Confessions of an Information Hoarder

Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. It makes us feel like we’re moving forward through time, rather than standing still or running in circles. My grandmother and her ancestors knew this all too well. Artful forgetting, editing, and curation allowed them to craft narratives that helped their children understand the past and orient towards the future... See more

The web has an almost infinite capacity for storage and memory yet its prevailing use is an acceleration of ephemerality. The reasons for this are complex to say the least (of which financial short term gain is probably the most prevalent). But this doesn’t mean the tendency can’t be resisted. Perhaps books as well as their online siblings could be... See more

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have ... See more