Friday, September 18, 2009

Leaving a legacy or living a legacy?

In the comment section yesterday, Stephanie Faris said... "It's all about leaving a legacy behind after we're gone. I often wonder...will these blogs and comments still be here 100 years from now? Will people study us to learn more about what it was like living in this century?"

I don't think these blogs (or their comments) will be here in 100 years. They might be archived in some way. I often think that the system could go down and everything lost from before as it comes back up. It happened once my first day as a moderator over at My Writers Circle dot com forum. That is one reason that I'm putting the blog party into book format.

I remember the 386 computer and the large floppy discs. Thank God, it was only months before windows arrived, because I was no good at DOS. My hubby's first computer had punch cards. Can you imagine? I miss the 3.5 discs and we seem to have a hard time sharing our external 3.5 driver (someone takes it to his office and leaves it there and the person he shares with - me - bought it, so I expect sharing to mean it is here part of the time).

Now we have thumb drives and they last a nano second in the big scheme of my needs for data storage. I have never found the CD back up to be worth the trouble. As a matter of fact, I've become horrible about backing up my computer because of them.

I just purchased an external drive back up and have not been able to get it to perform to my expectations based on the cost. Maybe I'll go by Staples and see if they still sell the 3.5 discs.

What I do part of the time with a few important files to email them to myself from my desk top to my lap top computers.

It is hard to imagine that not everything we do will be kept. NASA didn't keep the original tape of the moon walk, so what is the likelihood that what I write will be kept. I do hope a copy or two of my printed books survive a hundred years, someone's will.

Learn more about Stephanie here: http://www.blogger.com/profile/10461865229341760836

6 comments:

  1. To live life to the full and leave an essence of us behind -certainly the stuff we'd like to be remembered for - would be a wonderful accomplishment. A good, thought-provoking post, Nadine! x

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  2. Well I will leave my copies of your books to my daughter, she never throws books away,like her mum, so she will pass them on too!

    You might like to pop over to my blog sometime and read about my travel companion ;0

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  3. Oh my gosh, Glynis! Wow! I love your pic and the review. You are a sweetheart for sure! Thank you!

    http://www.glynissmy.com/2009/09/my-travel-companion-book-review.html

    May I quote you on my website?

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  4. Thanks, Carol Anne. We have Stephanie to thank for the topic. I like your comment too.

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  5. You might look into Google Documents as an offsite backup location for your important stuff. I've been fooling around with it, and while it's not perfect, it is a handy way to move my documents to a safe location that I can then access from any computer anywhere. It also has a rudimentary word processing function, so I can even do work in it.

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  6. Hello Paul, that is worth checking out. Thanks for the tip.

    When we were team writing, my friend and I used something on Yahoo so that we could share the latest 'edition' easily.

    I am honestly okay with not being remembered. Sounds strange and I never gave it any thought until now.

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