Smart Memories?

It is always interesting reflecting on the past - looking back at the things you used to say, the clothes you used to wear and the friends you used to have. Sometimes you wonder 'What on earth was I doing?', whilst other times you are left dealing with the feeling of nostalgia and longing for the good ol' days.

Dusting off the blog is allowing me to walk down memory lane. The world we live in today is a bit like that isn't it? Rather than sitting on the floor, flicking through old journals as if they were portals into the past giving us insight into who we used to be - today we scroll and click. We click on the photos of the past to jog us back to a time when a select group of individuals paid you enough attention to 'like' a particular moment of time. Are they still 'liking' those moments? If not, how come? Can we put this down to a friendship merely fading?

We scroll down the page, looking at comments, posts and updates that allow us to piece together how we were feeling at that very particular point of our lives. 2011 was filled with crowded photos, messy updates and questionable remarks from peers, while 2012 was filled with new faces, scenic landscapes and foreign memories. Will we ever realise just how dependent we are on these digital accounts of our lives as a means to relive our adolescent memories? Will we be sitting with our children, our grandchildren with an iPad in hand - clicking 'On This Day' to recreate the stories that have filled our lives to date?

Working in an industry that essentially 'sells the future', I often get stuck in trains of thought that lead me to wonder what 'normal' is going to look like in the years to come. I would classify myself in a generation of change, and I like to think of us as the 'disrupting the world of disruption.' We are a generation that is so used to change that the core meaning of the word is losing it's value. I believe that in years to come - 'resistance to change' won't be a phrase once muttered. No longer will resistance be the issue, but desire to change to take its place.

We are changing who we are through what is happening around us. We are changing our memories, our dependency on the written word and printed photograph to store our history. Our memories will never be black and white to the people of the future, we have changed to full coloured, 3D, panoramic visuals in the tap of a phone as we transition into an age of decorating the present with digital imprints for the future.