[danaris]

Talk to an archaeologist sometime.

Some of the most valuable finds in terms of learning about past societies have been very ordinary things: the everyday objects that we make, use, and keep says so much about us that doesn't get put into official records.

Archival isn't just for entertainment. It's for research, for history, and for remembering and understanding where we've come from.

[ShroudedNight]

There's a line in an old Time Team episode about how Phil Harding [I think] had found one of the most exciting things an archaeologist could find: [Totally deadpan] "A ditch."

Indeed, the things that make good historical evidence are very frequently rather counter-intuitive.

[glofish]

how about the current era, where every human generates thousands of photos per year ... is that a history worth remembering and will it help where we've come from?

I am not saying to not study history, I am saying storing everything is probably worse than storing half of it.

[danaris]

Aside from the pictures of the insides of purses or completely blurry and incomprehensible ones, yeah, it's worth remembering, and it will help understand where we've come from if we can preserve it for the next few centuries. Especially since so much of it is time- and geo-tagged. That kind of dataset is an absolute gold mine for people studying history.

Seriously, talk to some people whose field this is, or at least look up some things by or about them.