I was reading a thread on a music forum and the participants were lamenting the rise of “anniversaries”. When I first got into the thread, I thought they were going to be complaining about anniversary reissues, as a lot of 80’s big hits are now hitting 30-yr anniversaries, and some later ones are nearing 25-yr milestones. But surprisingly to me, it was something else.
Specifically, the jab was at a music news outlet making posts like “7 years ago on this day, we reviewed this album.” Ok, that’s a little weird. First in that it’s not a standard milestone like 5, 10, or 15 years, and also that it’s something they did. As if the world needs to remember the awesomeness of something they did… 7 years ago.
The consensus was that it was just a “slow news day” or a way of making a post to fill things up. As bloggers, I suppose we’re all guilty of such things. Although to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever done a “year in review” or “in case you missed this” post with links to my nearly 10 year archive of shit. Maybe because a vast majority of it is shit, or maybe because I respect you enough to expect you to use search or tags or categories to find what you want.
But that forum thread gave me a lead-in for a post I’ve wanted to make for a while. I just keep forgetting about it, which is ironic. With this concept of rehashing old stuff to other people, there is also a different rehashing going on, the rehashing of your own stuff to you. (#rehash?) Specifically, I’m talking about Facebook Memories. Not having FB myself anymore, I hear about the things I’ve done via my GF, whose life is documented on FB. “Remember when we did this last year?”, “Looks like five years ago we were doing this.” and on and on, each day.
On one hand, it’s kind of insane to think that life is moving so quickly and events are so superficial that we need to be reminded of what happened to us a year ago. On the other hand, more fingers. The idea of reminding people what they did for their own benefit is not new. 10 years ago (I swear this is just a coincidence), Microsoft Research presented SenseCam to help improve the memory of those with Alzheimer’s.
Facebook “On This Day” was introduced five years later, in 2015. And I think I might have been on FB at the time, but I do remember (without the use of any technology) the small backlash it caused, like “Thanks for reminding me my dad is dead, Facebook.” But the feature stuck around, and now with much more data to work with, I guess it’s become more accepted?
Anyway, the point I was writing about is that it will be curious to see in 20 years or so, undoubtedly in an anniversary post or something, if FB’s looking-back feature has had any diminishing effect on Alzheimer’s. Maybe as we age, the Ai will start showing you things that happened a few months ago or last week.
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