Passdown Project
Exploring how we "pass down" things to our children and grandchildren in an increasingly digital world
Passdown Project
Essay: The digital death of collecting - by Kyle Chayka - Kyle Chayka Industries
Kyle Chaykakylechayka.substack.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…
Benjamin’s library was a personal monument, the same kind that we all construct of things we like or identify with. Its importance was dependent on permanence — collections are made up of things that we own, that don’t go away unless we decide they should. “Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects,” Benjamin wrote.... See more
Kyle Chayka • Essay: The digital death of collecting - by Kyle Chayka - Kyle Chayka Industries
How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.
Julian Barnes • The Sense of an Ending
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?
Charlie Warzel • Confessions of an Information Hoarder
Community archives sites locally in nodes
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... See more