Sunday, April 05, 2009

If your house were burning...

The age old question of what you would take if your house was burning down (besides your loved ones) takes a new twist when the standard answer of photo albums goes away.

If all your music, books, and photos are stored online. If you no longer carry a wallet because your finger print and retinal scan let you buy what you like, and are sufficient to identify you. As all your records of memories become digital... the 'materialistic' world starts to melt away...

It also makes you have to worry about crime less, since digital material things can't really be stolen. What do people steal that isn't replaceable when CDs and books etc. disappear?

Plenty of things I guess. Art, jewelery etc. An example that I have always wondered about is the wedding band. You end up having an enormous amount of sentimental attachment to a ridiculously expensive piece of gold (and for the ladies with some diamonds)...

How do you replace that if it gets stolen? And it seems to be the most obvious target, especially when ladies start competing for who has the biggest rock.

Being a sentimental hoarder of mementos, I unfortunately can't claim to be completely released of material things yet. But I did consider today when thinking about online backing up of those 'photo albums' that you would grab as you ran from your burning house...

There are considerably less irreplaceable material things.

Which seems like a good thing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?