I wonder how this might change the way we remember those long departed.

We are a relational by nature as human beings and this means that connections fade with time. Young people by nature tend not to care about the life challenges faced by grandpa and grandma all those many years ago. We make idols of celebrities in our generation but what of the past generation or two. Maybe those of us who are older will well remember a film star out of the 1940s such as Loretta Young but young people don't (and for those who are older, who remembers or cares about Gloria Swanson as a sex goddess of the 1920s, for example). The same can be said of any other type of famous person. Today, some of us remember a few notable things that Ike did, for instance, but as we go back further, say, to William Howard Taft, we remember or care little or nothing about his life and the issues faced by that generation (even more so as we recede further - Franklin Pierce anyone?). Indeed, this is one of the problems of getting older. As our prime fades, and as things move on, fewer and fewer people care about what we did with our life's struggles and we can feel progressively marginalized and isolated as we enter into our 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. Only those who are our contemporaries can reflect upon and appreciate our life's accomplishments as they come to know us and as they share the common experiences with us. In time, of course, people die off and then those who relate to the remaining older people become fewer and fewer until the isolation is nearly complete for someone who lives a really long life. For the most part, immediate family might care but no one else does. For the person who is 100 today, no one cares what it was like to live through Prohibition or to have experienced talkies for the first time, or to wonder at the marvel of air travel that no one had ever seen before or to grow up and raise a family in the rural midwest of long ago. That time has come and gone and we, as a relational people, just can't relate any more.

Today, I can look at old photos of my parents (both deceased) and my heart is moved. I can do the same with photos of grandparents whom I actually knew and can relate but with nowhere near the same intensity. But, then, I look at old photos of my great grandparents in the old country from which my parents ultimately emigrated and I feel nothing - it is just some bearded guy posing for a picture in some little hut from a distant land and a distant time.

I love the study of history precisely because it helps bring to life how people lived and dealt with the challenges of their generation, no matter how distant from ours. But most of the events of humanity are forever buried in history in a way that they can never be known. Think of all the millions of people from the 1830s, for example, who lived and died while facing many of the same issues we do today - how am I going to make something of myself? how do I find my life's mate? where do I want to live? do I want to go to school and what should I study? how do I try to change my world for the better? For all those lives, the events and the subsequent memories were as vivid as could be as the lives were lived out and as a generation or two that knew those people remembered or were told stories about what they had done. But, given the passage of enough time, none of this matters one whit to those who live today. Now, nearly two centuries later, only a few high points of that era are remembered and often only from a sterile textbook type of memory (important historical "facts" in a book) about which few people care.

Will a perpetual digital presence on the web change any of this over time? Of course, it can help make vivid the lives of those we knew or directly remember from our lives and those of our contemporaries. It can lessen the "out of sight, out of mind" mode of forgetfulness and make us more easily appreciate those whom we knew and loved or respected while they lived. In this sense, the impact can be profound and particularly so concerning those closest to us in life - it is like my being moved by looking at the old photos of my parents, potentially magnified many times over in having been enriched by stories, anecdotes, written memorabilia, etc. not only from immediate family members but also from friends, acquaintances, and others. What a rich treasure trove this might be to help us remember and honor the memory of those to whom we related and all the more so the closer they were to us in life.

But what will thousands or millions of such narratives mean to those who live two centuries from today looking back on it all. Yes, it might be a rich vein for historians trying to identify broader trends and issues of our era but does it matter beyond that? In other words, would we even care to remember the stories of millions of persons with whom we are unconnected in every way, even if they were ancestors in our direct family line? I don't know but I would suspect that this would be much like looking at that old photo of my great grandparents in the old country. It might be interesting for a passing glance but nothing more. As relational people, it is hard to relate to those with whom we have no connection (or at least very little connection), and the memories of those lives in this sense would be relevant only for a time, i.e., as long as those who could relate still lived.

All this is another way of saying that, in time, the mark we make in this world will inevitably fade. And, for this reason, I doubt that it can be captured by online digital preservation in any way that will prove meaningful beyond the lives of our contemporaries.

All that said, this is a beautiful idea and this piece is a thoughtful evocation of its possibilities. It just can't be overstretched to achieve a goal that is, in my view, beyond the limits of human capacity. We can all be memorialized to a point but the limit is bound by those who remember being able to relate to who we were and what we did. At some point, that connection breaks and the memories fade, no matter how well those lives may be documented online.