Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy? (Voices That Matter) [Paperback]

Evan Carroll (Author), John Romano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0321732286 | ISBN-13: 978-0321732286 | Edition: 1

Almost without realizing it, we have shifted toward an all-digital culture. Future heirlooms like family photos, home movies, and personal letters now exist only in digital form, and in many cases they are stored using popular services like Flickr, YouTube, and Gmail. These digital possessions form a rich collection that chronicles our lives and connects us to each other.

But have you considered what will happen to your treasured digital possessions when you die?

Unfortunately the answer isn't as certain as we might presume. There are numerous legal, cultural, and technical issues that could prevent access to these assets, and if you don't take steps to make them available to your heirs, your digital legacy could be lost forever.

Written by the creators of TheDigitalBeyond.com, this book helps you secure your valuable digital assets for your loved ones and perhaps posterity. Whether you're the casual email user or the hyper-connected digital dweller, you'll come away with peace of mind knowing that your digital heirlooms won't be lost in the shuffle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

To be ahead of one's time usually means stepping to the side of one's time in order to see it clearly. This book does just that, putting our digital lives and afterlives into sharp focus. Fascinating. --David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author

Death is the final frontier of cyberspace--and this book provides a road map to the key issues, problems and future prospects for bridging this ultimate transition with dignity, security and grace. --Daniel "Dazza" Greenwood, eCitizen Foundation

Carroll and Romano explain the challenges of the digital afterlife, and provide workable strategies for safeguarding your digital assets.  This book is the perfect first step toward securing your digital legacy. --Fred Stutzman, ClaimID.com

Your Digital Afterlife is the first book to take on the looming topic of dealing with death and online identity. It's a must-read in the digital era! --Jeremy Toeman, CEO and founder, Legacy Locker

From the Back Cover

Almost without realizing it, we have shifted toward an all-digital culture. Future heirlooms like family photos, home movies, and personal letters now exist only in digital form, and in many cases they are stored using popular services like Flickr, YouTube, and Gmail. These digital possessions form a rich collection that chronicles our lives and connects us to each other.

But have you considered what will happen to your treasured digital possessions when you die?

Unfortunately the answer isn't as certain as we might presume. There are numerous legal, cultural, and technical issues that could prevent access to these assets, and if you don't take steps to make them available to your heirs, your digital legacy could be lost forever.

Written by the creators of TheDigitalBeyond.com, this book helps you secure your valuable digital assets for your loved ones and perhaps posterity. Whether you're the casual email user or the hyper-connected digital dweller, you'll come away with peace of mind knowing that your digital heirlooms won't be lost in the shuffle.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: New Riders; 1 edition (November 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321732286
• ISBN-13: 978-0321732286
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An aspect of your "estate" that most people haven't considered... December 26, 2010

By Thomas Duff HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

So what happens to your digital self when you die? Your email, blog, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook accounts? It's not something you hear talked about very much, but there could be personal and historical value lost if those accounts die along with you. Our parents and grandparents passed down photos and letters to us, but what if all of those photos and letters are now on Flickr and in email? Evan Carroll covers this topic in his book Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy?, and it's a fascinating read.

Contents:
Introducing the Digital Afterlife
Your Digital Life Death, and Beyond: The Shift to Digital; A Well-Lived (Digital) Life; The Artifacts of Your Life; The Value of Digital Things; What You Leave Behind; The Opportunity of Digital Legacy; Your Legacy at Risk; The Birth of an Industry
Securing Your Digital Legacy: Before You Begin; Computers and Devices; Email; Social Websites; Finance and Commerce; Create Your Plan
Epilogue: The Future of Digital Death
Appendix; Glossary; From the Authors; Index

Carroll start off by covering the evolution from physical pieces of our story and heritage to a more digital form. Especially dramatic is the comparison of communication from people who are serving during a time of war. Letters from the front-line are saved, re-read, age, and are part of an overall memory. Now you get emails that only exist in electronic form, and are quickly read, replied to, and saved in a mailbox. The immediacy and format of the message makes it more transitory, and less likely it will be handed down to future generations. This aging and patina that forms over the years is completely missing from the digital form. And while letters and pictures can be destroyed by flood and fire, a simple hard drive crash can wipe out a significant part of our digital past.

