Why do we keep things?

Musings from the attic- why do we keep things?

Here’s an interesting blog post that talks about why humans keep things, and makes reference to a study done by Microsoft in the UK about what they called the “home archiving of cherished objects.”  It struck me as a bit weird at first that a high-tech company would spend money to  research a subject as quaint as home archiving.  But then I thought about just how much all the data that’s being uploaded and forever archived on the internet has the potential to fundamentally change how future generations will recall their own digitized pasts.  Some people have even gone as far as to attach wearable video cameras to themselves and record every minute of their lives (they’re called “lifeloggers“).  But even if computers can one day store everything and do much of the hard work of remembering for us, we’ll still need our human brains to interpret and give meaning to all that massive amount of data.