What family archives are for, now that the AI can read them

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have three collections of letters sitting in my house.

The oldest is a stack from my great-grandparents, written between 1910 and 1913. The second is from my grandparents, written during World War II. The third is from my father — letters he wrote from the moment I was born until the moment his mother died.

There are other things too. Memoirs. Loose documents. A family record that shows up in more places than I can keep track of. But those three collections are the weight of it. Three generations, each one writing to the next, each one leaving behind something I’ve never fully read.

Family History on Thede Technologies

What family archives are for, now that the AI can read them