“The written word will remain”
Which words will we leave as our legacy?
What we have published in books and magazines, or what we have published on blogs and ezines and Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook…?
A few years ago I set about inputting all of our known family data into a family tree program. Like most people, I can only manage to go back a few generations, and I hit a solid wall with my great grandparents. More than that, the only thing I know of my great grandparents are a few fading stories and a couple of blurry photographs, unsmiling, taken in middle age. They were probably my own age but they look much older. I’m surprised to hear that my particularly stern looking great-grandmother was a jovial woman, always laughing.
If I’m ever anyone’s great-grandmother, what will a family-tree enthusiast know of me? I lot, if they want to dig deep. We’re the first truly documented generation. Those of us on the Internet, we’re all authors.
Header illustration: Thomas Webster – A Letter From the Colonies 1852
