Death 2.0

Benjamin Franklin said, "The only things certain in life are death and taxes”. In thinking of your future, it’s unlikely that you have ever given much consideration to your digital legacy. But, given the amount of information we now share online, it would be advisable to do so.

Burson-Marsteller

• The last thing on someone’s mind when they’re about to die is what’s going to happen to their Facebook account. But with 500 million people on the social network, user deaths are pretty unavoidable. Have you ever thought about how you will live online when you’ve passed away in real life?
• Fortunately, social networks have already started to put policies and provisions in place to deal with such issues. Facebook created the idea of "memorialized" profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed.
• Twitter has released a deceased policy that will hopefully be a step toward removing dead users from their recommendation engine. It would appear, however, that the social network has not yet announced the policy which will help family and friends of loved ones to retrieve an archive of their tweets or remove the account.

• As more and more people move their lives, address books, calendars, financial information, online, they are taking a risk that some information formerly filed away in folders and desks might never be recovered. That is, unless they share their passwords, which poses a considerable security threat.
• The situation also poses a dilemma for e-mail providers that are pilloried by privacy rights advocates at the mere suggestion of sensitive data being exposed, at the same time they are expected to hand over the digital keys to family members when a customer dies.
• Last year, Yahoo was forced to provide access to the e-mail of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq to his father, who got a court order in the matter.

• The world of gravestones and memorials has remained unchanged for centuries, but we are finally seeing companies innovating in this space and bringing the cemetery into the digital age.
• For example, RosettaStone is a palm-sized stone tablet with an embedded microchip and engraved symbols that can be selected to represent key milestones or affiliations in the deceased's life. The RosettaStone can be preinstalled in a new gravestone or added to an existing one to create a technologically enhanced memorial that will allow future site visitors to read the deceased's story from a mobile device. Photos and text can be linked , including genealogical information, achievements and relationships or even favourite recipes and philosophical beliefs.
• Virtual immortality may soon be achieved. Vastly improving information storage and processing and sophisticated virtual-reality graphics already create nearly lifelike experiences. Researchers now hope to combine artificial intelligence into the mix. People’s appearance, mannerisms, voice, and even their knowledge and experience may one day be digitized, creating a virtual person that would preserve much of our personalities for eternity.

• No-one likes to plan for after their death let alone think about the possibility of death itself. But in an increasingly digital world we've happily included technology as part of our lives, now we must include it in our plans for the management of our estates.
• HR and legal departments should look at what amendments may be needed to social media policies to encompass digital copyright.
• Here are a few [non legally binding] suggestions for getting your e-affairs in order:
  Planning Your Digital Estate: Dealing with Online Data After Death - http://bit.ly/u4Rgz