Digital afterlife update August 2011

Since I started a blog on aspects of a digital afterlife in early 2010 there has been a significant increase in the level of interest in the area. So far, most of these developments have remained independent of each other so I will focus on them below as somewhat separate activities - in the future I would expect an increased level of integration between the emerging "strands". The three key strands at the moment appear to be:

Managing a digital legacy

Probably the main area of interest at the moment is how current information accumulated within a computer system, including a computers hard drive, internet activity and so on, can be accessed and archived when a person dies. Typical questions asked here include:

  • Ensuring that passwords and user names are available to people who may want to access computers and/or internet sites
  • Accessing data from web sites that have been used by the deceased, often to produce an archive of activity on the site
  • archiving other information, such as email activity, photographs, video and so on

 Sites to put stuff about yourself

Sites are beginning to emerge where people can place photographs, video, comment, messages about themselves that are intended to he accessed by people after a person has become deceased. Some of these sites focus only on messages from the person "in focus", others provide this service along with either concurrent and/or subsequent input from others.

Memorial type sites

Sites are also emerging where people can leave comment, photos, video and so on as a memorial to the deceased person. Again, these may be "stand alone", or available alongside sites where the deceased may have already placed material.

 Developing an ongoing presence on the web that builds on a person's "digital data"

A fourth area of interest is looking at how data from the three areas noted above might be integrated into providing an ongoing "presence" for the deceased person in the digital world.

 The future?

I would expect there to be a considerable degree of development and consolidation in each of these four areas over the next few years. While this his happening it is really important that people looking at setting themselves up with a digital afterlife scenario are aware of the options and the advantages/ disadvantages of each option.



In my next few blogs I will focus on the four areas in more detail and try and point out what I see as key things to look out for with each part of this digital afterlife equation.

upi:dyd-dgyeo
16/8/11