The Well-Documented Childhood

I marvel at the amount of time we parents spend filming our families, especially our children. Us kids of the 70s were captured on Super-8, but not to the extent of subsequent generations.

How does the pervasiveness of video affect our memories of our pasts, our childhoods? It would seem to enhance references, enable better connections to ourselves as youths later.

But some new adults must also recognize developing traits of theirs they dislike in video of long ago and wonder whether they could have been changed somehow. Others might use their well-documented pasts as foils, as starting points for revision, redesign, revolt.

Added October 6, 2002
By Eddie "Wood" O'Neil