I had had my fair share of data loss lessons. For us, it is easy to say, “Why didn’t you back up?” But most people have an innate trust in tools, especially from big companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook/Meta. I have heard so many people happily claim, “I won’t worry. I have it on Google.”

Even for my daughters’ much simpler school homework, projects, and the usual drawings/sketches, I’ve set up Backups so they don’t cry when their work gets lost. I set up the Macs I handed down to them to be backed up to iCloud, and added a cheap HDD for Time Machine. They think I’m a Magician with Computers when I teach them to use the Time Machine and see the flying timeline of their work. The other thing is the Google Workspace for Schools. I have found that having a local copy always available via a tool (such as InSync) does wonders.

The only sob story now is Games. They sometimes lose points, the game coin thingies, and developer-kids with bugs that reset gameplay earnings. I have no idea how to help them there besides emotional support and how the world works — one step at a time.

How about if ChatGPT/Claude writes a local Markdown copy of each conversation? Won’t that be Nice?