Honestly, a lot of what you have to say make sense, it does... But then I remember that I still have the emails my wife exchanged almost ten years ago when we first met - and occasionally I do look back at those. And I fall in love with her all over again.
And then there are the random musings from friends who have died or any of a dozen other, slightly less big deal reasons to look back -- and I realize that in fact, those old conversations do matter, to me, often in unpredictable ways.
Your mileage may well vary, but I'd be truly sad if I lost those bits of history. Moreover, I wish I had access to that sort of an archive from my parents or grandparents... So maybe it'll be interesting to my kids. Maybe not. But the thing is, I don't know what's really going to matter and when disk space (on this scale especially) is a so cheap, it seems foolish not to save it.
Agree with this completely. My father died when I was 23. Being a digital packrat, I have every personal email I've ever sent or received. He wrote me quite regularly throughout college and I have all of those emails. All the life lessons and little bits of encouragement. My kids will never know their grandpa, but someday maybe we can share these together and they can learn a bit more about the kind of man he was in his own words, without my filter. They might also like some of the historically interesting ones like:
"Mike, check out this new store: http://www.amazon.com I think it's going to be popular. --Dad"
when disk space (on this scale especially) is a so cheap, it seems foolish not to save it.
This is the critical part for me. I delete the crap because it makes searching harder, but I currently spend $0.01/month backing up every email I've ever exchanged with my loved ones. Maybe I'll never need them, but at $1.20/decade, why would I not stash them? (It is, of course, all automated)
My fiance and I recently went through a bunch of our first emails and chat logs and laughed about it. The effort needed to keep this stuff is almost nil, so why not?
And then there are the random musings from friends who have died or any of a dozen other, slightly less big deal reasons to look back -- and I realize that in fact, those old conversations do matter, to me, often in unpredictable ways.
Your mileage may well vary, but I'd be truly sad if I lost those bits of history. Moreover, I wish I had access to that sort of an archive from my parents or grandparents... So maybe it'll be interesting to my kids. Maybe not. But the thing is, I don't know what's really going to matter and when disk space (on this scale especially) is a so cheap, it seems foolish not to save it.