My online identity: What happens when I die?
by RT
I have a dear friend named Mat. We took the CELTA course together in 2003 and were part of a rag-tag group of expats who hung out at Lady Hamilton’s pub just off of Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. Our group did the usual commiserating (and joy sharing) about life in Switzerland, culture, politics, music, family life and so on.
Mat moved back to Australia, but kept contact with everyone over Skype and Facebook. He’d hit me up on Skype when our time differences worked out. The last time I saw Mat was in August 2007. He was in Switzerland and called me up out of the blue for lunch.
About month later he was dead. An athlete (marathoner) for most of his adult life, Mat collapsed and passed over while on a morning run back in Australia. He was 39.
Every time I open Skype, I still see him on my contact list. I’ve never had the heart to delete him. Today, just out of curiosity, I double-clicked on his name to call him, just to see if anyone would pick up. Of course, no one did, but the account still seems to be active.
This made me wonder about my own online history. What if I got hit by a bus (or tram in Zurich’s case)? Who would close out my Skype, Facebook, Yahoo, Friendfeed, Seesmic and the other accounts all over the Web?
Who would notify the folks hosting my websites? Would my husband even know who to contact?
Would I turn into some weird, static, internet ghost?
In addition to Mat’s Skype account, his Facebook page, at least the listing (we hadn’t “friended” each other there), still seems to be active.
Perhaps this is the modern world’s answer to immortality.
interesting post – something to think about
That’s a truly interesting question you are asking – what happens to our digital footprints when we die. It’s not “only” user accounts, but data, pictures, messages, blog posts etc. Currently, the answer is “nothing happens”, but I am sure that Web2.0, or the social web as I prefer to call it, will have more to this in the future. Probabely there is even one or the other stealth startup that is right now developing a web service around this topic. An interesting edge on mortality and immortality in the digital age is coming from ETOY corporation with their mission eternity project.
@Ralf: Is this what you’re talking about? http://www.etoy.com/blog/mission-eternity/
@RT: The angel application is one part of ETOY’s mission eternity, the technological part that is. The project home page is at http://www.missioneternity.org/
Truly interesting question indeed. This topic hit me in another way. A very good friend of mine, met on line around 10 years ago, whom I had spent tons of time with in real life, but with whom I was in contact maybe every 6 months, died. And I learned about it 6 months later, when a common friend told me. It was very strange not to have known that he was gone.
To go back to your post, I must say I never asked myself the question of what would become of my online identity when I was gone, but rather always wondered if my parents, family etc. would think about telling my networks of friends “worldwide” (not only online actually, but I studied abroad and have friends my family never met). So I gave my parents and sister a few key pasowrds and made them swear that they would send an email to all my address book if I was to disappear…
This said, if no-one takes the time to close all the accounts and blogs and such, you never disappear. Is Facebook then the new philosopher’s stone?
@ notafish – > “So I gave my parents and sister a few key pasowrds and made them swear that they would send an email to all my address book if I was to disappear”
My mom would freak.:-)
What happens to your online identity when you die? Let me tell you.
It errodes and decomposes to nothing, quietly and slowly as thousands of digital worms devour the space you once inhabited. Your essential nature will disappear into an infinite universe of ones and zeros, the curse of conformity finally befalling you as it does everyone else.
Meanwhile, your name will slip even further down Google’s ranking until it vanishes from our collective cyber memory and into a formless oblivion. Eventually, someone somewhere comes along and buries something on top of you – another blog perhaps, or a server shivering towards its inevitable demise. It matters not.
But you’ll be fondly remembered – at least until everyone you know has slipped this mortal coil and had their inbox closed by default.
And when they are gone, a silence will fall. There will be no tapping of keys, no pings of notification. Just a cold, errie, hopeless silence.
There’s a way around this sorry situation, though. You can write something that people will want to read long after your RSS feed stops twitching.