Legacy

[Editorial]

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Legacy

1.

something (such as personal property or money) that is willed to someone by a person who has died: bequest

2.

something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past

3.

a candidate for membership in an organization (such as a school or fraternal order) who is given special status because of a familial relationship to a member

What I want to write about is number 2.

Upstairs, I have old photos of my mother and her sisters. The black-and-white photos of family from the 1920s are still... well, not quite like new, but only slightly faded. But the color photos and slides? Their colors have faded and taken on a red shift.

And yet, what do the new generations leave behind? Vaporware.

You know all those huge data centers you are fighting against? Well, my photos are in there, and your photos are in there, along with all of that stuff you have in the cloud. Your wedding photos, the pictures of your first baby, that first vacation that the two of you took, that photo of the "double dare" to go on the roller coaster at the amusement park—they are all in the cloud! No, wait, they are not in your attic. They can go "POOF" at the press of a key, or the moment you stop paying. They are in your social media posts, but what happens after you are no longer here? Yes, they are up on Facebook and all of your friends can see them, but what about your future generations?

What happens to our future generations?

I burned discs of the old family photos, but they can’t just be picked up and looked through—you now need a "device."

What will our legacy be?

{/Editorial]