From there, Carroll lays out a detailed plan and format to both back up your digital life and to make sure that someone has the digital keys to handle your estate after your death. It's not quite as simple as you'd think, as web sites will often automatically shut down accounts once they are presented with proof of your death. On top of that, today's cutting edge storage mediums (like DVDs or solid state hard drives) may deteriorate over time, or the hardware to read those devices may become obsolete. Zip drives, floppy disk drives, laser disk readers... even VCR players are becoming ever more difficult to find. Move forward another decade, and the problem just gets bigger.

Yes, thinking about your online self and death may not be the most enjoyable thing to think about. You may not even care or think it's important. But your family (and their families) may feel different, and would like to know what "grampa" was like when they were alive...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Borrowed

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential Resource for Estate Planning in the Digital Age April 14, 2011

By Gwynne Murphy

Format:Paperback

Anyone considering making or in the process of creating a will in honor of Make a Will Month should get this book and explore the additional resources that Carroll and Romano have provided beyond their careful tour of your digital life. The authors take an honest and easily digestible look at the complex digital world. Not only do they examine the current situation of individuals amassing a constantly-growing collection of digital assets, but they simply it and walk you though ways to evaluate your options for the future. It's simple to recognize that we had no need to consider the preservation of our digital assets in the (not so distant) past. They didn't exist until recently, but in many cases, like digital photography, we want to be able to pass along these precious memories and records to the future generations - much in the same way you may have inherited the cherished family photo album. But what you may not realize, and what the authors illustrate, is that some of your digital assets are being archived and preserved whether you want them to be or not. Bottom line: Your Digital Afterlife is a must read for anyone with any sort of online element to their life. (And, yes, that includes personal email accounts and Facebook profiles.)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very rare gift for making difficult things intelligible April 4, 2011

By Mr. Charles R. Cowling

Format:Paperback

Where all assets were once physical, except for lingering memories, now they are increasingly digital. The most obvious examples are letters, documents, music and photos. There's more.

This book is full of thoughtful, intelligent insights."Will future generations have less attachment to physical objects?" What an interesting idea. Physical objects are unique, but "one of the unique features of digital things is that two exact copies can exist or one copy can be accessed in multiple places at one time." Had we only physical assets, they'd be divvied up, some thrown away, and our identity fragmented. Digital assets can be bequeathed complete - to more than just one person.

The law presently regards assets only as physical assets. How do we make sure these endure?

Your Digital Afterlife wants to persuade us of the necessity so, first, it makes the case. Our digital assets are identity-defining: "All this content forms a rich collection that reflects who you are and what you think." Much of this content may be interactive - comments on your Facebook status "reflecting on your identity"; your comments on others. Future generations will be able to see us as we saw ourselves and as others saw us.

So rich is this content that there's now "a huge opportunity that's never been available to ordinary people - a permanent archive of your life that could exist beyond your physical life." So great is the amount of our content that the authors call on us to curate it. With photos, for example, don't just leave 10,000 - no one will know where to start. Whittle them down, grade them and tag them.

This is all so new that "as a society we have not thought through the ramifications or considered what will happen to this digital content."

What's more, a great deal of this digital content does not reside in our devices (computer, phone, etc), it is stored by businesses which can deny others access - or go bust. What's more, most of these companies' terms of service do not make provision for our content on our death. They never thought of it. Here is a matter which needs urgently to be addressed: "Ideally services that host digital content would have an industry-standard or legally enforced way to deal with the death of their members." It will happen.

In the meantime, we need to appoint a digital executor with the technical nous to enable them to gather up and pass on our digital legacy - having, perhaps, got rid of specified content we'd rather others knew nothing of.

To enable our digital executor to do his or her work, we need to make an inventory of our devices and accounts - on a spreadsheet we can download from the YourDigitalAfterlife website. Meticulous instructions are given.

The book concludes with a speculative look into the future. Is it possible, the authors wonder, if, one day, artificial intelligence will become so sophisticated that it will be possible to process our store of digital content and create a humanoid robot in our own image?

Your Digital Afterlife is beautifully written - clear, jargon-free, accessible. Its tone is just right, too, companionable, not jokey and joshing nor loftily authoritative. It is both philosophical and practical. It has opened up a new and important field to me. As a UK writer and blogger on matters funereal (goodfuneralguide.co.uk) I shall be recommending this book with energy and conviction. It is superb.