The inescapable fact of life is that we die. Yea, even Facebookers: one estimate puts the number of US Facebook users who die annually at around 375,000. What happens to all those photographs and wall-posts and status updates? Will their authors have given their password to someone close to them? Or taken out an account with Entrustet, which will enable them to specify which of their digital assets will be preserved and which destroyed?

Again, the answer is: probably not. Some people may not be all that bothered by the thought that no personal records of them will endure.

But many of us would regard it as intolerable. Think of the pleasure we get from old family photographs or the delight that comes from clearing out an attic and finding boxes of love letters, school reports, our first exercise books and old appointment diaries.

Tagged as #toblogabout a couple of days ago, but even more pertinent after today's dConstruct which left me thinking yet more about curation.

Having emptied my family house over the last 6 months, the final paragraph of my selected text resonates with me. I have my school reports. I have my Mum's school reports. I have a lot of family photographs. Weirdly, we have scanned many of these things out of a need to preserve, to protect, to create digital back ups of analog originals.