With all of the conversation surrounding the digital afterlife, one thing is certain: you can’t deal with it by yourself.  You need a person or a service to help you. Services are popping up left and right, just check our (hopefully) comprehensive list. Still, for some things, you really need someone to help you out.  We (among others) have been calling this person a digital executor: a person whom you designate to execute your digital estate.

So, what makes a good digital executor?  As I see it, there are three critical components: trust, distance and capability.  I’ll address them in that order.

Trust

Seems pretty simple, right? In fact, it is.  You need to select someone who will respect your wishes and faithfully carry out your digital will. I don’t think there’s any more to say here.

Distance

Your executor needs to be close enough to you that you can trust them (see above), but needs to be somewhat distanced from you for a couple of reasons.  If you choose someone like your spouse or significant other there’s a greater chance that they will pass at the same time you do.  Then, of course, your digital will would not be carried out, unless you had others in place as well. It’s also important to have a person that will carry out your will without hesitation.  Those close to you may have trouble with deleting files or profiles (should that be your wish) in the name of preserving  your memory.

Capability

Finally, you should find someone who is up to the task and there are a few dimensions of this.  First, they should have access to your information.  However you choose to store you authentication information and wishes, they should be capable of accessing it.  Second, they should have the appropriate technical savvy.  Want your Facebook account deleted? You might want to choose someone who has a Facebook account.  Enough said.  Finally, they need to outlive you.  This goes back to distance, but you should think about age too.  When you’re young, someone from your own generation is likely suitable, but as you get older someone from the next generation may be more appropriate.

I’m sure there’s other considerations given your unique situation, but it’s my hope that this list will give you some helpful tips to get started.

According to CNET, Symantec is launching its Norton Online Living Calculator today, designed to determine the black market value of your online assets. The calculator asks questions about online finance, social networking and email accounts. The output is an estimated value of your personal information, which is substantially less than I imagined.  Mine was $10.59 a far cry from the $100.00 I estimated.

While The Digital Beyond isn’t particularly interested in selling you security software, the concept of assigning monetary value to online assets is of particular interest to us. If my information is only worth ten dollars on the black market, how valuable is it to my family after my death? Just consider your hourly wage and how many hours it might take to gather up your online assets. Even after weeks of effort they might not know about or gain access to everything.  I’d suspect that its worth more than ten dollars, and maybe more than the subscription fees for the growing list of digital estate services.

Norton Online Living Calculator

Seen today on CrunchGear and Gizmodo, this Japanese-developed device sends Tweets about your heartbeat. Despite scaring your relatives when Twitter is down, this device could lead the way for a “is ___ dead” service with a yes/no/unsure API. While this adds some biological fact to confirming one’s death, there’s several kinks like hospitalization or disconnected monitors that would introduce unreliability.

From the translated promotional video:

“Now I can die and post this info to Twitter. That’s what I call a revolution!”

Twitter Heartbeat Device

How many domain names do you have registered? I can think of at least five between mine and others I manage. If you were to pass before the registration expired, who would renew them? Remember that domain names aren’t property and you can’t really put them in your will. As I see it, and I’m not a lawyer mind you, there are two really simple options to protect them:

1. Set up a corporation, likely an LLC, and register your domain names through it. You can appoint a designee to take over the corporation and they’ll have relatively few issues gaining administrative control of your domains. In my opinion this plan is highly complicated, but is the most legally sound.

2. For those of us who don’t like to draw up legal documents in our spare time, allow me to suggest a more straightforward approach. First create a list of all of your registrars, DNS providers, hosting companies and the like. Record your usernames and passwords with this list. It’s important that you keep this list updated, by the way, because an old/expired password won’t be of much use. Now, dependent upon how much security you prefer you can either place this list in a secure location at home, or go and rent a safety deposit box at your local bank. Next appoint a technically minded designee whom you trust. Again dependent upon your security preferences, either provide them with the location of this list or specifically grant them the safety deposit box in your will. Make sure to set expectations with your designee and everything should go as planned.

I would suggest that you leave specific, written instructions with your designee. You may also be interested in providing messages for your online communities and friends that he could deliver on your behalf.

One thing you shouldn’t do is provide usernames and passwords in your will. It is a part of public record and can be viewed by anyone. Also, you should probably review your plans with your lawyer. As I said before, I’m not one and this information is provided as-is with no warranty expressed or implied. Feel free to use it as you wish, but my colleagues nor I are liable for any resulting damages.

