Aah, all those addresses we have accumulted down the years and never deleted from our mobile device.
Should we? It's a subject analysed in this piece "My Digital Cemetry" in International New York Times.
"MY digital address book lists 2,743 contacts. This is not because I’m popular or extroverted; I’m neither. It’s because this collection of names stretches back two decades, the oldest contacts tracing to a 1996 Palm Pilot and preserved through transfers involving more devices than I care to remember. It covers life in four cities and work on countless reporting projects. The idea of organizing and pruning this slow-motion data dump is by now unthinkable.
One result is that when I start to tap in the name of someone I’m looking for, I often turn up several others as well. Maybe an expert source on a subject I’ll never write about again. Or the best plumber in a place where I no longer live. Possibly a former colleague I have since learned actively dislikes me. Probably at least one name I just can’t place. And, perhaps, someone who is dead.
I might take that moment to delete one or more of these entries. But not the ones for the deceased. Those I keep.
I seldom talk about this habit, because I assume it sounds weird. But recently I was intrigued to read about an incident described in “Becoming Steve Jobs,” the new book by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. A couple of years after Mr. Jobs died, the anecdote goes, John Lasseter, a founder of Pixar and a close friend of Mr. Jobs’s, showed Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the “favorites” list on his iPhone contacts app. It still included Mr. Jobs. “I’ll never be able to take that out,” he said. Mr. Cook responded by pulling out his phone, which also included Mr. Jobs’s contact entry.
I’m not sure if this says something unusual about Mr. Jobs, or Mr. Cook and Mr. Lasseter. But to me it suggests something more universal. However our tools are designed, human behavior determines how we really use them. So while there may not be anything logical about hanging on to the contact details of the departed, Mr. Lasseter’s comment makes perfect sense. And maybe that makes me feel (a little) less weird for thinking that my contacts list has accidentally acquired an involuntary-memories feature, a memento mori functionality.
Digital technology has already had notable effects on the ways we mourn, remember the dead, and even think about the afterlife. This has mostly come to our attention as a side effect of the broader tech-driven redefinition of social and public life: a personal blog becomes a kind of monument to be preserved, a social-media profile becomes a site of communal grieving. To some extent, digital services have adjusted to this development: Facebook accounts, for example, can be “memorialized,” a setting that allows friends to share remembrances, but stops posting upsetting birthday reminders."
Should we? It's a subject analysed in this piece "My Digital Cemetry" in International New York Times.
"MY digital address book lists 2,743 contacts. This is not because I’m popular or extroverted; I’m neither. It’s because this collection of names stretches back two decades, the oldest contacts tracing to a 1996 Palm Pilot and preserved through transfers involving more devices than I care to remember. It covers life in four cities and work on countless reporting projects. The idea of organizing and pruning this slow-motion data dump is by now unthinkable.
One result is that when I start to tap in the name of someone I’m looking for, I often turn up several others as well. Maybe an expert source on a subject I’ll never write about again. Or the best plumber in a place where I no longer live. Possibly a former colleague I have since learned actively dislikes me. Probably at least one name I just can’t place. And, perhaps, someone who is dead.
I might take that moment to delete one or more of these entries. But not the ones for the deceased. Those I keep.
I seldom talk about this habit, because I assume it sounds weird. But recently I was intrigued to read about an incident described in “Becoming Steve Jobs,” the new book by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. A couple of years after Mr. Jobs died, the anecdote goes, John Lasseter, a founder of Pixar and a close friend of Mr. Jobs’s, showed Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the “favorites” list on his iPhone contacts app. It still included Mr. Jobs. “I’ll never be able to take that out,” he said. Mr. Cook responded by pulling out his phone, which also included Mr. Jobs’s contact entry.
I’m not sure if this says something unusual about Mr. Jobs, or Mr. Cook and Mr. Lasseter. But to me it suggests something more universal. However our tools are designed, human behavior determines how we really use them. So while there may not be anything logical about hanging on to the contact details of the departed, Mr. Lasseter’s comment makes perfect sense. And maybe that makes me feel (a little) less weird for thinking that my contacts list has accidentally acquired an involuntary-memories feature, a memento mori functionality.
Digital technology has already had notable effects on the ways we mourn, remember the dead, and even think about the afterlife. This has mostly come to our attention as a side effect of the broader tech-driven redefinition of social and public life: a personal blog becomes a kind of monument to be preserved, a social-media profile becomes a site of communal grieving. To some extent, digital services have adjusted to this development: Facebook accounts, for example, can be “memorialized,” a setting that allows friends to share remembrances, but stops posting upsetting birthday reminders."
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