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Back up all your data – but memories worth keeping will live on in your mind Back up all your data – but memories worth keeping will live on in your mind
(about 14 hours later)
I am adrift in the world now and it is entirely my own fault. My phone went wrong and it now has to be "wiped". In other words I have no contacts, no photographs, no history, no texts of love and hate.I am adrift in the world now and it is entirely my own fault. My phone went wrong and it now has to be "wiped". In other words I have no contacts, no photographs, no history, no texts of love and hate.
And the next person who says: "Well you should have backed it up," will be murdered. By me. I have consulted a lawyer and found out that, given the state of my hormones and such provocative smugness, any reasonable judge would acquit me.And the next person who says: "Well you should have backed it up," will be murdered. By me. I have consulted a lawyer and found out that, given the state of my hormones and such provocative smugness, any reasonable judge would acquit me.
Instead of working, living, looking after my kids, going out, apparently I really should have been "backing up" every experience 24/7. And please, don't even go there with "the cloud". I realise that had I bought an iPhone everything would be different and stowed away in a cloud somewhere. For what is my life but random data? The small handheld computers that nearly half of us now use are pretty amazing. Being without one for aeons – a day – made me realise how much I rely on it. In the Neolithic period we wrote down phone numbers or even memorised them. In a panic I found my my old Filofax pages, full of the numbers of people I have not seem for decades. Some of them dead. Instead of working, living, looking after my kids, going out, apparently I really should have been "backing up" every experience 24/7. And please, don't even go there with "the cloud". I realise that had I bought an iPhone everything would be different and stowed away in a cloud somewhere. For what is my life but random data? The small handheld computers that nearly half of us now use are pretty amazing. Being without one for aeons – a day – made me realise how much I rely on it. In the Neolithic period we wrote down phone numbers or even memorised them. In a panic I found my old Filofax pages, full of the numbers of people I have not seem for decades. Some of them dead.
But now my phone – I rarely use it as a phone – functions as a diary as well as an address book. It is a visual record of silliness and holidays and ... just stuff. But it is my stuff. The phone company says it has to wipe the info because of the Data Protection Act (whose data is it then?). So I am left unsure as to what exactly I have lost.But now my phone – I rarely use it as a phone – functions as a diary as well as an address book. It is a visual record of silliness and holidays and ... just stuff. But it is my stuff. The phone company says it has to wipe the info because of the Data Protection Act (whose data is it then?). So I am left unsure as to what exactly I have lost.
Photos that are never printed, never shared except for a second's "Oh look!" – do they mean as much as the curled ones of my older children? What exactly am I trying to preserve? A life lived via social media is a highly edited one: look at me, cropped, retouched, looking better than ever! Look, I am on holiday. Again. Look at this perfect meal! Behold my perfect life!Photos that are never printed, never shared except for a second's "Oh look!" – do they mean as much as the curled ones of my older children? What exactly am I trying to preserve? A life lived via social media is a highly edited one: look at me, cropped, retouched, looking better than ever! Look, I am on holiday. Again. Look at this perfect meal! Behold my perfect life!
This collation of memory that is now entirely digitised unsettles me even as I partake of it. In my generation I see clearly the refuseniks locking themselves out of what they see as trivial and somehow unreal.This collation of memory that is now entirely digitised unsettles me even as I partake of it. In my generation I see clearly the refuseniks locking themselves out of what they see as trivial and somehow unreal.
They have a point that is not simply Luddite. Indeed, age is not the issue. Many young people resent that the history of music is on shuffle. They want something tangible. When I moved house recently, I rediscovered my old collection of vinyl – it was some kind of heaven. The very smell of it. Put that in your cloud and smoke it. Rick James. Public Image. Kate Bush. Each cover that I had studied. Each record I had taken round to a friend's because I could not wait to share it. There are no images of the day someone first played me Marvin Gaye. The best meal I ever had: bread and tomatoes. The first time I hitched through France. This is Instagrammed into my mind.They have a point that is not simply Luddite. Indeed, age is not the issue. Many young people resent that the history of music is on shuffle. They want something tangible. When I moved house recently, I rediscovered my old collection of vinyl – it was some kind of heaven. The very smell of it. Put that in your cloud and smoke it. Rick James. Public Image. Kate Bush. Each cover that I had studied. Each record I had taken round to a friend's because I could not wait to share it. There are no images of the day someone first played me Marvin Gaye. The best meal I ever had: bread and tomatoes. The first time I hitched through France. This is Instagrammed into my mind.
Nothing feels more "backed–up" or ever will than the mixtapes made for me by friends or lovers who gave me music that I had never heard, that they thought I would like, that I came to love. The reams of yellowed cuttings from weird publications I once wrote for sit there, not in any cloud, and mean nothing to anyone but me.Nothing feels more "backed–up" or ever will than the mixtapes made for me by friends or lovers who gave me music that I had never heard, that they thought I would like, that I came to love. The reams of yellowed cuttings from weird publications I once wrote for sit there, not in any cloud, and mean nothing to anyone but me.
And yet I now embrace a world in which I record life as it happens, the gap between experience and the registering of it ever smaller. This unexamined life is surely backed up for future use. An ad I saw recently said that if your "external drive" crashes you will lose everything "that bears witness to many beautiful and important moments in your life".And yet I now embrace a world in which I record life as it happens, the gap between experience and the registering of it ever smaller. This unexamined life is surely backed up for future use. An ad I saw recently said that if your "external drive" crashes you will lose everything "that bears witness to many beautiful and important moments in your life".
Maybe my internal drive is crashing. Maybe the level of connectivity that we are encouraged to live with is neither always beautiful nor important. "How much memory does it have" we ask of every new device? But how many memories do we need? We continue to record them, almost as out-of-body experiences. As much as I love this new tech and am simply fed up that I lost some stuff, I do wonder if I haven't also lost a sense of proportion. About memory. And its uses. Poets remember for us. Without smart phones. Bukowski wrote: "Best of all, I've memorised tonight and now and the way the light falls across my fingers, specks and smears on the wall, shades down behind orange curtains; I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little, yes, I've memorised it all."Maybe my internal drive is crashing. Maybe the level of connectivity that we are encouraged to live with is neither always beautiful nor important. "How much memory does it have" we ask of every new device? But how many memories do we need? We continue to record them, almost as out-of-body experiences. As much as I love this new tech and am simply fed up that I lost some stuff, I do wonder if I haven't also lost a sense of proportion. About memory. And its uses. Poets remember for us. Without smart phones. Bukowski wrote: "Best of all, I've memorised tonight and now and the way the light falls across my fingers, specks and smears on the wall, shades down behind orange curtains; I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little, yes, I've memorised it all."
So I cannot have lost what I never really had, can I? All that is digital melts into air but I remember the blur of nights out, the first time I heard that song, my children's first laughter. None of that is on any cloud. So sure, back everything up, but the time machine is you. Your memory. Your mind. Live your data well.So I cannot have lost what I never really had, can I? All that is digital melts into air but I remember the blur of nights out, the first time I heard that song, my children's first laughter. None of that is on any cloud. So sure, back everything up, but the time machine is you. Your memory. Your mind. Live your data well.
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