Word on the street is that GoWalla is removing some beloved features. It strikes me, seeing the flood of tweets about it over the last few hours, that we are aggressively becoming reliant on temporal features as if they were concrete parts of our historical footprint. Sorry dude, it’s not.
I’ll likely never index my kids’ first day of school snap because I chose to Facebook it like a dumbass. My witty remarks that perfectly capture the iconic moments that seem to define me are lost to history a short 6 hours after I post it.
Ironically, the items that once felt so unattainable because they ended up in a shoebox in a closet are the same ones that my kids flip through on rainy weekend afternoons uncategorized but yet still available. Those same shoeboxes are next to the same fundamentally untagged, uncateragized shoeboxes of my grandparents, with photos, love letters, and initially uninteresting reciepts for the same antiques throughout my house.
How, my friend, are their kids to repeat if my life record is trapped in some random social network (sometimes unfortunately) permanantly stored but virtually unattainable except in the case of evil marketers or the odd chance I run for president?
How, my friend will they find them if that site closes next month? Where does it go?
The fact is, no where. More specifically, no where I can use.
But why?
The answer is 2 parts and obvious.
1.) Who cares? I’m not asking for it, so why invest in figuring it out.
2.) Innovation is lazy and reacts primarily to immediate need. The immediate need is that I want to SHARE not PERSIST.
To #1, this may change. Ney, will change.
To #2, see response to #1.
In my extensive research on the matter, which may be better described as nil, it seems Google is the only significant player who has even moderately attempted to rectify this with their Data Liberation Front initiative. Unfortunately this process is limited to Google assets and doesn’t go beyond getting the data.
While the data will end up in a virtual shoebox like some old snaps and love notes, it’s not really the same. I hardly expect some future 6 year old to parse ancient XML nuggets on rainy afternoons.
Why isn’t there a focus on post sunset data persistence?
Why does GoWalla get away with a heartfelt “Sorry dudes. Chin up. It’s all about future vision and your interesting life didn’t make it” letter with no more than a “Ah, nuts.” flutter of tweets.
Perhaps GoWalla is just that unimportant to our lives. Full disclosure, I never got it. But I sure can appreciate those who did. And, even more, I sure as hell appreciate the social impact such systems have integrated in our lives.
I predict some solution here. Something HAS to surface once the masses start to realize the void left to the ultimately folding areas of the preverbal cloud. If not, drop me a few mil and I’ll put it together.
