The Internet Archaeologists

The internet is full of all kinds of shit no one cares about.

Take, for example, this blog entry.  A rant about how the net piles up with excrement, to be pretty much ignored by everyone, except perhaps hundreds of years later, if the data still exists (much of it will through various mechanisms of cloud redundancy), when the future internet archaeologists are digging through the tripe, analyzing every bit, putting the pieces together, trying to reassemble the psyche of the late-20th and early 21st centuries.

"They used to worship this man nailed to a letter T," they will think, "but at that time, they started converting to a polytheistic religion called Marvel Universe."  Though they will have much more information than we do about the middle ages, they will still likely get the details all wrong.  This will be comical, if we could see it for ourselves.

They will sift through this old data, with their own computers to assist, analyze it backward and forward, make connections.  They will know who your friends were, who you called, who you worked for, how much you made, what you purchased, what you believed.  Each subsequent generation will use new technologies to gain a clearer picture of who you are, right now.  Yes, you - sitting in that chair.

They will adjust their interpretation of you to meet their agenda.  They will put forward the pieces of you that make others believe what they want them to think about you, and thus about their own past and identity.  They will erase other pieces, or perhaps the bits that suggest that you were virtuous or good, or that you were cruel and primitive.

The data will paint a picture.  And for most us, it is all that will remain.

So the next time you are trolling on YouTube, or spewing vitriol on Facebook, or saying something really dumb, stop.  Think.  You are recording in the halls of history, who you are.  You are painting your eternal legacy.

And for so many of us, it is not the legacy we would like to have.