I’m not looking back but I want to look around me now

I still use an email address I’ve had since 1996 and another I’ve had since 2003. Between them I have some 37,000 emails. Yes, 37,000. And that’s not including spam.

Sounds like a lot, but it breaks down to 7 per day over what will be the 15 years since I started using the internet in earnest. I’ve probably purged several thousand more too prior to the point at which free inboxes grew bigger than meagre size limits like 5mb/10mb/50mb. Once the floodgates opened on near unlimited storage the need to keep things in check disappeared.

And yet for a few years now every so often I’ve felt the urge to sort them out. Alas, I don’t have the guts to just delete huge chunks of them en mass. Every time I try I inevitably end up reading them (albeit, not all 37,000 obviously).

But those 15 years of emails are not peppered with insight and cherished memories. It’s like looking back on a lazily kept diary that other people have scribbled in. Not so much a cathartic trip down memory lane but a stark reminder of just how much complete dribble can be traced back to you.

With this in mind I’d like to take a moment to apologise for pretty much everything I have ever typed to someone, or indeed published online in whatever form.

Enthusiasm for de-cluttering disappears when faced with such an avalanche of regret so it’s still all there being kept begrudgingly for prosperity and the benefit of no one.

Even if I were to delete it all I'm sure it'll be backed up somewhere for the purposes of data mining and profiling - if not by nefarious corporations but the powers that be. I've seen Sneakers, The Net, Hackers, and Enemy of the State. I know what's going on.

If, in this age of technology and growing dependence on the internet within everyday life, information is power as much as knowledge is then it won’t just be the state of the planet that future generations will have to clean up – it’s the state of our digital universe.

The amount of crap that can or could potentially be attributed back to individuals, whether they like it or not (lame attempts at anonymity and proxies withstanding), is stupefying. Just think of the horrific narcissistic mess the digital archaeologists of future generations are going to be saddled with.

These days people methodically research birth, marriage, and death certificates and the like to trace their family tree and get some idea of the lives of their ancestors. In 50 years they’ll have unimaginably vast archives of emails and social networking sites to wade through.

Our great, great, great-grandchildren will be able to piece together the first thing you bought from Amazon, what you had for dinner on April 2nd 2009 (as Tweeted), whether you thought Inception was the bestest film ever or convoluted toss courtesy of your blog, and other such exciting titbits. Family trees will be superseded by social networking friend lists potentially mapping out not just your nearest and dearest by bloodlines but everyone you possibly knew, or knew by association, or were part of some Jammer Dodger Appreciation Society group on Facebook with.

The linking of your ancestors friends lists from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and so on is going to bring new meaning to the idea of six degrees of separation. I appreciate most people in the western world can probably be linked in less than six *now* but in the future the ever-increasing connectedness of human beings will have reached a point upon which we’re all related far closer than most of us would prefer.

Instead of the future equivalent of (or possibly cybernetic) Tony Robinson and co digging up artefacts in a trench perhaps there will be shows where they use all this digital footprint to relive the essence of your life through a Star Trek: TNG era style holodec or virtual reality setup. Maybe it’ll be a bit like the premise of Assassin's Creed but a tad less exhilarating, i.e. doing the weekly shop in Tesco instead of killing Knights Templars in medieval Jerusalem (although granted, if you do your shopping mid-day on a Saturday the two aren’t that dissimilar).

People have kept diaries, journals, photo albums, and various other means with which to collate the aspects of their life for centuries but it’s only within the last decade that people have had the means, and willingness, to transcribe every damned little thing to share with the world. In this regard I am part of the problem.

This blog has been around for over 10 years now – although admittedly abandoned for a good half of that period. Everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed. It’s not even mildly interesting for me, and that’s one of the reasons why I gave up on it. That and because my life is desperately dull. But this year I’m going to give it another go. I enjoyed this once even if looking back makes me cringe.

Lucky you, people of the future.