What will your legacy be?

In Memoriam

A recent post on Mashable highlighted the range of services which promise to (on the whole) respectfully deal with your ‘digital legacy’.

Think about it. How much effort, creativity and kilobytes do you think you’ve spent tweeting, updating, blogging and blipfotoing since you got your mitts on the internet?

And, amongst all that digital noise, perhaps there are a few things worth passing on to future generations.

At the very least, knowing that a lucky loved one is able to tell all your friends and followers you’ve gone to iHeaven2.0 is a comforting thought.

It also raises the question of what our descendants may make of us in years to come. When the digital archeologists of the far-flung future eventually manage to decipher the archaic way we store things today (no doubt using some barely flickering iPad as some kind of latter day Rosetta Stone), what will they think?

Will they – like Andrew Marr, dismiss us as “inadequate, pimpled and single”, or will they look upon things like Flickr’s Explore and xkcd as beacons of past artistic merit and inspiration?

However our present is interpreted in the future, it should at least get us thinking about the legacy we’re creating for those who follow.

So, next time you’re ranting or flaming about Justin Bieber or the X-Factor, take a moment to think – is that how you really want to be remembered?

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