I store ICQ logs since the very first day I used it (and till the last). All e-mail conversations with friends over more than a decade. Sms since the first phone sophisticated enough to allow export to PC. Seems like I’m very attached to keeping logs.
More generally I have a huge attraction to patterns, which are e.g. architecture, works of literature and art, genomes of biological species, geologic formations, history of the Earth and then humanity. And are losing some of such patterns all the time. They go into oblivion never to return. Extinct species, Library of Alexandria, cities bombed down to the ground. What unites these patterns is that they are, in a broad sense, history. Everything that we’ve lost was there once. And I consider it a great misfortune that these patterns are lost forever.
There is some hope though. What if we became so much more technologically advanced as to be able to create reverse Laplace’s demon. Does not seem likely though. Especially if we are interested in several millennia (at least) of history reconstruction.
What I’m hoping for is that we are being monitored and recorded by some non-intervening aliens, who will tell us our story. When we are grown up enough to hear it. Imagine you can trace your ancestry since our exodus from Africa. Or we can know answers to all the historic mysteries, how the pyramids were built, culture of native American civilizations, see Mitochondrial Eve. It may be impractical for aliens to keep such detailed logs, but can I at least hope?
Also I’m a bit worried, what we may see. Imagine seeing now a video of a tantrum you threw being a kid. Would be kinda embarrassing, right? And we.. did much worse stuff than screaming and whining. We killed and mutilated each other in the names of gods, emperors and whatnot. We lied, stole and betrayed.
Good that find this embarrassing at least. Means we’ve grown up a bit.