One day, I might be leaving a “digital time capsule” for my children instead of handing off a shoebox filled with old photographs.
I guess the digital time capsule would be in the form of an id and password, not a 2TB hard disk drive. The id and password will give access to my personal archive of digital photo collections and scanned documents which will be stored in the “cloud”, meaning it won’t matter where the physical location of the storage would be. Just an access would suffice.
Perhaps I would have to pay a sum of money for the data to be preserved for quite an extended period. Or, it is possible that a company like google would provide the service for free (while maintaining the rights to dig through the materials without linking it to my identity). Even a government might be able to do it for tax-paying citizens.
Who knows if, one day, that quite a number of people would prefer “permanent” digital information access service to a physical tomb in order to remember the deceased? Instead of driving several hours to a cemetery, the family members might gather at a home or a restaurant and log in to the service in front of a screen.
Which would be more authentic? Access to the files left by the deceased or that person’s tomb?