On de-cluttering, digitization (and disappearing) of our footprints...

The other day when I was walking around the block, I came upon a few boxes of "free stuffs" that people put on the street, the stuffs that they intend to throw out that someone else might find interests in. I found a few things of interests. In them, I found a couple of old books, old prints hardcover books that were from the 19th century. There were inscriptions in the front pages, notes of gift to some friends, one of them had notes from a god-parent to the child. 

I don't really have any needs for these old books, but for some reasons, I felt compelled to take them, almost as if I felt the needs to save these very old artifacts from going to the landfill. Part of me too, felt soothed when holding something so ancient in my hands, it feels so real when I touch those yellowed pages and tattered covers.

And so, when I read the New York Times article about de-cluttering, I truly feel for it.

Articles like this are almost always written by older folks feeling nostalgic about a fast disappearing era where there are physical artifacts to touch, to feel, to keep, to past down to the next generations, the same way I would have felt for those old books. The larger social trend though, is moving in the opposite direction.

I bought my first Nook for my kids more than a few years ago out of necessity. In the past, whenever we go on road trips, my kids would load up on books, borrowed from library. That works out fine since they could bring as many books as they want and put them in the car. (They usually bring 25-30 books each time.) That won't do when we go overseas as it becomes too cumbersome bring all those physical books. The Nook was almost a godsend since they can bring as many e-books as they want, and they can read on their own device. These days, they've built up their own digital library of hundreds of books, and they can read them anywhere, anytime. How else could you bring the complete Sherlock Holmes collection, and all the Jane Austen's books, and all the books with you all the time? There's simply no way it can be done physically, and digital copy is an elegant solution to a practical problem.

The kids love it because they have become used to all things digital. While they still read physical books from school and library, they are used to having everything else in softcopy. I'd actually argue that all those studies that equate kids' academic performance to the number of books at home are rather outdated because those studies simply do not have the empirical evidence from homes that have gone digital. In other words, for kids that are older, I don't think they read any less than on e-books than they would otherwise have with physical books. Well, not for my kids anyways.

I would say though, that it would still matter for very young kids to learn reading with a physical book, read by some adults to them physically. That makes a much bigger impact when their very young brain is still forming and needs to learn from touch and feel. But, that's a different story.

There is no doubt, however, that my kids would have missed out on a connection to a past era when there will no longer be any physical artifacts to be had. These days, we don't write letters, we don't buy books, we don't keep the physical stuffs. The home is so clear of everything, it's like a neo-minimal furniture showroom, with nothing on the shelf except a few pot plants.

Even this journal that I'm writing, this blog that I've really just meant for my kids to read, a journal that I would otherwise have kept and written in my long hand, would evaporate in the ether, should blogger.com cease to exist. All that it takes, is for someone to pull the plug on this blogger.com server, and all these years' of journal entries will be gone. 

I sometimes feel ambivalent about that kind of minimal footprint. There will come a day when I pass away, and there will be very few artifacts that connect back to me, except these binaries. I generally don't mind it, but I'm beginning to think that I should really discuss this with my kids, of how their generation would treat this subject. Do they really need - or want - physical artifacts to remember me by? If so, maybe I should start building a collection for some time capsule for them someday.