How much of your creative legacy exists only in virtual format?

Hi Richard, that is a thought probably most of us haven't even considered. Where is it, how can it be found and how can it be accessed? Just like the 5.25 floppy disc with plenty of history on them. We have nothing to access it with. Something to ponder for sure. Have a great day.

The digital files stay clean, crisp and circle the globe long after you and I are reduced to ash, dust. Travel light and keep hunting, pecking, shooting images and video to keep the mediastream seeded, tended, watered, fed.

Richard, Very similar here.  Not much in the way of hard copy, and even before that my presence in photos is fairly spread out.  The annual Christmas family photo, maybe a little something here or there, but mostly at the whim of our electronic world is where my work resides.

    Great point, Richard.  The ancient Mesopotamians baked letters (characters) onto clay tablets; they still exist thousands of years later.  Same with Papyrus scrolls, and Latin codices, or the dusty books I have from the early 1800's.

     But what about our digital 0's and 1's? 

Hi Richard... I think about that. After I'm gone 'they' will run a cloud defrag and my electrons will be scattered to the cyber winds... Well, something like that... Yet, I have this ongoing internal argument about the many boxes of music scores, reel to reel tapes, and cassettes that take up so much of my closet space. I theaten to sit down one day, digitize it, and through all that hardcopy in the recycle bin. But there's too much! And on occasion, when I look through it, I feel a sense of accomplishment more than digital has ever given me. There is something to be said about holding it in your hands and thinking, "I created this." Even if few even know it exists... 

Oh I think about this all the time!  It becomes more poignant the older I get.  I don't want my grandchildren to lack tangible evidence of my existence, nor do I want them to come in after the fact and find no remnant of my love for them in my home.  So I print, print, print...photos, art, musings, etc.  As for those artifacts from people who have passed out of my life, I hold onto them as touchstones.  There is no energy in that digital file, but the handwritten love letters between my grandparents radiate.

Richard-we've been so caught up in digitizing everything.. our photos, our written words. and all of this could go poof if somehow the e-reader or smartphone should go kerplunk.  

My legacy will be in the hearts of my decendents at least my kids.  Agter that who knows.

That thought HAS crossed my mind. When the WP host bill is no longer paid, poof, it's all gone. My vote is my Active Rain blog posts live on. 

I think there is a way to export our AR posts to our WP blog. I think I asked about this once. Maybe we should have a way to decide if our posts stay up or get removed. Mine stay. Margaret Rome, Baltimore Maryland are you listening? 

I print lots of stuff I write and I pack it into that "shoebox" and I take my sd card in and print photos all the time too.  I'm an old fashioned sentimental fool and I plan to live and die that way.  I think my daughter will keep that shoebox (actually it's pretty much a room half full of shoeboxes) and that she will look through them all again and again.

Good morning Richard,

You have given us food for thought! I use to make albums of our trips with captions and real photographs..we love looking through them. Now all our trips are in albums digitally and I have to admit it is not the same looking through them.

Certainly something to think about Richard, I have written thousands of these and never even thought to print one of them.  They would certainly fill a drawer pretty quickly.

Luckily, most of those digital memories are tucked safe, more than a mile in the Utah mountains. I have been consumed with thoughts and goals of scanning my old photographs, but hadn't thought about maybe printing off hard copies of treasured digital photos. 

Call me a bit pessimistic but I believe the government will have some of what I have written in its massive files!

All you have to do is look at the pile of video tapes we have and very few vcr's any more to play them.  It's a frightening thing to think about all our information being locked up in outdated storage with no access to future generations.

Hmmmmm...very intereesting. I hope that there will be a way for later generations to look at our info, learn from it and also get to know their ancestors. I am not sure how they will do that though, we live in such a throw away society.  Your not gone until the last person you know says your name, will that be true of data.