this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Web Development

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How to handle the erasure of your 'digital legacy'? (self.webdev)
submitted 1 year ago by TechyDad to c/[email protected]
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I've been struggling with something for a while now and ironically a sitcom from the 80's finally helped me pinpoint the problem. My TV was on for background noise and I noticed that it was an episode of Family Ties. In the episode, Elyse Keaton was having a problem. A prominent building that she designed was being torn down and replaced by a cookie cutter mini-mall. She was struggling with her "legacy" - her mark on the world - disappearing. After the building was gone, what evidence would there be that Elyse Keaton was there?

I'm facing a similar issue. I don't like getting into my day job too much online (for various reasons), but suffice it to say that applications that I developed for decades are being sunset/replaced. I've developed quite a lot over the decades, but eventually it would all be replaced. Once it is, what will I have as "proof that TechyDad was here"?

How do you handle the existential crisis of our works being digital and transient versus having an actual, physical product?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I revel in the knowledge that entropy will erase us all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition
(copied from Wikipedia)

[–] MrPoopyButthole 5 points 1 year ago

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

        I am the grass. 
        Let me work.
[–] TechyDad 1 points 1 year ago

Oh, there's definitely upsides to that. There are posts I made to Usenet in my college years that I'm glad have been swallowed up by time and consigned to oblivion. I would hate it if all of those embarrassing moments were to suddenly resurface and become a permanent part of my present and future life.

But the idea that EVERYTHING that I've done will vanish freaks me out. Yeah, this is definitely a midlife crisis coming on.