Here’s a thought; with the advent of ‘social’ your great-great grandchildren will know significantly more about you than all of the information you’ll ever know about your grand parents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents combined.
We now live in a world where every tweet and status update and ‘like’ and image is stored and backed-up and copied for ever and a day which leads to a question; forget carbon foot prints for a moment, what impression will your online footprint make? Or put another way, how are your current day to day actions impacting your legacy?
This is a timely question especially when one considers that only five years ago none of us had even heard of Facebook or twitter or ‘social’. Only in the last ten years have we seen mobile phones and the instant connectivity they provide go mainstream and many correctly argue we are still at the beginning of the socialization process.
So what can we expect in the next five years? The next ten? Dare I say the next fifteen years, approximately the same amount of time since Al Gore invented the Internet? 😉
Lets look at legacy in more detail. As I get further from my 40’s and nearer to my 50’s my world looks different. People from my school days look a lot older (I don’t of course…), some are no longer with us and my life becomes ever more like my fathers. I can’t stop that but what I can do is help future generations of ‘Fellsys’ understand what my life is like. I can tell them what is important to me. I can highlight my successes and failures, my proudest and darkest moments. I can give them a better picture of the whole me, in essence I can help sculpture my legacy.
How? By being aware of my social footprint and by adding to it in other available digital formats. I’ve long thought that there is a market for an app that records our personal lifeline. The app would detail the obvious facts like dates of birth and marriage but also thoughts on life milestones. In fact, to be truly representative, it would also need to include my thoughts on life events and experiences. As an ex-police officer I have countless stories that entertain, intrigue and sometimes scare my friends but all of those stories will die with me. I’ve lived in three countries and have many memories about my time in each and the reasons behind my journey. And of course I have experiences and feelings tied into the birth of my children, my first job and my hopes for the future. They all make up the picture of what is ‘me’. And so (with thanks to Matthew Shadbolt) to a great Web based program from Intel; “Museum of Me”
In a very entertaining way the program draws on your Facebook account to highlight those people that you interact with the most. Using your photos and status updates it presents a collage of your life in video format. Some have called it creepy but personally I think it’s a great first step towards real time genealogy and ultimately seeing what our legacy might look like from another’s perspective.
To create your own museum click here. Enjoy 🙂