digital world has created bloat. When I could only take 36 photos on a reel, I pre-selected and staged my photos. Once we had access to digital cameras things changed. Alongside the whimsical capture of icecream while it is still dripping all over my child, I found 23 photos of a bird in various stages of flight. You can watch it soaring into the clouds if you click through fast enough!

But should I be so surgical? Some posts, like the one at the top of this essay, will obviously not make the book. But it turns out that my most interesting content came from answering questions from those engaging with my daily writing. A casual comment on sustainability? I responded in the thread with an explanation of how every part of a coconut and coconut tree is used and repurposed in India, complete with the Kerala postcard.

Those questions changed the direction of my books. Instead of the traditional chronological travel memoir, I am now writing a book about the longer-term impact of the 9-month, 16-country round-the-world journey on our young family.

Naturally, the early June-July 2020 questions were more inquisitive. “Why?” “Which countries?” “How much?” “How do you pack?” Those answers became vignettes I included to showcase components in the decision-theory book I wrote while figuring out how this self-publishing thing works. [Contours of Courageous Parenting: Tilting Towards Better Decisions]

My current solution: I’m treating this moment like moving home. I’m taking time to browse through the albums and dailies. I’m debating where I could showcase content that stands out - the book, the newsletter, a family collage? I’m only boxing the work that I (or my kids) will need later. No reason to take along the dust bunnies.

Covid. Cleaving. Continue?

“Can you send me the photos of me in my Bob-The-Builder phase?” “Do you have a photo of that red ball?” “Remember when I dressed him up in a tutu?” I hold the digital key to all the memories that my kids now request.

I often write about liminality (E74). Because I am not immune to the experience. In both these curation exercises, I have to face up to the ends of eras.

Our youngest graduates university in May. I already find myself in a space of deep reflection. Curating a (parent’s) lifetime of photos while in this vulnerable state comes with a generous side helping of Kleenex.

Going through the WIC daily build-a-book posts I found spots where snippets of Covid-life interrupted my flow. Memories of living in intense isolation. Debates in July and August 2020 on whether to send our kids back to school and university. Life before vaccinations. Remember? Turns out it wasn’t that long ago.

But I made new connections and found community during those moments of isolation. I doubled down on Zoom and made friends around the globe. I may be losing access to the technical platforms. But I still have the community, the experiences, and the memories. And discovered another persona … as a writer.

My current situation: I find myself closing these chapters of my life. Parenting. Covid. And I ask myself: As we continue, what next, how next?

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Make. Take. Talk.

This seems like a good moment to resurrect my CTA.

In a world drowning in data, who owns what we create? How do we curate it? Where do we cache it?

Make: A plan. Create a system to protect your creative work.

Take: the time to reflect on what you share with others. As creatives, we might find insightful gems lying in plain sight as we answer questions. [Have you re-read your answers to tweet and email threads?]

Talk: Join this conversation. Do you have a digital hygiene routine where you test your access to old memories? Should you be having this conversation with your parents? How should you curate and store your work so that your Future-self (yourself 20 years from now) can still access it? Technologies age out. Connector designs change. So do systems and platforms.

P.S. Forewarned

Coincidence? Here is Seth Godin’s recent post They will lose your data. He uses fewer words to encourage us to preserve our “foundation of valuable data”.

Forewarned should be sufficient. Assume that the software company doesn’t care nearly as much about your work, your memories or your reputation as you do.
— Seth Godin

An idea 💡

One thing I did notice while swiping through 25 years of photos …

A great baby shower gift should be photography lessons for first-time parents: Kneel to take photos. Learn how to avoid shadows. Subject placement - don't chop off the heads, toes, and ears of your growing treasure. [Here is an idea

Steven Foster

!]

Of course, in a digital + AI world these tips may not matter as much as they did years ago.

Tip for new parents 👀

Create a curated folder and fill it with the special moment photos and videos - smiley baby, first day at school, graduation. You will be asked for these repeatedly over the next few decades by teachers and your children. So make sure you always have easy access to them. Congratulations

Angie Creates

and

Paul Millerd

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Did someone share this edition with you? Please come join us in Tribe Tilt:

One of our newest Tribe members found us through Twitter and was inspired to write their own response to the Mind the Gap essay (E78). This is what makes this community so special. Great engagement, the space, and permission to explore around ideas.

See you next week. Stay healthy - from there all else becomes possible.
Karena