Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are You Estate, What's Your Legacy? 1st Edition

I'll admit it: I've been a computer geek for more years than I care to count. I remember the good ol' days of DOS, the 640k memory limitation, Ad-lib sound cards, 9600 baud modems, and electronic BBSes. I was on-line long before mainstream America knew what being on-line meant and Bill Gates decided that this Internet thing just might be the future of computing.When the Internet went mainstream, I was there. At varying points, I used Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, and Internet Explorer--yes, even that amazingly worthless 1.0 release. I surfed newsgroups frequently. I connected via telnet to MUDs--MMOG is not a new idea, people. I was among the first to sign up for a blog--I had to have one; never mind the fact that no one knew what a blog was at that time or why anyone would need one. I fondly recall the days when Facebook required a university email account to access.At some point, though, a sea change occurred, one no one seemed to notice at the time but one that would prove a defining evolution in society: our lives went online.There is a difference between being online and living online. I am online for several hours each day, checking email, reading news articles, stalking friends, et cetera. But an alarming number of people are spending the majority of their time online--so much time, in fact, that their lives in the really real world have begun to suffer. These are the people who insisted on pre-downloading the latest World of Warcraft expansion so they could play it the moment it went live. These are the people who go on to the beach and video conference with the office. These are the people who sit in the family room and spend quality time with their loved ones while checking the 1300 Google Reader feeds to which they're subscribed.These are also the people for whom Carroll and Romano's book is written.The gist of the book is securing one's digital estate. The problem, though, is that one's digital estate is not simply the digital photographs on one's hard drive or the emails sent to one's parents from Afghanistan; a digital estate is apparently everything--and I do mean everything--one has put online: photos, emails, blog posts, comments to blog posts, responses to comments, chat logs, instant messages... even one's Facebook profile should be secured for posterity. Basically, everything a person does online, according to the authors, constructs a person's digital identity and should therefore be safeguarded. Of course, this is all in addition to what's on one's hard drive, smartphone, and iPod.But I'm getting ahead of myself.The first third of the book is spent explaining what an estate is and how the concept has changed since going online. Sure, there might be a few chimpanzees reading this book and they probably don't know what an estate is, but for those of us more highly evolved, the first third is unnecessary padding coupled with gratuitous pictures and screen captures--including one of a coffee cup, a photographic example of how online lifestyles have give mundane moments a grand significance. More troubling than the padding, however, is an idea that comes up every so often in these chapters: we need to be securing our digital legacies, but its not necessarily practical. For example, JPEG is explained to be the current digital standard for pictures, but it might not remain the digital standard, in which case, we would need some kind of conversion service to maintain those pictures we want to keep. Add to that the fact that the mediums or services we use for storage of said pictures might not always work: online services shut down and physical storage mediums go bad or are simply rendered obsolete with time--anyone still have a floppy disk drive?What comes next is a hodgepodge of suggestions ranging from the commonsense--gather all usernames and passwords together, identify what is to be done with the various files and accounts--to the laughably absurd--export and archive emails, websites, and Facebook profiles, prepare an electronic memorial. Strangely, everything suggested in the book sounds like it should be covered in one's will. Executor? Check. Heirs? Check. Instructions? Check. The book does explain--in one of its few socially responsible moments--that putting a list of passwords in one's will is a bad idea, as a will does become a public record. Of course, bequeathing a list of passwords seems like a reasonable idea...The question that this books largely ignores is perhaps the most important, and it's importance may be the reason it's largely ignored: what, exactly, is important enough to be safeguarded? Securing one's music collection or photo albums is one thing: it gives a glimpse, however sentimental, into a person's life. But a Facebook account? What is the value of a Facebook profile? A Twitter account? A blog? If a person considers these things significant enough to be secured, isn't that evidence enough of a life unlived? Sentiment is one thing; celebrating banality, however, is quite another.And I am not opposed to preserving a person's memory--I've long wished I had more tangible remnants of my grandparents, particularly my maternal grandfather who died when I was only two years old. But shouldn't we be preserving things of genuine significance rather than the mundane and transient?Then again, I suppose the whole point is that everyone is transient.

