Hi Friends.  I’ve submitted an idea to speak at Ignite here at home in Raleigh.  I would appreciate your support by voting for my idea.  Here’s the summary:

Last Tweet and testament? Email from the grave? Funerals in World of Warcraft? When you die, your identity will ascend into the cloud—the Internet, that is. But you won’t be around to push the buttons on your Facebook, Twitter, Email, or Web sites. You’ll need somebody or something to do it for you. Learn how planning today can secure your own (digital) immortality.

For those of you who don’t know, the Ignite format is different.  Speakers get exactly five minutes and 20 slides to say whatever they would like.  This seems like a great opportunity to raise awareness of digital afterlife issues to a captivated audience.  Thanks for the support.

While doing some research recently, I started to think more about the  fields of study that together form a foundation for the digital afterlife.  I have always maintained that this is a multi-faceted topic, but I didn’t realize how true that statement was.

Identity – online content is a projection of our identity into the digital world.  E-mails, photos, connections and conversations provide a corpus of data allowing for unprecedented study and preservation of identity.

Human-computer interaction – the study of how we interact with computers.  Closely linked to identity, computers have become our companions in life.  They’re contents provide records of our thinking, communications and pleasures.

Estate planning – the traditional practice of law that helped individuals plan the disposition of their assets.  Our digital assets are becoming increasingly valuable.  It’s time for a legally-sound process to protect them and allow us to pass them along to the next generation.

Funeral service - end of life care and remembrance.  The way we remember and honor the decreased is changing.  Online memorials and gatherings are an increasing occurrence and are no less real than their offline counterparts.

Archives and preservation – archivists have worked for years to collect and preserve tangible information for centuries.  Now in an digital world they are working to collect and preserve not just physical, but “born digital” assets as well.

I’m sure that I missed a few.  Can you think of any others?  Comment it up, folks.

The Washington Post just published an article about the digital afterlife from Mike Rosenwald.  It’s a great overview of the industry and provides a few personal stories from those affected by death on the Internet.

Jeremy Toeman, founder of Legacy Locker, was quoted in the article.

“We’re in an era now where people are really going to have to pay attention to what their online assets are,” Toeman said. “Five years ago, that terminology — digital assets — didn’t even make sense. Now it does.”

I couldn’t agree with his statement more.  I’m excited to see what will happen in the months to come for the growing industry of digital afterlife services.  Earlier this month I wrote some predictions for 2010, and the points that Rosenwald, Toeman and others make in the article are further proof that we’ll see more growth this year.

As an aside, I’m pleased to learn that Legacy Locker has over 10,000 subscribers.  It’s one of the first signs I’ve seen of success in the industry.  I hope that others are seeing similar success.

It’s that time of year and there’s one thing that the Internet is not short of–predictions about what will happen in 2010.  And like most others out there, we have an opinion too.  Let’s take a brief look back at 2009.

Without doubt, 2009 was the emerging year for the digital afterlife.  Since we started keeping track in June, the digital afterlife has appeared in blogs and the media nearly 60 times, and I’m sure we missed a few articles along the way. 2009 also brought a deluge of online services that help individuals manage their digital afterlife or memorialize their loved ones.  We didn’t keep up with the launch date for each new service, but there we learned of at least 10 new services in 2009.  With all of this buzz it’s safe to say that more and more people are thinking about the digital afterlife.

So what’s next?  In 2010 awareness of digital afterlife issues will increase and the industry will continue to grow at a rapid pace.  Trendwatching.com says that the digital afterlife is a part of an overall trend of “profile myning,” or taking control of your own profiles.  Internet users are increasingly aware of their online identity and are taking steps to control it.

With personal profiles (which are the nucleus of one’s personal brand) representing an ever-greater emotional and financial value, expect a burgeoning market for services that protect, store, and, in case of emergencies/death, arrange handing over of one’s digital estate to trusted others. – trendwatching.com

Standards
There is not yet a best practice for dealing with deceased users’ content.  Practices vary across sites and many sites do not have a standard practice in place.  We expect to see efforts form around standardization, as more attorneys and estate planners gain interest in the subject.

More content
The idea that personal computers should primarily use local storage (aka your hard drive) is becoming a thing of the past.  Flickr is great for photos and Google Docs is starting to perform as well as desktop-based software.  The recent Chrome OS more or less solidifies the fact that the browser is the new operating system.  This trend means more content in the cloud that will require afterlife planning.

Competition
The digital afterlife industry is still very young and there’s no clear leader.  Right now, services can roughly be divided into three categories,  estate planning, posthumous messaging or online memorials. We suspect that like any emerging industry, the competition will heat up and these services will work to differentiate from others.

Increased digital component in funerals
Hong Kong recently turned to online memorials to help deal with the shortage of burial plots.  Funeral homes across the US are using DVD slide shows or other multimedia during services.  With some places replacing graves with online memorials and technology making its way into the funeral home, we expect more to come on this front.  Too bad Eternal Space didn’t hold on longer.

In summary 2010 will be another emerging year, but will be full of exciting developments for the industry.  We’ll be here at The Digital Beyond to keep you informed.

Photo credit to Atomische on Flickr.

