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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson

Personal Cache  
  An online data repository used to store personal data.  

This is a rather novel idea; it is similar to the idea of a lifelog.

From her pocket she drew one of two data spools, inserting it into a slot in the counter. Picking a code word from the name of a college roommate's pet cat, she created a personal cache and fed in the contents of the spool. When the cylinder was empty and erased, she breathed a little easier.

...She'd just registered her story... If any of it ever did come to trial, now she'd be able to show with this dated cache that she had acted in good faith. The Rio treaties did allow one to withhold information temporarily - or try to - so long as careful records were maintained... never imagined that "temporary" might be interpreted to be as long as twenty years or that the registering of diaries like hers would become an industry in itself.

Teresa sealed the file, swallowing the key in her mind. Such was her faith in the system that she simply left the empty spool lying there on the countertop.

Technovelgy from Earth, by David Brin.
Published by Bantam in 1990
Additional resources -

The idea of a personal cache is also a predecessor to the free gigabyte storage offered by Internet firms like Yahoo and Google for use with their various applications (like email).

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  More Ideas and Technology from Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by David Brin
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  Tech news articles related to works by David Brin

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