Passdown Project
Exploring how we "pass down" things to our children and grandchildren in an increasingly digital world
Passdown Project
I turned forty earlier this March, and as I enter my forties, I’d like to leave a breadcrumb to revisit when I’m fifty.
These four themes are what I intend to be guiding principles for how I live my life and prioritize my time in my 40s:
the idea of leaving a personal digital 'breadcrumb' for 10 years down the line
StoryFile Memories is a cloud-based file storage system in which people can upload all manner of digital artifacts - images, video and sound recording - to become an interactive AI of their "authentic self" intended to live after death and communicate with the bereaved. ( 8 ) With plans ranging from $1 per question to a one-time, all-access price o... See more
Sarah Wambold & Rem Moore: Only Loss
Similarly, I was foolish and didn’t upload my high-school, college, and pre-2013 photos, most of them digital, to the cloud. Thanks to a damaged hard drive and a lost computer, most of these photos are gone, creating a massive hole in my life. What does it mean that my digital likeness, save for some Facebook photos, begins so late? Are the memorie... See more
Charlie Warzel • Confessions of an Information Hoarder
Otto - AI biographer
landing.ottowrites.co
6/ To add a bit more color:
- the last major innovation in history and how we experienced it was Wikipedia, which was a landmark
- LLMs and AI now offer a new modality to store information and make it experiential
- even then, the methods by which we collect primary data for history, and how we make it discoverable, need to be updated for the mode... See more
Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry - Philosophy & Technology
link.springer.com
In the mid-1990s, Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Robyn Fivush developed a measure called “Do You Know?” It had a series of 20 questions, including: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth? It turned out that having the answers to these questions was the single best predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness. Children who know more about their families tend to do better when they face challenges, be more resilient, and moderate the effects of stress. Our family’s story—our history—is linked to our own personal identity and knowing that we belong to a larger family. “Children who have the most self-confidence have . . . a strong 'intergenerational self.’ They know they belong to something bigger than themselves,” said Dr. Duke…
Sarah Wambold & Rem Moore: Only Loss
donotresearch.substack.com
We have more public information than ever, but what if there is also less transmission of more personal information between people—especially between generations. What is lost if our digital heirlooms become inaccessible to close relatives? What is lost if estates do not donate prominent people's cloud data to university archives?