An interesting reflection by Russian author Pavel Subbotin edited by Michael Walsh.

Ours will be the first generation in history to leave behind no tangible trace of ourselves.

We will not leave physical letters, documents, communications, memorabilia, or photographs. Future generations will not have touchable proof that we existed.

Our generation left its written and printed memories for us. Past generations also did so. We can read these memories and wonder about them. We have the opportunity to reflect and learn from them.

Living past lives

As a result, we were able to relive their past lives. We could revisit their personal experiences by looking at our forefathers’ mementos and photographs. We also explored their reminiscences.

Such image and penned memorabilia lived on in our souls. Here, we had a physical link with past lives. It connected us especially to friends and family. Fate had invited us to love and share our lives with them.

The lost nostalgia

There is the lost nostalgia of lives experienced and shared with those who come after us. This feeling is as intense as it is personal. Later, you realize it wasn’t the right one because it is as human history intends.  

The generation taking our places will not leave letters or photographs. They will not leave memorabilia in documents and diaries. We cannot hold, stroke, and personally relate to these.

A barren world without keepsakes

With what will we yearn because of what used to be the tangible evidence of earlier existences?

We will not leave our handwriting. We won’t leave the worn, crumpled, folded paper.

The notes and stamped envelopes with addresses, stamps and postmarks will remain. The names of those to whom and from whom they were intended will also stay.

We will not leave behind snapshots. They will all disappear in the electronic hustle and bustle.

How do you write on the back of a laptop?

Even now, we can’t take out our photo albums. We can’t even write on the backs of mementoes and keepsakes. There are no backs to letters, envelopes, and photographs…. or laptops and Smartphones.

I have nowhere to write that this is me, and this is Zhenya, this is Masha, this is us. Then, there, it was good. I can’t turn them over in my hands, I can’t be silent, I can’t remember.

The chain of the past is broken

And when we are gone the way of our forebears, we won’t be able to pass them on to others.

We won’t leave the images of our faces and the incidents and experiences that created the milestones of our lives. Ourselves and those who were our universe, our life, our thoughts in the deepest of nights and over breakfast.

The forgotten, unrecorded past

We won’t leave journals, records, or our diaries. Short, long, clever, or not. No one will be able to read what we were like and what our days were like.

We ourselves, in time, won’t be able to read them. We didn’t start them. We didn’t continue them. We didn’t print them out for ourselves, our children, or anyone else.

The vanishing generation

We will be the first generation to leave no trace of ourselves. Our entire life is stored electronically.

What happens when computers age and burn out? What happens when disks, flash drives, and social media servers disappear? If only, what then?

There will be no memoirs, diaries, notes, letters, or photographs from different years.

The broken threads of our existence

There will be no biographies, no handwriting, no anything that remains for someone as a thread to us, gone forever. We’ll be the first to vanish without a trace.

Hello, age of gadgets, computers, and social media. You’ve managed to erase us.

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