As faithful readers (Hi Meg!) will recall, I’ve been scanning old photos into digital form. I’m about halfway done with my photo scanning, which is to say I’ve completed the wedding album and am working through maybe 50 rolls of random 35mm and APS film.

While I was waiting for a scan to complete tonight, I decided to take a look-see though a box of photos from my late great-aunt and uncle, June and John Marcinkevich. One of the first things I found was a nice frame with three kids pictured, and on the back a description of the kids, who are the children of Joe and Kathy. Apparently, they’re the neice and nephew of June and John. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them before. And now that June and John are gone, I’m not sure I’ll ever find out.

Which brings me to today’s deep thought. A lot of people are doing stuff that amounts to putting your entire life in digital form… some colleagues at Microsoft BARC (Bay Area Research Center, the Shoebox Greetings of MSR) are working on this thing called My Life Bits. The idea is straightforward enough: put everything in digital form and store it. No more writing letters, that’s e-mail. Christmas Cards? That’s what Jaquie Lawson is for. Photos? Canon, Nikon, or pretty much every frickin’ phone made is the past year. So it’s easier and easier to record your entire life.

Say June and John did this. And whereever they digitized things had full backup and recovery, so nothing was lost. Would I have any further idea who Joe and Kathy are? Like their last names… or whether or not they’re still alive. How they’re related (I assume on John’s side, as I know my side of the family fairly well).

Knowing one way or the other won’t really affect my life. I doubt these folks live in Seattle, and judging by the photo style the kids are probably grown and gone on with their lives by now. But I found it an interesting lesson in thinking about things such as My Life Bits. When my daughter’s children look at my photos, they’ll probably know who the people are who are in them. But will they know why those people are in them? Will they know the stories that the pictures tell, or just that some people related to them happened to be in front of a camera? In looking at how I arranged my photo gallery, right now, no. There’s just a title for a photo shoot… no names, places, story, or whatnot. I just scanned in a thousand pictures from our wedding. The event needs no explanation besides “Erik Selberg marries Mary Kaye Rodgers.” But that isn’t even the caption… it’s “2000-07-20_Wedding_Pictures.” It’s assumed that it’s our wedding and people viewing it know that…. a grandchild might also, but would a great-grandchild? Or a niece or nephew?

So, looks like I’m going to need to put down some more descriptions of events. Hopefully, I’ll have the patience to do it well, but who knows what I may miss for someone who doesn’t know my history (for example, I now know the importance of last names). But the issue is still there… without some way for people to meaningfully store both the facts and the backstory around their lives, personal histories will still mostly die with the person. I’ll leave the pondering of how to solve this for the comments.

I’ll gripe about the lack of IPTC tomorrow.