There is a gradual recognition, in the digital current-life, that a lot of what might be left behind at the end of a user's life may be in digital form. This book is one of the first, if not the first, to help people think about this situation and make suggestions on actions they can take. It provides a good background on some of the issues to be aware of and traps to avoid in trying to maintain digital material into the future. It is also does a good job of listing resources, including websites, that may be helpful in trying to sort out a digital afterlife.Unfortunately, it encounters a problem that many contemporary books focussing on technology suffer from - by the time a book is published some material is already dated. For example, this book suggests that photos should be culled so that more interesting ones do not get lost amongst the thousands of others - but already software is doing this job so in the future "more" will be better and a picture search application will quickly find what you want; in the book there is quite an emphasis on still photos and little comment about video - yet video is rapidly taking over as a preferred way to record experiences.A problem in trying to grapple with the concept of a digital afterlife is conceptualising what the term might eventually mean. Is it just about preserving digital material acquired during a life time? Is it about allowing on going discourse between people in the form of a "memorial site"? Is it about setting up a digital persona that people in the future might interact with? And how can people go about creating material that they may intentionally wish leave behind rather than relying on existing material that they will leave behind? Is it about all of these things and more? These questions are raised in the book but not discussed in any substantive manner. I felt this was a bit of a let down.The authors of this book acknowledge that it is a beginning and that we probably don't know all the questions yet - let alone the answers. For me, with a vested interest in this area, I did not feel I learned a lot that was new, and some of my current questions were not addressed by the authors. But, for someone who is new to the idea of a digital afterlife it is probably worth a read.

This is the first book of its kind that addresses our digital lives and what happens to all our data after we die. It will become more and more important as more of us put all our assets online. I personally have more than 25 key online accounts that I want to make sure get to my beneficiaries without a hassle. This book tells you how to do It. I insisted that each of my clients create file listing all their usernames, passwords and URL addresses while i was a financial advisor. This is critical! Read the book!

A very topical subject as we use the internet more and more for our personal needs. Unfortunately the time comes to all of us when someone else has to pick up the pieces that we leave behind. The days of sorting the papers in the filing cabinet are fast disappearing and instead others need to know what is on our computers. A very thought provoking book for readers regardless of age.

Well thought out and very thought provoking. Even if you own "just" a smartphone you need this book. If you die tonight do you have someone who knows the pass code to unlock it? What happens to your Facebook and Yahoo and other accounts? You need a "digital" asset plan right along with the plan (will) you have for your monetary assests. This book is filled with real life stories and advice. A good and important read.

Preserve or memories in the digital age! Or, not preserve them. Will my grandchildren really want to look at my Tweets? Will someone steal data and job me blind?

I used this book as the foundation for a documentary about digital afterlife. Even if you don't think you need this info, I suggest reading for the future implications.

Excellent resource on the subject of managing your digital assets. I highly recommend it.

When I started reading this book, my main concern was what would happen to the genealogy research I had undertaken. I had 'acquired' several websites and wanted to put in place a plan as to what should be done with them after I was gone. It soon became apparent that the digital footprint I needed to consider went far beyond just my family history research."Your Digital Afterlife" provides the reader with much information about why you need to think about your digital assets and what will happen to them when you die. This book also covers planning and tools which can be useful.This book is for everyone who has an online (digital) presence, be it just email or social media. Consider that if you blog, you could find that without the appropriate planning, your work might be lost forever.

Non utile alla mia ricerca, molto ripetitivo, poi, essendo un libro del 2010, è sorpassato dall'evoluzione delle normative e dei servizi online. Sconsigliato, soldi spesi inutilmente, le stesse informazioni si possono trovare online e anche in forma più approfondita.

... mais qui offre peu de solutions à ce problème pressant. Alors que la nécessité d'une solution devient de plus en plus évidente, à chaque jour qui passe.