Basic Instinct, preserving life stories

Preserving life stories and experiences is a basic human instinct. From cave drawings to oral histories to journals to shoe boxes full of photographs to camcorders, people have always sought to preserve their life stories. This instinct fills a base need.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art,
to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time. . .

Excerpts from the Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No longer will preservation of life narratives be the province of a few with the time and means to document their lives in detail. Despite most of the current attention focused on digital, networked representations of the “now”, the more powerful and valuable uses will emerge from stories recorded over time and preserved in accessible and intuitive formats.