Recently Leonie Fischer (leonifischer.com) contacted me about her design project, Necropolis. In her words: Necropolis is a memorial object for ourdigital presence after we have passed away. An algorithm transforms the Facebook activity of a person into light signals. These are transferred into small LED lights which then blink in an individual rhythm. The light is built […]
I have a confession to make. Despite advocating password management applications like LastPass and SecureSafe, I’ve never been a bona fide user myself. At the encouragement of my virtual assistant, I decided to take the plunge and set up LastPass.
When my father was dying, I often found myself turning to music – as a source of comfort, as a means of distraction, and certainly as a way of making sense of a most profound experience. The piece that most often would accompany my meandering thoughts was Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe. I made no mental […]
Privacy Matters. In fact, 4 out of 5 people believe privacy matters more than access to their accounts in the event of their death. It’s an important and necessary consideration for any estate plan. When it comes to our online accounts, we’ve come to expect a certain amount of privacy. It’s an expectation that people […]
For the average person making a will, the concept of “digital assets” and planning for the transfer of one’s digital life has simply not been on the will writer’s radar. Until now, that is.
“All living things seek to perpetuate themselves into the future, but humans seek to perpetuate themselves forever. This seeking – this will to ‘immortality’ – is the foundation of human achievement; it is the wellspring of religion, the muse of philosophy, the architect of our cities and the impulse behind the arts. It is embedded […]
In 2010 my friends Nathan Lustig and Jesse Davis (founders of Entrustet, which was later acquired by SecureSafe) used data from Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control to estimate the number of Facebook users who would pass away in 2010. They updated these numbers in January 2011 and Nathan updated them again in June […]
While a gravestone is the classic form of mourning and marking the dead, it does have its issues in today’s world. Sometimes we simply can’t be where we want to be. When we’re miles away, how do we mourn and remember those we’ve lost? Thankfully, this is one such area where technology has made great […]
The Uniform Laws Commission has released its final revision of the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which was revised earlier this year in a compromise between the ULC and industry opposition.
Today Facebook released new functionality to address how profiles are handled after an account holder’s death. The new feature, called Legacy Contacts, allows users to specify in advance a caretaker for their account once they pass away.
