At the recent TIG Conference, Liz Keith gave me her copy of the January 9, 2011 issue of The New York Times Magazine which included an article entitled “Things to do in Cyberspace when you’re Dead” by Rob Walker.  The article details the live and untimely death of blogger/tweeter Mac Tonnies and the efforts of his friends to save his online work.  The article discusses the pros and cons of trying to save the digital output we are all putting online every day.  Companies have cropped up – Legacy Locker, DataInherit and Entrustet – are the top three and they promise to follow whatever instructions you have for how online information should be dealt with.  You can decide that not all email accounts need to survive or that maybe some photos should simply disappear into the mists of time.  All of us want a certain amount of control over our legacy – digital and otherwise.  So consider this next time you update your will.  You have one, right?

I think the toughest problem is going to be passwords.  So far that seems to be the biggest hurtle to having family members and friends simply clean out your online closets like we do physical closets when someone dies.  I don’t want to have to update Joel every time I change a password.  (Its way more important that he remember our anniversary!)    However if I could just give him a special , “backdoor” password that would never change, then he could just delete what I wanted to have deleted and keep up the accounts on what I wanted to remain online and viable.  Sounds like an easy solution to me.

Then I was thinking – how long would you keep your website/blog/twitter feed/Facebook page around?  20 years?  30 years?  Until your children’s children fail to know who you are? Or maybe we will all end up donating our digital memories to universities so that scholars can pour over my status updates as the apt rantings of a “typical middle aged woman with an attitude”.

Speaking of scholars, Dr. Elaine Kasket presented in September, 2009 a at the 9^th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying & Disposal in Durham, United Kingdom a Powerpoint of her research on how individuals use Facebook to preserve memories of individuals that have passed away.  She refers to those who create and maintain these memorials as “in-memory-of-groups” and she studied them to understand how the multi-faceted person we represent on Facebook survives and which may in time be revised to only reflect what the mourners want to remember.  The presentation is interesting but a little scary.  I am not sure I want all of everything I have ever said or thoughtlessly put on Facebook to survive.

So I don’t have a cut and dried suggestion for what you should do about your online identity and the plans you should make for it once you are six feet under.  I think I will at least discuss it with Joel and maybe make a few discreet plans – surely he can have my Facebook password.  What do you think?  Are you ready to decide how to dispose of your online life?

Filed under:
Blog by Joyce