Digital Footprints and Paper
These days I often see a comment: “One day I will die, but this comment of mine will remain.”
I have seen the same idea in conversations with people I know. They think that after they die, Facebook will preserve some kind of digital footprint of them.
Their photos, their writing, their videos… year after year.
But that’s not true.
If something you wrote is in a book, or written down in a notebook, it will more or less remain intact for years, unless someone burns it.
But whatever you have on Facebook is actually sitting on someone else’s computer.
You upload a photo and think, “This is now on Facebook.” What really happened is that it got transferred to another person’s computer. When needed, it is shown to you from there.
For that computer to keep running, it needs uninterrupted electricity. Paying that electricity bill costs a lot of money. Facebook pays for it by doing business.
And like every business on earth, Facebook’s business will also naturally shut down one day.
Then the computers that kept your data will shut down too. So many years after your death, these digital footprints of yours will not really be there anymore.
That is why I have become obsessed with paper again. The stories I love exist in the market as books. The photos that matter to people close to me, I print on paper and gift to them.
I do not know how any of this will exist many years after my death.
But I like imagining that some future human will discover these footprints and research “ancient” humanity.