Why Do I Archive?
January 19th, 2012 | Back to Blog Listing

The back of my childhood house in Manalapan, NJ - August of 1981 (that's me standing next to it)

The back of my childhood house in Manalapan, NJ - June of 2006 (notice the addition over the back room my dad built)
I've had a number of people ask me over the years why I am so interested in collecting and cataloging my life. And second to that is why I am so interested in making it all public. The best I can offer these people is that it brings me great pleasure to see how things change over time, and I am not in any way ashamed or embarrassed to share my life with anyone who is interested to learn about it.

Having spent many years now working in data collection, data aggregation, and various social medias, is that most people really seem to enjoy looking back into their past. In fact, the entirety of the new Facebook model "Timeline" is based on this idea. Obviously there are unbelievable financial incentives for getting people to post an entire history of themselves to Facebook, but that's never really been my goal with this sort of thing.

The reality of the situation for those of us born prior to the late 90s is that there is simply no good way to view our family photos given that nothing was digitized. I've noticed over the years how photo albums are getting corrupted, pictures are fading, and a myriad of other chemical processes are eating away at the photos that I do have. That idea alone has provided me with a significant incentive to have my entire print collection scanned and cataloged on my site as I'd hate to not be able to share that data with future generations.