With the recent increase in visits to this site, I’ve been explaining its purpose more often in conversation with others. Generally speaking those who are technically-minded understand the issues with digital death and are surprised that they hadn’t considered them before. That epiphany is my favorite moment in any conversation about this. But I’ve talked with more people recently who don’t get it. One person today told me this “I think of it just like I think of what happens to my body: I won’t be here to care.” I may have paraphrased that inadvertently due to my memory, but I must say that I completely disagree with that sentiment.

Digital assets are rapidly replacing tangible ones. Consider family photos. These days they are more likely to be digital from the time they’re taken. Archivists refer to this as a “born-digital” asset. These born-digital assets, in this case digital photographs, are family heirlooms, a vital part of your identity. Passing these heirlooms to the next generation is not just a luxury, it’s an integral part of identity preservation. We’ve been doing this for ages. By passing an object of our identity along, we can leave a story or memory behind. It’s important to know how your survivors will obtain your born-digital assets, because they won’t find a drawer of printed photos in your residence, they’ll have to go looking on your computer or in the cloud.

The issue of identity preservation is just one of many others.  What about access to vital information like emails or web hosting accounts?  How about the necessity to delete some content, to hide things you wouldn’t want others to know?  I could probably think of a million other reasons why this issue is important, but the bottom line is that the more digital assets you have (and it’s growing, trust me) the problem will only grow.

To that thought, I’d like to hear some of the reasons you’re considering the digital afterlife.  Comment it up, folks.

Many of you likely want to know what you can do to plan for your own digital afterlife. It’s something important to think about and we’re glad you’re here to get started.

Step one: Define your assets
A good first step is to inventory your online assets. Going through this process will not only result in a working list, the process will help you understand exactly how many assets you have. You’ll find more than you thought of beforehand.

Step two: Decide your wishes
Now that you have a list, go through it and decide what you would like to happen to each asset. Maybe you want it deleted, maybe you want it archived or perhaps you want it left alone. In any case, decide what you want to happen. It might also be a good idea to check the terms of service for any Web site for which you have a log in to see if they’ve already made some decisions for you.

Step three: Choose one or more executors
You won’t be around to push the buttons, so you’ll need a survivor to do it for you. Asking a trusted friend or relative to help is essential to having your wishes honored. Think about who is knowledgeable enough to help you out with your assets. Perhaps one person comes to mind or perhaps you want to divide tasks up amongst several people. We have more information about selecting executors here.

Step four: Document your wishes
Finally document your wishes and put them in a place that’s accessible by your executor(s). There are many online services that will help you out with this part. You may be able to do this yourself using a safe-deposit box or other security mechanism, but a service might make it easier or more secure for you. It’s important to think about how to best secure your information and passwords. Whatever you do, don’t list them in your will as that will become public record.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you make these decisions carefully and with the input of your relatives. If you have any concerns it’s never a bad idea to consult your attorney.

John Romano and Evan Carroll, creators of The Digital Beyond, appeared on WRAL in Raleigh, NC giving some helpful advice about preparing for the digital afterlife. You can read the full story online at www.wral.com.

We also have a checklist to help you plan for your digital afterlife.

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Jeremy Toeman is the founder of Legacy Locker, one of the many services that help people deal with the issues of digital death and afterlife.  Recently he spoke to a group of estate planners about the issue.  I’m pleased to hear that the legal community is starting to explore this issue.  It’s a good first step to standardizing practice concerning digital assets.  Here’s the video from his presentation.

Note: The Digital Beyond does not endorse any one service. We’re pleased to share Jeremy’s presentation with you, however we encourage you to evaluate and use the service of your choice.

Lately I’ve been consumed with research in pursuit of my masters degree and in that I’m hoping to expand the existing body of academic research to include issues surrounding the digital afterlife. It goes without saying that an understanding of online identity is critical to the study of a digital afterlife.

We’ve discussed several times the value of the past, that desire to know more about those who came before you.  And we’ve postulated that the digital age presents an opportunity for individuals to be known by future generations through their online postings.  Preservation issues aside, this raises the question of identity.  Is an online persona an accurate reflection of and individual?  For our purposes, lets assume that an online persona is the summation of one’s online content, including relationships to others and their content.

danah boyd’s 2002 thesis from MIT discusses a model of identity that separates the internal and social identities.  To use the analogy provided by Erving Goffman, an individual presents their internal identity as if they were a performer on a stage.  They are influenced by a desire to be perceived in the best possible way depending upon the audience or environment.  There is a difference between the internal and the external or social identity.  The external one is a projection of the internal.  Yet this is only a portion of one’s online identity.

Online, we can examine the reflections that others make to one’s online postings.  These reflections take the form of comments, links and replies. These play an almost equal part in interpreting identity.  They can tell us if others agree with the projections that an individual makes, we can also make inferences about identity based upon the identities of those with whom they interact.

Gary Marchionini, one of my professors, provided the information science community with a new notion of information, the  proflection of self online.  The term, proflection, combines both the projections of an individual and the reflection that others make upon it.

All of this said, let’s go back to our core question.  Are online personas an accurate reflection of an individual’s identity?  There’s no real cut-and-dry answer, but the online persona is an interesting set of data that shows how an individual wants to be perceived and the reflections made by their social network.

Academics aside, what do you think?  Does your Facebook profile, blog and other profiles present an accurate view of who you are and what you believe?

Photo credit: Internet- Good or Bad? by Mikey Gottawa

What happens to your digital identity after you die? This video explains some of the hurdles between you and the digital afterlife.