A friend of mine has just had a baby. The little boy Tom is a cute bundle of flesh and noise and no doubt will be the source of great joy throughout his life, as his parents guide him through to adulthood.....
Having recently advised his father on which laptop to buy, the question of an external hard drive came up. When I asked why he thought he needed one, he pointed at his new born child.
With the surge of digital paraphernalia creating clutter in our living rooms, pockets and handbags, what are we doing with the old leather-bound diaries and photo albums, teenage love letters, important mortgage statements, wills and funeral arrangements?
For me, I have a big box of what I call “memorabilia” where I keep loads of “stuff” that I want to look back through, or show my kids and grandkids when I’m older.
Now that all my photos are digital, I go for paperless statements with the banks and so many travel, theatre and sports tickets are online printouts, I suspect my box won’t grow as rapidly over the next 20 years as it has over the last couple of decades.
But my friend’s need for a 320GB hard drive to store all the memories relating to his first child got me thinking.
If my house was on fire, what would I save? The box or the hard drive?
The box.....every time!
