First the Breakup. Then the Screenshots.

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

A laptop donation might actually be the easy scenario. The archivists I spoke with told me they’re all bracing themselves for the moment when, inevitably, a public figure donates their smartphone. It is in some ways the most personal kind of donation someone can make, offering access to text and WhatsApp histories, photos, Tinder messages, saved re... See more

In the end, to move through the world is to experience encounters that constantly pass us by, and to brush up against moments that we are not able to save other than as an unreliable memory. The increasing popularity of apps like BeReal that capture those moments—rather than try to contain and display them—seems to reflect an embrace of life’s flee... See more

This screen-centric visual experience has a lot going on: photographs and videos and vector graphics and overlapping chat windows pressed up together with spreadsheets and reminders that updates are ready to install if only I’d let them. It’s the everything-screen! And so I feel called to frame and claim and digest it all. I have limited control ov... See more

My friends are always obliging me with ephemera like this—screenshots of sexts, emails to their mothers—because I’m forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people. What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course none of these artifacts really amounted to anything; it was like trying to grab smoke by its ha

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