{"id":563316,"date":"2019-03-28T03:35:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T10:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-project&p=563316"},"modified":"2021-05-11T05:47:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T12:47:28","slug":"the-future-of-looking-back","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/the-future-of-looking-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Looking Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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While we tend to think of most digital things as only having a shelf life of a few years, the reality is that we’re now taking digital photos, and keeping digital items, for long enough that we have to start thinking about the consequences of using them for reminiscing in the future and passing them on to our offspring. This project explored what it might mean to inherit someone else’s digital as well as physical belongings and it asked how we might use digital technology to reflect on our own lives.<\/p>\n

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Technology + Time<\/h3>\n

This idea of thinking about technology over extended lengths of time is a primary motivator for HXD. It seems quite striking how our relationship with technological objects and digital \u201cthings\u201d has become quite fleeting.\u00a0We no longer expect to buy a phone or an mp3 player and keep it more than a few years. We have become used to the idea that something better is just around the corner and are quite prepared to abandon what\u00a0we have now to get it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Green imperative here, of course, as there is in much of what we do now. It seems unsustainable to continue throwing these physical items into landfills, and we either need to change that habit, or find a way of making the cycle less onerous. In Cambridge we\u2019re interested in this ethical dimension, of course, but more broadly we really seek to understand what it means to have an attachment with our things that extends beyond such short periods of time. There are items that we keep and treasure in our homes already, but these tend not to be technological, beyond the odd collection of ancient video games that a few individuals don\u2019t seem to be able to part with. Why do we keep some things, and not others?<\/p>\n

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The Role of Objects in Our Lives<\/h3>\n

We are trying to think about this more broadly because our relationship to the things we keep matters not only for physical items, but, we assume, also for the megabytes of data that we\u2019re creating. It is common, for example, to keep and display printed photos in our home. They act as touchstones for us to people and events in our past. They tell visitors to our homes something about us through the choices we make of their content, where they are placed and the prominence they are given. And because these items are physical, their condition tells us something too. They acquire a patina of their own that tell us stories of use. Fingerprints on glass show that attention was paid to them. Nicks and scratches on the frame show how well they were taken care of. So these items help us remember; tell others something about us through our environment; and tell their own story of use as objects.<\/p>\n

Is this true of the new digital things in our lives? Is this true, for example, for the thousands of digital photos that many of us are now taking every year? To some extent it may be too early to tell. Our relationship to digital content is still a relatively new one. So part of the work we\u2019re doing in Cambridge is to extrapolate out to try and anticipate how our relationship with digital things will change once we ever get used to having them around over the long term. This is a complex space to design for. It is\u00a0impossible to predict what items a person will keep and put on display in their home. How can we know what\u2019s likely to be precious to them? An object that seems worthless to one person may be charged with sentiment for another.<\/p>\n

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The Role of Objects Beyond our Lives<\/h3>\n

This question of the role of sentiment extends past our own lifetimes, just as the objects themselves are likely to outlive us. What happens to them at the end of our lives? Just as our physical things live on past us, sometimes becoming a part of the lives of our offspring, other family or friends, this will surely be true of our digital items.<\/p>\n

The process through which objects are passed on through the generations is complex. Sometimes when we receive things from the deceased it\u2019s through an act that was deliberate and thought out. They intended us to get an item. Sometimes, though, it\u2019s entirely accidental. We may receive heirlooms from them simply through the process of their homes and lives being disassembled.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the things that we inherit are welcome, and we\u2019re happy to have them and integrate them into our own lives. We might even put them on display in our own homes. Other times we\u2019re not so happy, and they seem incongruous with the ways in which we live. Maybe we don\u2019t find them attractive, or they\u2019re not very meaningful. Often, even though they are not things we would have chosen to own, they come with a sense of obligation that doesn\u2019t allow us to part with them. We\u2019d rather keep them in a box in the basement than dishonour the memory of the deceased by discarding them. In some senses they are burdensome.<\/p>\n

Predicting which heirlooms we might actually feel sentimental about is a challenge. Our parents may THINK that they can predict what we would like to inherit, for example, but often the reality is different. The memories of our own childhood can be quite different from theirs, and therefore the artefacts we feel sentimental about can also be different.<\/p>\n

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