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.

You probably remember my previous posts about Dead Man’s Switch and the e-mails I’ve received from the service.  Here’s a follow-up to the last e-mail.

Subject: Dead Man’s Switch is REALLY worried about you

Hi, Are you okay? You haven’t answered our last two emails. If you don’t answer this, your emails will be sent out in one week.

To update your status, visit the following address:

http://www.deadmansswitch.net/update/

Hope to see you there,
Dead Man’s Switch staff

There’s only one more week before my test e-mail gets sent out.  I’ll be sure to post when it gets to me.  Stay tuned.

Re-posted from Field Notes

Man has been struggling with death since the beginning of consciousness, and while we aren’t any closer to answering the big question, we are getting closer to a solution.

There will come a time when super computers (or the average wrist watch) will be able to trace and store the patterns of thought. While some believe that there is something unquantifiable about the mind, some believe that this will be the birth of digital consciousnesses.

What would happen if someone actually figured this out? I’ll tell you what – that person would become richer than Bill Gates. To be able to sell eternal consciousnesses would be a service beyond imagination. While it might not be the answer, it would certainly be an attractive solution.

Well, it beats pushin’ up daisies.

You probably remember my previous posts about Dead Man’s Switch and the e-mails I’ve received from the service.  Here’s a follow-up to the last e-mail.  It seems that I didn’t successfully confirm my continued existence, so here’s my next notification:

Subject: Dead Man’s Switch is worried about you

Message: Hey there, where have you been? You didn’t answer our first email. If you don’t answer this, you will get one more warning in a week before all your emails are sent out.

To update your status, visit the following address:

http://www.deadmansswitch.net/update/

Hope to see you there,
Dead Man’s Switch staff

It’s still kind of creepy, but I do like that the subject line shows a bit more compassion.  I wonder what the final notice will say… stay tuned.

As I said previously, I don’t have it setup to send any e-mails in the event that I don’t respond.  Although I may set it up to send one to myself, just to see what type of introduction the service might add to the e-mail message.

Re-posted from Field Notes

A while back I posted about www.deadmansswitch.net.  Here’s the first e-mail they sent me to confirm that I’m still alive.  I like how it’s doesn’t assume that I’m alive, but I was hoping that it would be something more formal.  In either case it’s still kind of disturbing.

Hello you,
this is your plain old regular email to remind you that you should check back with us at Dead Man’s Switch, so we know you’re doing well.

To update your status, visit the following address:

http://www.deadmansswitch.net/update/

Hope to see you there,
Dead Man’s Switch staff

For the record: I don’t have it setup to send any e-mails in the event that I don’t respond.

Re-posted from Field Notes

When the gang here at Capstrat set out to brainstorm some ideas for SXSW 2009, we talked about what “digital will” service might look like. We decided that the basic model would allow a user to write e-mail messages and they would be sent on their behalf posthumously. The user would be prompted to check in from time to time to keep the messages from being sent. It’s like having a jet ski engine stop when you fall off or stopping a train if the operator isn’t touching the controls. It’s called a dead man’s switch.

www.deadmansswitch.net went into beta in late July with a service that does just this. From their site:

This is how this works. You write a few e-mails, and choose the recipients. These emails are encrypted with military-grade algorithms, so you can be sure that no-one except the intended recipient will ever read them. Your switch will email you every so often, asking you to show that you are fine by clicking a link. If something were to… happen… to you, your switch would then send the emails you wrote to the recipients you specified. Sort of an “electronic will,” one could say.

The concept here isn’t new. People have been writing wills and leaving behind letters for centuries, but now we have an online equivalent. I’m not sure how I feel about having a web server send an e-mail asking if I am alive, but the service is designed to give you several chances to verify your continued existence. I also think these guys deserve the award for the most morbid user welcome message on the Internet:

The last time you showed signs of life before today was on Friday, September 19, 2008. Now you can write a new email, or see the ones you have already written:

Of course, the terms of service state that “it comes without any warranty, neither express nor implied (even the actual sending of the messages is not guaranteed, but we’ll do our best).”

What do you think about this? Is it something worth using or too morbid to think about?

Re-posted from Field Notes