...Scripta Manet

Since around 2006 the greeting on my cellphone's main screen has read Verba Volant.. ("words fly away)".  I put this to remind myself that whatever is said through the phone is temporal, to be lost in the ether of time and fiber optics.

I'd like to eventually obtain tasteful stationary which on its bottom includes the second phrase which completes the Latin expression: ...Scripta Manet ("words remain/are forever").  At the time I updated my phone greeting I considered making ...Scripta Manet my Gmail signature (I decided against e-mail signatures in general).  I created my Gmail account in 2005 - the service was a dream realized for archivist like myself.  Google advertised Gmail then as allowing you to never have to delete another message - to be able to save everything.  This now standard feature was revolutionary for those using AOL or our college e-mail servers.  I think then Gmail allotted each account 1GB in storage, which at that time was essentially infinity (Gmail was the everyman's first cloud storage system - when my fellow master's students asked how they were supposed to be able to move or store large quantitative data files around for their theses, our professor simply remarked, "Well, Gmail accounts are free...")

"Verba Volant..." reminder on my flip-phones home screen.  Note the 2013 dumb phone usage...

One of the more popular mobile apps today is Snapchat, which allows you to message self-destructing photos.  There are also analogous text versions (OneShar.es or PrivNote).  I can't even fathom this.  The only reason I could imagine would be, as some have suggested, is to send dirty pictures.  Otherwise these services are in direct contrast to what I perceive the point of a photo or purposefully writing a letter would be: you want to remember an image, a person or place or event.  I've never found an old photo, handwritten letter, or even e-mail that I don't consider priceless.  I wonder if twenty years from now there might be slight pangs of collective regret for at least some of the destroyed images.

I've used e-mail regularly since the late 1990s.  Our first inboxes were confined by small storage spaces.  Typically, old messages would self-delete after 30 days.  It's gut-retching to imagine how much loss occurred.  I probably used AOL, AIM, and GW's e-mail almost every single day from 1998 through 2003.  These messages would have formed an accidental diary, and what a treasure-trove it would be: a time capsule of our thoughts on daily life, our turn-of-the-century routines, clues to memories we've forgotten, and perhaps most preciously, words from friends and family no longer with us.  AOL or GW could literally name their price if they were able to sell my recovered e-mails.

I think I'm among the last generation that will ever have large parts of their lives undocumented.  Between permanent e-mail and especially social media, with ubiquitous photo and imaging hardware, I can't image how anyone growing up today won't have detailed depictions of their daily lives recorded.  It's almost too much information, and the appeal of Snapchat or checking-out of more permanent communication methods is that the past won't return to haunt you one day.  I'm curious what will happen when the children of this generation eventually grow up to comb their parents' whiny Facebook posts.  Some friends' children will lose as much respect for them as I have.

I know in someone's dusty photo album in some closet somewhere there are dancing photos of myself I'd turn beet-red to see.  I'm also sure that, many of my old e-mail or instant messenger conversations would be cringe-worthy if I were ever to read them.  How lame, how corny I'd seem!  I know for a fact many of my high school friends never want to look back at those years, and would rather pretend those years never happened.  But,  they did happen, and this is the only life we're given, the only awkward period we're given.  They're unique stories - our stories - and for that reason, even only privately, it's worth it to embrace them.