Thanks to cheap storage and easy copying, our digital souls have the potential to be truly immortal. But do we really want everything we’ve done online – offhand comments, camera-phone snaps or embarrassing surfing habits – to be preserved for posterity? One school of thought, the “preservationists”, believes we owe it to our descendants.

Poor Charmer got deeper and deeper into falsehood, until one any he appeared with a mass of entangled wire in his hands, and declared that his machine had gone to shivereens.

These, howsofar I stray, shall work their spell, And seem to bring my feet Back to the ways remembered well, Where with old friends, old loves, I walked of yore.

Thus far I have proceeded in a theme Benewed with no kind auspices:—to feel We are not what we have been, and to deem We are not what we should be, and to steel The heart against itself; and to conceal, - With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught, — Passion or feeling, purpose, grief or zeal, — Which is the tyrant spirit of our though, Is a stern task of soul :— No matter, — it is taught.