There’s a hot idea right now about feeding someone’s whole digital life into the LLM woodchipper (something like rewind.ai (archive)), and somehow that will be useful. I’m open to be convinced that this kind of thing will be a net-positive but I’m not so sure.

Personally, I’m a data hoarder. Not in the pathological sense, but certainly more than most people. I used to have a desire to build a “life’s library” where, upon my death, the entirety of my online data would be published to a public site. I’m not sure why this appealed to me. In one sense, it was an atheistic statement - like, look! I don’t care what happens after I am dead! From another perspective, it was the brainchild of a lonely middleschooler: “Look at me! I matter! When I’m gone you’ll all be able to see the sum of me and know - I was messed up, but I was there!”

On a lesser scale, this same attitude does still persist. In fact, I maintain a small archive on this very site of my old projects, posts, and other ephemera. I’m also a big user of the “Download/Export my Data” feaure of social media sites. Although… if you want to read my private messages, posts, or angsty Tumblr threads from the past 15+ years, they won’t be made public any time soon.

To my surprise, as I get older, I am less concerned as I once was with maintaining a public persona (as much as I ever had one anyway.) I am not a full data-privacy hermit, but I don’t necessarily mind letting accounts slide into digital oblivion once in a while either. It’s not a matter of shame - I’m sure no one who spent their youth online has come out unscathed - for the most part, I have no regrets.

Instead, companies that used to seem cool to me, or provided some utility, have just gotten worse. What I’ve come to value most are services that allow me to keep my data on my terms. If, someday, “AI” can help me with that, or use it ethically, then that seems fine to me. Until then, I’m working on keeping control of my own data.

Some posts and resources on the topic I like:

  1. “Social Quitting” by Cory Doctorow (origination of “enshittification”)
  2. “The Rot-Com Bubble” by Ed Zitron
  3. Mastodon… just, in general