If I were forced to evacuate my home due to an impending natural disaster, the three items I would ensure I bring with me are my two smartphones and my laptop computer.
My smartphones contain everything from all my contacts and social profiles to years of saved photos that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to replace. They keep me connected digitally to the wider world, allowing me to coordinate with emergency responders, update loved ones on my situation via calls, texts and social media, and carry my digital identity with me no matter where I end up in the aftermath. I rely on my phones’ apps for everything from basic needs like navigation, banking and housing to maintaining my professional and personal relationships wherever I land. They provide both practical lifelines as well as psychological comfort during an emergency through their ability to digitally preserve my memories and connections.
My laptop computer fulfills a similar role as both a practical tool for communication, coordination, documentation and information access, as well as an vessel carrying years of my writing, family photos and personal journal entries and projects I would hate to lose forever to a disaster aftermath.
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My laptop allows me to store data locally while still backing it up to cloud servers for extra resilience. And like my smartphone, it lets me communicate critical updates to workplace, friends and emergency response teams when internet access is available. But unlike my phone, my laptop provides a larger portal to the digital world - facilitating urgent communications, housing searches, or insurance paperwork that tiny smartphone screens can’t easily handle. So having both devices increases my capacity to handle urgent digital tasks in the wake of displacement, while also ensuring deeply personal data remains accessible despite connectivity challenges.
In a fast-moving disaster evacuation, I would have little time or capacity to consider more belongings beyond what I could quickly grab in a single bag and pockets. So I would focus on these devices that concentrate so much of both my practical and personal digital connections within their small forms. With them intact, I preserve access for coordinating emergency arrangements while also saving treasured data that gives continuity to my identity from present life back through the past. By securing years of memories along with tools to navigate present upheaval, my phones and laptop would provide both psychological comfort as well as practical resilience after losing so much else. They each serve almost as external brains giving me immediate access to digital enhancements for security, stability and identity assurance while my spirit finds its footing again.
So in the traumatic rush of disaster evacuation, my indispensable digital lifelines would be those carefully-selected devices holding what restores normalcy for sustaining my essence. My laptop and smartphones bearing photos, contacts, writings - pieces of personal infrastructure and history I can carry with me to start piecing wholeness together again. They would give me the ability to digitally reach out to needed help and resources, while also offering the comfort of personal continuity wherever temporary refuge takes me in the turmoil of disruption’s aftermath. With them, I cling to past identity while moving urgently ahead.
My response to the Hiveghana prompt
