“What goes on the internet stays on the internet.” How true will we find it to be over time?
The words ‘digital’ and ‘heirloom’ do not belong together. An heirloom is a physical bridge to the past, something that has endured the love of previous generations. We pass it on in the hope that those who come after us will cherish the footmarks of our memories. The digital world is rarely permanent. We do not really expect our digital footprint to become a heritage.
Which photo will be shown to your kids, and will it truly radiate the memory of their parent? Will your account on Instagram be enough to tell your story, or will it simply become inaccessible with time and change? A place where only a version of life can be seen and remembered as if it were whole. A version that was chosen, edited, and filtered. A life arranged into squares and captions.
Digital platforms will disappear. Apps will no longer exist. Passwords will be forgotten. Not suddenly, but slowly. An old email you no longer use. A password you were sure you would remember. A device that stops working, taking everything stored inside it with it. We assume they are ours. But access decides ownership. And so, our archives may not be as lasting as we imagine.
Our memories would fade. Buried deep in some server, no longer visited. Sitting in folders we once meant to organise. Waiting without being returned to. Files with names we never changed. Dates we no longer recognise. When we no longer live, who will access our photos? Will anyone know where to look? Or will they remain exactly where we left them, waiting for no one? The ghosts of our memories. Our faces, lost and hidden, seen by no one. Not gone, just unreachable. How different that is from going through our parents’ old photographs, sitting beside them, listening to the stories behind each image. The pause before a story begins. The corrections. The laughter. A shared ritual: now transformed into something private and isolated. We no longer gather around memory. We scroll through it. Alone. No one pauses us. No one adds to it. We may be the first generation to leave behind no accessible personal past.
And yet, we have never recorded more. In our hordes of photos, do we remember why each one was taken? With the ease of capturing every moment, we have forgotten the weight of each one. The joy of a single frame. The pause before it was taken. There was a time when a photograph demanded intention. You chose the moment. You waited for it. You kept it. Now, there is no need to choose. Everything can be saved. Everything is saved. And so, nothing stands out. We have preserved moments, but not the act of remembering them. We have also lost the simple act of holding a photograph. Of returning to it. Of letting it return to us. A digital image does not wait in the same way. It does not insist on being found. It stays where it is until we think to search for it. And most of the time, we do not. Now, our memories appear as numbers. A handful of likes. Endless, unordered images. A gallery that keeps growing but is rarely revisited. We keep everything but forget how to return to it.
When everything is saved, nothing feels significant. Not because it is gone. But because it is never returned to. By us, or by anyone after us.