Archiving the Digital Generation

Yesterday afternoon, I was searching on my computer for a document I hadn't seen in a couple of years. As I tried plugging various phrases into Spotlight, hoping that the file would come up, I started seeing archived instant message conversations popping up in the search results.

Intrigued, I opened a few. These were IM conversations from the last part of high school, which had somehow made it over to my MacBook when I purchased it over three years ago. Re-reading these exchanges was an eye-opening experience. I was shocked at how moronic, clueless, or even pompous my instant messages sounded to my more mature brain. Did I really say these things? Why would anyone have wanted to be friends with me?

Of course, high school was a different world, with its unique pressures and social situations. But still, some of this is incredibly embarrassing. There are my own lame attempts at humor, and stealthy conspiracies about prom dates and other issues. But there's also the exchange in which a high school classmate, now a fellow honors Government major at Cornell, didn't know who Rush Limbaugh was. It seems that not only were we stupid emotionally, but perhaps intellectually as well.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the internet age is that much of the content we produce is lost. True, people would discard letters and handwritten notes, too, but they might be more inclined to hold onto them because they were fixed in a tangible form. My generation sends instant messages, writes things on Facebook, and drafts emails at a feverish pace. When our IMs are closed, when Facebook has pushed our publications to the bottom of the wall, and when we delete batches of emails to clear out our inboxes, we don't give a second thought to whether we'll want to read these things again. We live for the here, the now, the present.

I don't think this is good. By spending 20 minutes reading through my IMs from four years ago, I learned not only about the person I was then, but realized how much I've changed since then, and how my relationships with people have changed since then. If I hadn't stumbled across these files, I might have continued thinking that I've always been as mature and as levelheaded as I believe I am now. Instead, I now know that I used to be, for lack of a better word, somewhat of an asshole. At least over AIM.

I hardly IM anymore, but I've gotten into the habit of archiving a lot of my emails (thank you, Cmail) and trying to save things for posterity. It's not the same as opening a box of letters tucked away on a shelf, but it provides a similar window into how much has changed in my life. If you have a few minutes sometime, try going through the archives on your computer. What you find might surprise you.