MNEMOSINE human digital heritage

Throughout our life, we produce various digital contents, stored on different devices and digital formats. For instance  photos, movies, mail, writing, informatic code, etc...This set of personal data is what we call the human digital heritage.

These data used to be stored mainly on personal hard disks, but nowadays, a lot of content is on the "cloud", through corporate services as Google (for instance Picasa photo storage service, gmail mail service), or Microsoft (msn instant messager, hotmail mail service), or social networks (FaceBook, LinkedIn), but you may also consider video services as Youtube, etc...

These digital traces that we left on the digital space may seem innocent. However, they are important for our relatives, because they are part of our identity:

Some of these data, for instance photos and videos, are unvaluables in a familial context.
Some others data, as writing, articles, informatic code, are unvaluables in an historical context.

The digital technology allows for this digital heritage to be available to futures generations, as our children. It should be a fundamental right to be free to transmit these data ("memory duty"), as well as being capable to erase them ("right to be forgotten").

However, there is no existing structure capable to give us these rights for such period of time. Indeed, the only existing actors technologically capable to address such services are private companies. However, these structures may not be adapted to the ethical debate, and we can not expect that they will still exist for transgenerational period of time.

Mnemosine consists in setting on a reasonable framework allowing to anyone to dispose of an appropriated digital space to constitute and preserve his numerical heritage, in order to transmit it in a familial or historical context.

Human digital heritage is today a reality for most of us

Let us give to it the framework that it deserves.