Just imagine, for the sake of argument, that everything you say or do can be recorded for posterity. This isn’t really such a stretch — we are already giving up our collective privacy for the convenience of carrying around those smart phones in our pockets.
So suppose that every gesture you make gets recorded, and instantly baked into a server somewhere. I would argue that this creates an opportunity.
With the appropriate supporting technology, you will be able to see yourself in earlier moments. In fact, you will be able to layer on those moments, creating various avatars of yourself.
One can imagine a new way of dealing with one’s past, one’s legacy. Not through regret, but through creative editing. If there was something about yourself that you didn’t like, you will be able to use technology to purge it — to remake yourself, to become pure.
I’m not so sure this will be a good thing…
“we are already giving up our collective privacy for the convenience of carrying around those smart phones in our pockets”
Many people are, but by no means all of us.
True. These days I generally walk around without a cell phone on me, and I don’t miss it. But I do think, despite a few hold-outs such as yourself and myself, that it is something we are doing collectively.
Regret is defined by M-W as “sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one’s control or power to repair”.
The ability to edit out regret is a seductive dream. But purity? That would take away your humanity — you’d be held to the same standard as Adam and Eve in the garden. And your returned innocence would keep you forever naive. Perhaps the editing should have a threshold where you are only able to purge the deepest of sorrows. You can erase the ones that still devastate, but the ones that gave you character have to remain….
I totally agree!