But what's separating it from its current state and its full potential is the difference between active and passive interneting. The difference between the individual and the community. The question of what makes history; events or the lives of those involved in those events. Greatness is in the details. We are all protagonists of our very own story. A story that leads up to times and places that might one day become major events that are remembered for centuries by millions. Or remembered only by us until the day we pass. Either way, those events are only half the story. It's the stories of the people involved and how their lives led them to that exact moment that really makes that moment reach its full potential. It's the Magnolia of the day to day. The frogs falling from the sky is only a magnificent conclusion after you've witnessed all that has led up to that moment.

I was reminded of something just of this nature tonight. I decided at work that I would come home and bull my dress shoes. Something I learned about back in March through my favorite site kottke*, and have wanted to try for a while now. And the same held true. The result can only be fully appreciated by someone who has undertaken the process. Who has experienced what its like to meticulously bring out the shine. And as I sat there polishing away I started thinking about Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. Particularly the scene in which Andy polishes the Warden's dress shoes late in the film (at the 13:50 mark of the accompanying clip below). The sound of the shoebox lid sliding off the box itself and falling onto the table beside it always felt real to me. And I guess where I am going with this is, that moment was just one in a number of moments that made the climax of the breakout and reunion between Andy and Red so special. You are brought along in that movie, as you are in Magnolia, captivated by the details and nuances of the characters and their relationships.

What does this have to do with active and passive interneting you ask? Well it's precisely the details and nuance of the individuals day to day, captured online and added to the communal encyclopedia that's missing. It's true that millions are active interneters daily. That blogging, vlogging, myspace, facebook, twitter, the still in beta daytum and a million other resources I'm not familiar enough with to even include all provide the individual with the ability to chronicle their day to day. But what happens when their 'day to day' ends? Will all this information just up and vanish? We may have a record of frogs falling from the sky but will we lose the guts of what made the stories of life so great?

So I am putting this out to the technology world. A world that I don't have the skills to enter myself. I would like someone to build a tool that aggregates and archives an individual's online footprint into a preservable window to the past for future generations. An internet depository if you will that keeps track of my actions online (actions I particularly permit it to track) so that 100 years from now someone could request a report as to my online footprint on a particular day and receive the information that I allowed to be stored. What I may have blogged that day or what other blogs or articles I may have commented on that day. What I was interested in at that particular moment. What my Daytum account consisted of at that exact moment in time. Because it's only then, when future generations have the ability to know of the individual day to day lives that were lived in the past will the internet have become truly the Encyclopedia of Life that it is capable of being.

*At least I think it was kottke, I can't seem to find the link.