Blessed are the children of the digital age

By April 3, 2012 June 12th, 2015 Insights

boxes

This post isn’t about marketing. Nor is it about design. I supposed you could put it in the category of nomadic entrepreneurialism, but the truth is that it’s really just a rant about Spring cleaning and being the daughter of a mother, bless her soul, who was obsessed with keeping a record of her and her family’s life.

I’m staring at boxes of 35mm slides, photo albums dating back to the 1930’s and school yearbooks from the 40’s. This is only part of what I still have in storage, being the designated family historian. All I can think is how lucky young children are today, born in an age when all of their experiences, images and mementos will be able to be carried in their pockets (most likely on their phones), or sit on someone else’s server to be lapped up like raindrops from the “cloud” whenever and wherever they desire. Lucky little urchins.

In my continuing quest to “live light” so that I can run my life and my business from anywhere a big jet plane takes me, I’m forced to dedicate myself to digitizing the visual record of my early life and family, or leave it behind in a box to gather dust in a dark room somewhere, forgotten except for the monthly storage fee.

Mothers everywhere, I urge you now in your scrapbooking zeal, scan those beautifully handcrafted pages and slip a little thumb drive in the back of each book. Look to the future when your grown children, squeezed into a tiny condo with no closet space because it’s all they can afford even on their $200k/year salary, will be forced to make the decision to “toss it or treasure it”  when staring at the 3 dozen scrapbooks you compiled of toothless birthday grins and tedious family vacations. They will thank you.