Digital Detritus

We had dinner with friends the other night in a lovely Country Club home, a home none of us owns.  On sabbatical from their college in Maryland, they caught wind of a Wesleyan professor who would be in Switzerland for the year, which is how they ended up in this home.

It was a fun evening filled with good food and lively conversation.  After dinner, as plates were being cleared and coffee was being poured, Mark and I wandered into the living room to see what we could learn about said Wesleyan professor and family.  First, we scanned their CD collection, which was both eclectic and large.

While running my fingers along the spines of the cases, though, I had a realization that caught me off guard. Whatever I hoped to learn about them from their taste in music would be old news already.  Why?  Because I bet that this professor hasn't bought an actual CD since iTunes manhandled the music industry.  That meant that the stories I was culling from all these bands were at least five years old.  Hardly revealing, unless I was studying history.

And that's when I realized that bookshelves are on the verge of becoming archival, too, as more and more people push their favorite authors onto Nooks and Kindles.

Whatever is a nosy visitor to do?

Sure, there's still the medicine cabinet, but I've never been a fan of trolling someone else's bathroom vanity, unless I had some dinner stuck in my teeth.

And, since I've already got David Macauley on my brain this week, I find myself recalling his strangely brilliant children's book titled "Motel of the Mysteries."  Set 2,000 years in the future, it tells the tale of an amateur archeologist who happens upon the remains of a motel destroyed in a 1985 natural disaster.  The discoverer of this future Pompei, he begins unearthing pieces of daily life--from a "Do Not Disturb" sign to a skeleton atop a toilet seat.  What follows are his wild theories of an ancient religion revealed in this "archaic burial chamber" he has discovered. 

What on earth will people use in the not-so-distant future to make sense of the lives of others?  What happens to our stories--both intended and unintentional--that once were told by the books we read, the albums and CDs we collected, the odd gathering of tchotchkes on our dusty shelves?  Surely, no one will ask to see our iPads or Kindles to learn more about us.  Surely, no one will privately peruse our electronics to learn more about us.

Well, maybe no one except the NSA.

What a sad side effect of our digital living, that so many conversation starters, so many opportunities to learn more about each other have been digitized to death and we are left with nothing but air and ear buds and digital detritus that tell us little about the people who surround us.