People often talk sadly about the last thing they said to or did with a loved one before they die. Petty arguments. Missed meetings. These regrets often follow the survivors for the rest of their lives.

Technology is now making it easier to send your loved ones messages that they receive after you die. The Great Goodbye specializes in sending photos, MP3s, videos, and email to your loved ones to comfort them as they mourn you death.

But the service doesn’t state that all your emails have to be love letters. You could reveal who really shot J.F.K or raise some hell one last time? Ahh. To know that you got in the last word.

Lisa, the blogger at clusterfook.com, recently died of ovarian cancer. She blogged about the disease and dying of it. Rest n peace Lisa.

Her blog was important to her so she decided that she would hand it over to her friend, Secondhand Carl.

She made arrangements. Gave him access to the admin. Now he runs the blog and is posting obituaries and news about Lisa’s death. This kind of informal arrangement seems easiest and most personal. No need for lawyers or wills. Just a person’s wishes being carried out. Nice.

It seems like the issue of digital death has reached mainstream, evidenced by The Onion now commenting on it.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/facebook_friend_apparently

“Boy. That’s a shame. Just goes to show you that you really have to enjoy every SuperPoke like it’s your last.”

Thanks to Sharkey for the link.

In this post, Steven Keith, a strategist at Capstrat, has provided me with the next real world need in search of an online equivalent.

I recently watched the director’s cut of Bladerunner. His job is to kill the aging androids. I thought a job of the future would be to kill someone’s digital past- for hire. Or offer services to alter relics or artifacts of someone’s past so you could change history to protect their political or executive future.

Imagine virtual detectives and digital hitmen roaming the bytes of your past annihilating all evidence of your misgivings, paving the road to your new pristine tomorrow in exchange for money, services or whatever form the currency of our reputation will take.

I think of “The Wolf” in Pulp fiction combined with Trinity from The Matrix. A super-stealthy hacker who can mop up your bloody past and erase your digital finger prints – all without leaving a trace.

Will there be legitimate and/or underground “cleaner” services that allow someone to erase “unfortunate” moments captured and released into the wilds of the Web? Will you want to do this at your death to gussy up your digital afterlife? Or will you want to control when your secrets hit the street. Personally, I am still waiting for someone on their death bed to spill the beans about JFK’s murder, like the inventor of Big Foot.

A friend emailed this today. Written by chromepoet.

Very soon, we will read about people who toss it all by posting a list of their usernames/passwords, shutting down their computers and walking off the grid, never to be heard of again. It will be the equivalent of a digital suicide.

And would make a great movie.

I love it. Digital Suicide. What a bizarre concept.

So while mad scientists are busy making digital salvation possible, what can us mere mortals do to enable our digital footprint to outlive us? Well, in this lifetime I believe that people are going to start offering services that allow us to bundle up and archive our digital self.

If we think of that footprint as the total of all our online transactions (posts, comments, photos, videos, etc.) , then bundling up all the assets would provide a view of a person’s digital life.

Of course this issue is clouded by the very idea of ownership. Who owns a comment? Who owns the blog. For that matter, who really owns your Facebook or Flickr profile? You? Or the site? But regardless, the content is there. It’s accessible. It’s store-able.

The only question to consider is why?

We are at the beginning of a new age. Data storage gets cheaper by the day. It enables us to store incredible amounts of data. It is quite possible that whatever makes the leap to digital has a chance of remaining until the end of time.

We are happy to inform you that we have now finalized the day/ time for our Core Conversation

Who Will Check My Email After I Die?
Tues, March 17
5:00-6:00 PM

See you there!

Egyptian kings buried themselves with treasure, food, and even slaves. Chinese emperors made ceramic armies to command after death. What do modern people do? They bury themselves with their mobile phones, Blackberries and iPhones and iPods.

In this MSN article, funeral directors talk about how people are requesting to be buried with their digital devices. Friends may start a play list that the deceased can listen to as they go into the ground. Or friends can call mobile phones as the casket is being lowered into the earth and hear the faint ringing of the phone.  I suppose people could TXT their last respects. “hey bffl. c u l8r. ily”

People crave connection. Some people have been known to keep paying the mobile account after a death just so they can continue to call the number and leave voice messages.

Electronics are making their may into the most intimate and profound rituals in life. They are becoming part of the fabric of our lives. People will mean it when they say that they can’t live without their computers. I guess they won’t be able to die without them either.

I wonder how the 3G signal is 6 feet under?

Imagine leading a quality digital life for 50 more years. What will happen when you die? What will become of your online accounts? Your data? What do people pass on to their heirs? Can your survivors box up your digital life and archive it? Will the data be lost without people to tend it?

Or will the data live on forever? Can our digital self image achieve immortality?

Three generations have now been using computers most of their lives. We have been busy collecting digital photos, music, and movies. We have been writing blogs. Recently, we have begun uploading our digital assets to the Web and sharing them with each other.

As of late we have begun creating and connecting online profiles to one another, creating a complex landscape of online social networks. When we look at how fast things are changing we see that much of this innovation has happened in just the last 5 years.

A whole industry will be born to answer these questions and satisfy a desire that has existed since the beginning of time – the desire for immortality. We all can’t have a terra cotta army in our tomb, or a great pyramid above us. But for a fist full of dollars we will be able to maintain our digital footprint for all time. Just you wait and see.

Matt Ludwig has accepted our invitation to be the second facilitator at our session “Who Will Check My Email After I Die?”

We are excited that Matt will be joining us at SXSW and look forward to his persepctive.