This is a good topic - designing for death.
There is a resource called http://www.assetlock.net/
There is a review of this service at:
http://www.assetlock.net/elements/press/sfgate.pdf
What are the issues with designing for death? Here are a few:
1. Financial information that heirs may need.
2. Back from the grave - there have been movies about people who died, but
left a series of letters or videos for their loved ones. Seems a little
eerie, but I figure that my wife my enjoy my odd sense of humor or pithy
sayings when I'm gone.
3. Revenge :-). You can have letters sent to people who had irritated you
at some point in your life.
4. The letters you send to people explaining something that was always a
mystery ("so you didn't marry me because I have white rugs" :-).
5. Photo collections on disk or online.
6. Cancelling various services no longer wanted.
7. Password storage.
8. Inheriting digital access
9. Important update information is more and more likely to be done online
(to save resources) so perhaps we should be designing UIs that allow a
second trusted person to receive membership and registration information.
10. Access to emails after death - this is trickier since emails can mix
business and personal stuff and if you are in the military sending emails
through military servers, who owns those messages?
I'm 58 and have less than 20 years left if I go by the morbidity tables so I
started thinking about this a few weeks ago and have started pulling
together all my passwords and main resources onto a terabyte drive that will
go in a safe and will be updated 4 times a year or so.
Good topic.
Chauncey
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 7:13 AM, Andy Polaine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thanks for that, I'll have a listen.
>
> I've been thinking about it quite a bit since my mother-in-law died a
> couple of years ago. Her stuff was all analogue, so we could go through all
> the old folders and boxes of documents and sort everything out. I have so
> much digital stuff, a lot of which is protected by passwords. Even on my own
> machine (and even getting into my own machine) would be an issue.
>
> But I'm not a security nor legal expert and I can imagine there might be
> some issues and approaches that already exist that one could draw upon. From
> a personal standpoint, the questions it raises for me is who you would trust
> and whether you would trust a "digital executor" or a third party company?
> How much would someone pay for, ahem, lifetime membership?
>
> Best,
>
> Andy
>
>
>
> On 31 Oct 2008, at 09:54, Meredith Noble wrote:
>
> Andy, you might be interested in this segment from CBC's great
>> digital culture show, Spark:
>>
>> http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2008/04/full_interview_derek_k_miller_1.html
>>
>> (CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation... Canada's BBC or NPR)
>>
>> It's an interview with a man who has cancer and is thinking about
>> his digital legacy.
>>
>> "One of the things that Derek has been thinking about his digital
>> legacy, and what should happen to our web presence when we die. Do we
>> need to appoint a digital executor to oversee our online belongings?
>> Someone who would know all of your passwords and keep up the payments
>> for your domain name, for example, so your site would live on even
>> after you have gone?"
>>
>> I listened to it a few months back so don't remember details, but
>> I'm sure you'd find it interesting.
>>
>
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