The Future of Looking Back

Description

What will we leave behind in this new digital age? As digital technology takes an ever-increasing role in our lives, one question is how we’ll manage our collections after we’re gone. What takes the place of shoeboxes full of pictures and dog-eared record albums? Get an inside look at Microsoft researcher Richard Banks’s thinking about how we might manage the digital artifacts and content we’re creating now—and how we might pass on or inherit these kinds of items in the future.

 About the Microsoft Research Series

 At Microsoft Research, we’re driven to imagine and to invent. Our desire is to create technology that helps people realize their full potential, and to advance the state of the art in computer science. The Microsoft Research series shares the insights of Microsoft researchers as they explore the new and the transformative.

CONTENTS:

Foreword; Introduction; Digital histories; The lens of a designer; Acknowledgments; Part I: Stuff and sentimentality; Chapter 1: Getting sentimental; 1.1 Keeping things safe; 1.2 Keeping things for ourselves; 1.3 Keeping things for an audience; 1.4 Keeping things for legacy; 1.5 A sense of obligation; 1.6 Sentiment, not archaeology; 1.7 Unexpectedly sentimental; 1.8 Family heirlooms; 1.9 A sentimental point of view; 1.10 Heirlooms with function; 1.11 Adding your own layer of sentiment; 1.12 Design challenges; Chapter 2: Attributes of the physical and the digital; 2.1 What’s good about the physical?; 2.2 What’s good about the digital?; 2.3 Design challenges; Chapter 3: Where the physical and the digital meet; 3.1 Bringing the physical and digital closer together; 3.2 A history of stories; 3.3 Exchanging state; 3.4 Design challenges; Part II: A digital life; Chapter 4: Our digital lifespan; 4.1 Infants; 4.2 Growing up; 4.3 Adults; 4.4 Seniors; 4.5 Design challenges; Chapter 5: A digital death; 5.1 A part of due process; 5.2 Nonmaterial legacies; 5.3 Grieving; 5.4 Honoring the dead; 5.5 A continuity of relationship; 5.6 Design challenges; Part III: New sentimental things; Chapter 6: Things and experiences; 6.1 Capturing places; 6.2 Capturing things; 6.3 Capturing people; 6.4 Design challenges; Chapter 7: Recording our lives; 7.1 Logging our lives; 7.2 Playing on the senses; 7.3 A spontaneous relationship to the past; 7.4 Design challenges; Chapter 8: The things we put online; 8.1 Things live all over the place; 8.2 Not places for life; 8.3 Changing notions of the public and private; 8.4 Looking forward; 8.5 Design challenges; Afterword; References; Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 7; Chapter 8;