I was watching a news story a few days ago that projected what was in store for us in the future. Because of the digital revolution and the many devices and social media now available to record our lives, they now have in mind a hologram app for a smartphone and this is what it can do: All of the pictures and videos we upload, all of the data we upload, all of the activities in our lives that we share or are recorded by others will one day be bunched in chronological order along with our identity, available to a device and projected around us in a room as a real-life hologram. We can go back and see what happened to us at a certain time and can actually see our lives surrounding us in real time. It’s compared to the imaginative time chamber on the Star Trek series where it was possible for a person to instruct a computer to take them to a certain time frame and suddenly they were there. It’s quite amazing that this could be possible, and yet, we upload pictures, videos, chronological events, etc., every day without a thought, to our social media accounts or cloud storage. All of that info could be construed into a history of your life. Your children could someday “watch” your life, your future spouse could take a look; anyone could see what you have been doing since you were born. Scary, huh?
Quote from Eric Schmidt, author of The New Digital Age: In the future, our identities in everyday life will come to be defined more and more by our virtual activities and associations. Our highly documented pasts will have an impact on our prospects, and our ability to influence and control how we are perceived by others will decrease dramatically. The potential for someone else to access, share or manipulate parts of our online identities will increase, particularly due to our reliance on cloud-based data storage.
The ancestors of our past, who left their lives recorded on a few pages, only wrote the best of their efforts and activities. They recorded the best deeds they accomplished, no matter how difficult. Now our lives are being recorded every single day, no matter what we do, whether we encourage it or not. (The fact is, we do support and participate whole-heartedly in many ways.) But what an amazing possible leap from the pages of a book to real-life participation in the past!
So which mode of legacy do I prefer? Lives are difficult and complicated. Living one life – my own, is enough for me. I like to be inspired and uplifted by stories of great people even though I know, deep inside, that they are a lot like me, struggling part of every day, meeting challenges, digesting defeat, celebrating victories, and enjoying blessings; leaving a heritage to loved ones and constantly moving forward to hopefully a good and satisfying ending to the story.
I prefer leaving the perception we have of ourselves as the best legacy, but, alas, it's probably not the most honest.
