We’re undervaluing the legacy possibilities of digital media.
I miss my grandparents — all four of them.
On my dad’s side were Bert (1998) and Eileen (2009) Cavey, and on my mom’s, Jim (2003) and June (1991) McAlpine. I loved these four to the extent that a kid can love his grandparents when separated by 2,100 kilometres.
All four have been gone for a while now, but I’m old enough to remember warm memories and exchanges with each of them. I treasure those random slices of personal history, even as they blur and fade with each passing year.
I wish so much that they were still around. What would it be like to sit down and discuss life with each of them today? I’d love for them to meet my wife and my stepsons, to see my home, to visit the place where I teach.
There’d be a shift from amazement to horror, no doubt, when I tell them the market value — and then the principal owing — on my Vancouver-area home. No doubt they would each have some sage advice for my family life, my career, and the career choices of my wife and stepsons.
They’d be mystified by the hours we spend interacting with screens today, I’m sure. But both my grandfathers would also be secretly impressed, I’d like to think, by the frank level of dialogue that holds forth at our device-free family dinners.
They’d likely be surprised to learn that we’ve dispensed with the once-wonder of cable TV, but relieved to see news now available from a multitude of sources day and night on YouTube.
They’d probably be bothered by the improprieties of our non-denominational church, but hopefully they’d also be pleased by the warmth of community and quality of relationships that we experience there as well.
Silent Memories
Thinking about my grandparents makes me wish that I could consume their content. I wish I could bring up their channel on YouTube and peruse their videos for the hundredth time. I wish I could scroll their Instagram feeds — stretching back to WWII. I wish I could explore their blog posts, and read their articles, and listen to their podcasts.
I mean, just to have the opportunity, the chance, the choice … to go for a drive today and play an audio selection from my Grandpa. From the cloud to my phone — quick and easy. That’d be pretty awesome.
Of course I can’t do that today, and neither can you. Because this internet thing is still, remarkably, only 25 years old.
Building Legacy is Easy
Today’s incredible ease of access to the internet gives us new options. Unlike our grandparents’ generation, we possess all the platforms and tools to let our voice be virtually heard for years and generations to come. We are free to create, design, photograph, perform, speak, and record video in ways that can be enjoyed and interpreted in perpetuity, rendered in digital qualities that withstand the degrading ravages of time.
We have the choice, the means, the power to craft and preserve meaningful digital legacies.
Many of us will say that we don’t want to. We might feel reluctant to step up to the stage, to grab the mic, to pick up the pen, to type some thoughts and hit publish.
We feel as though we have nothing to say, that we have nothing of importance or value to add to this world.
But I say that we do — we all have something to say, to create, to express. Because it’s not really about the striking quality of your ideas, so much as it is about their origin.
It’s about YOU.
Think of your grandparents. Did they feel a similar shyness about expressing their voice? They may have, and yet how amazing would it be today to explore their videos, to relive their joys and passions, to get a sense of their goals and dreams, to understand their heart and concern for others in the world around them.
It would be amazing to understand them better, and in that journey, to understand ourselves better, too.
That. THAT is the gift that the internet offers us and our descendants today. Let’s not let it pass us by.
Tim Cavey 