Egad! What about my computer? My whole life is in the thing, and I’d never considered what to do with it. It holds, among other things, the novel I’ve slaved over for five years, legal files, about 6,000 emails, and a heck of a lot of photos, some of them pretty racy. (Yes, that’s really me on a topless beach, years ago. Those men sans clothing were, sigh, prospective Internet suitors. And that extremely well-endowed specimen? Research.)
I figured I’d better check around and see what everyone else was planning to do with their cyber remains. I was sure “Chris,” a married friend of mine who initiates all of his extramarital affairs online, would have some strategy in place. “I’ve saved all of the emails from [one former flame],” he confided, “because I still love reading them. They’re in a separate folder on my computer.” Chris carries his laptop with him everywhere, so his wife won’t find his personal stuff. But what if you were to die tomorrow? I asked him. “I do worry about that,” he said. “You don’t want your kids knowing your indiscretions.”
I knew I’d hit on something big when I quizzed Frank Cipolla, one of the composers of the score for the off-Broadway show Evil Dead: The Musical, and he started worrying, too. He’s stored the entire development of the show (from conception to recording) on very specific music software. “How would anyone other than a musician know how to use my files? ” he squeaked. “I can’t leave everything to my mother — she doesn’t even know how to use a computer.”
Surely this is fodder for the next worldwide panic-cum-business opportunity. Lawyers should be sharpening their pencils. Not so, according to John Poyser of the Canadian Bar Association’s Wills, Estates, and Trusts section. He told me the cba has “no position” on the bequest of computers technology and that adding a provision to one’s will would suffice.
Perhaps it’s no great surprise that lawyers have missed the boat on this one — most of them are still faxing, for God’s sake. But what about the real money-makers? I called Steve Wozniak, inventor of the first Apple computer. “I don’t have time to figure out what to do with the stuff in my computer,” he said, adding, “I’m in the celebrity category where so many people write about me I don’t need to save anything.”
But as we continued to speak, I could tell the possibilities were starting to churn in his brain. “This really strikes out into a new area,” he said, sounding chirpier. “People could prepare to leave behind a lot of their records in a My-Space format, prepaid perhaps, so they could stay online forever and others could go back and see what they were all about . . . It’s probably a good business opportunity.” I ought to hang up now and get myself a lawyer, I thought. But Steve was probably emailing his Apple geeks as we spoke, and he’d be taking advance orders for iDead by sundown.
Turning my attention back to the “little picture,” I did the obvious and went to the web. “What happens to your online life when your real life has ended? ” is the tag line for beforeyouaregone.com, a blog started by Texas deacon Charles Martin in March 2006. He posts sporadically with tidbits — articles, websites, online forums — culled from around the world, addressing not only what information needs to be documented, but the various methods of capturing it and making it easily accessible, Martin says, “to those who will carry on the torch or just calmly put it out.”
But there just isn’t much out there to share, I discovered. Businesses are only starting to circle around. Billed as a solution to “password fatigue,” clipperz.com is a free confidential storage service for passwords, burglar alarm codes, credit and debit card details, pins, software keys, etc. Martin, who reviews the site on his blog, points out that it will soon also enable clients to “share secrets” with family and friends. Another website, mylastemail.com, run by the UK’s Alphatalk Limited, is way ahead of them.
Comments (5 comments)
Systems Guy: I really fail to see the point of this article. Is there really any difference between a messy desk full of letters, pictures ect. and a messy computer containing old text messages, jpeg's, pdf's and gif's? People seem to endow havoc on their computers with a certain mystical quality when in fact it's root cause is the same old mundane stuff that has been causing havoc in their everyday lives for years.
Hey folks take the time to get organized, clean out your desk or should I say directories. No big deal! There are some great archiving tools out their; learn how to use them. And as much as I have virtually no respect for lawyers when it comes to deriving a worthwhile syllogism (yeah I know join the club) most are able to use a word processor. I think you really could have asked Steve Wozniak something a little more mentally scintillating than how to keep your computer tidy. How bout something in regards to a nifteee compression algorithm.
February 09, 2008 05:40 EST
Anonymous: When you are dead you are dead. Why worry? February 10, 2008 00:53 EST
Anonymous: This article raises a serious debate that society is not talking about. This really just offer a different dimension to the internet. Because the question is, who becomes the owner of your material or even your email address when you pass on. Is it your family or the company that you sign up with? I felt this article is just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of moral and legal debate you will see emerge in the near future.
Toronto February 15, 2008 09:46 EST
dani: Password fatigue is already a problem when you're alive, to have to worry about it in relation to your death is pretty surreal.
Working at PassPack (a Clipperz competitor), I've learned a bit about "shared secrets". It seems needlessly complicated to me. Wouldn't it be simpler to just print out your login and password of your favorite password manager and leave them with your lawyer or in a safe at your bank?
dani
http://www.passpack.com
February 21, 2008 04:10 EST
Kirk: This is the mildest of admonitions to Georgie Binks, and The Walrus editorial staff, but give Steve Wozniak his due: rather than the 'iDead', I'm sure he would have hit the market sweetspot with the 'iMortal'. February 24, 2008 09:37 EST