Storage Access Framework

At first we thought metadata rich, non-hierarchical, network based, multi-provider filesystems were our future. An arduous journey but well worth the efforts for the beforehand unimaginable user experiences enabled by new technologies that thereupon displaced the storage access frameworks of our past.

We soon found our future was dystopian.

Our fragile but free local storage was exchanged for the highly available but DRMed cloud. Every song ever sung, not available on our vacations to a country that hadn't signed the right free trade agreements. We dutifully archived our love letters, searchable when we needed to remember we were once not alone and when we didn't know we were on a first date with the friend of a Google / Facebook / Yahoo / Microsoft (/ NSA / law enforcement) employee. Instantly sharing with our family videos of our children singing along with the increasingly antiquated radio, instantly taken down by unattended algorithms: copyright violation for the song, child pornography because our two year old was taking a bubble bath.

The luckiest of us were paid microcents for every person who clicked the individually tailored advertising adjacent to our digital lives. So we worked hard to build an audience: our friends, our followers, our subscribers.

A photo taken every thirty seconds by our glasses, our wristwatch, our necklace, our pin.

Never bored, we were content.

We were Content.