Artifacts

What three artifacts could someone find in the future that describe you the best?

I would say that the three things that would give someone the best and most complete impression of me would be my computer, my phone, and my fabulous case full of books.

My computer is the perfect artifact for someone to find since it contains a huge amount of info about me.  Now, we're going to pretend that they find my computer exactly as it is now, even though that's unlikely.  Chances are they would find Future Me's computer, which would undoubtedly have some different things.  Anyway, they can find out a lot about me from this thing.  The first thing they see is the desktop.  They see my wallpaper, which tells them that I like a certain tv show.  Nothing too big there, but it's still information.  They also see my desktop icons, which there are very few of, and those that are there are extremely unobtrusive, so they can guess that I dislike having things all cluttered up.  They also have access to my email, my files, and the internet.  If they were to read my email messages, they learn who some of my friends are, what volunteer group I'm a part of, what books I get from the library and how often I get them, what sites I have signed up for, and that recently those sites have been all history related for some odd reason.  When they look at my pictures, they learn what my hobbies are, what my friends, pets, and I look like, some tv shows and movies I like, and they either find out a bit about my sense of humor, or they take those things seriously and think that I'm really really strange and they'll probably feel very confused.  When they look at the rest of my files, they can find my entire music library, as well as many essays and stories I've written in the past.  You can learn a lot about someone from their writing and their likes and dislikes.  They now have a pretty decent picture of who I am.  There's still the internet left to look at.  Keep in mind that search/internet history is a very powerful thing.  The first thing they get when they click the internet icon is my homepage.  They will either think that I'm some wacko who is convinced that the almighty LHC is truly going to destroy the world, or they'll figure out a little more about what I find amusing.  They also have access to all of my bookmarked sites.  From the fact that in my bookmark bar there are only icons (they don't have site names with them) that have been arranged in order by color, they can see how I like to organize things.  Then they either find out more about my sense of humor and what I find amusing, or they just think that I'm an incredibly strange person who cant keep track of the days of the week and looks at blogs consisting entirely of pictures of toast because I am genuinely interested in nicely browned and perfectly crunchy bread.  From the other bookmarks, they find out just how much I like astronomy, and that I watch a lot of movies and shows online.  If they can access my internet history then oh boy will that yield some info for them.  By the time they get through all of this they will know my name, my face, and a whole lot about me.

While my computer gives them a pretty good image of me, the information it supplies is lacking something.  It  has very few records of my conversations with people.  My phone on the other hand, is full of these.  Again, we're pretending that it is my phone in my current state, so it has records of loads of text messages, and this allows them to just go and have a grand old time reading through my conversations.  They can find out how I speak, how my friends speak, what we talk about, and all sorts of other things.  This information can add to, confirm, and disprove things that they determined from looking at my computer (for example, I do, in fact, know what day of the week it is, okay?!).  They will also learn that I use "goon" as some odd mixture of an insult, a term of endearment, and a few other things that I can't remember the words for right now.  I also have pictures on my phone, so they will learn many things such as the fact that that I like dinosaurs and wearing silly hats (and they can infer that I like dinosaurs wearing silly hats as well).  If they take this info and combine it with the info they gathered from the computer, then they have a huge amount of information on me.  Probably not as much as our Google Overlords have, though.  Or maybe more.  I like to think that Google hasn't gained access to my files (or my brain, for that matter).

The third artifact was a bit more difficult to come up with.  I didn't really think that I have one other thing that I could use that would describe me.  My disorganization means that my sketchbook is empty and my drawings are all scattered about, so they all would become individual things, and just one doesn't make a good artifact.  We're only using Current Me's things, so I can't put Future Me's telescope since Current Me hasn't saved up enough money for it yet.  All that I could come up with that was singular was my fabulous case full of books.  Yes, I mean my bookcase.  But I refuse to write it as "bookcase" here because that would just be the case and not the books.  "Fabulous case full of books," on the other hand, makes it obvious that the books are in the case, so they can now be used as my artifact since a fabulous case full of books is singular, even though it contains multiple books.  This works that way, right?  Even if it doesn't, we can pretend it does, can't we?  Okay, let's get on with it.  Even though a decent record of what I checked out from the library is on my computer, the Future People would have an incomplete picture of what I read since it does not include the books I don't check out from the library.  I have books from when I was younger and books from now.  They would be able to get an idea of how my tastes have changed over the years.  Actually it'd more likely that they would think that I read at a 5th grade reading level then every once in a while whip out a nice big book to confuse people.  Or maybe they would think that I'm using the big books to look smart while I'm actually at a 5th grade reading level.  The possibilities are endless.  I sure hope they realize that they're from multiple times in my life, otherwise those poor Future people will feel unnecessarily perplexed.  Regardless of whether they figure this out or not, they can still infer a lot about me.  A book can tell you so much about it's reader.  They could find out all about my interests and possibly a lot about my mind and personality, but how much they figure out in the personality area really depends on how much they want to analyze these things.  Ultimately, the fabulous case of books doesn't add too much to their knowledge about me.  If they knew that I'm referring to it as my fabulous case of books then maybe they could draw some conclusions from that.

So that's that.  Future People can get a pretty impressive amount of information about me from only three artifacts.