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FILE<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re gone, what happens to your digital remains?<\/p>\n
What comes to mind first are familiar material considerations such as wills, finances, property divestiture and the burdensome responsibility of sorting through and disposing of a lifetime\u2019s worth of accumulated clothing, furniture, vehicles and all manner of personal belongings. These jobs are made immeasurably easier if the departed has left specific and detailed instructions and documentation for those tasked with sorting it all out.<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s equally important in death\u2019s 21st-century context is having a plan for the increasingly large portion of our lives that are spent online \u2014 the so-called \u201cdigital footprint\u201d we create through our social-media presence, our texting and e-messaging interactions, our search-engine activity and our various commercial and recreational activities on websites and retail platforms.<\/p>\n
When we\u2019re gone, someone is going to have to sort through all of that, too. Without exception, it\u2019s a decidedly more complicated task than rummaging through a box of old shoes or deciding what to do with someone else\u2019s lifetime\u2019s worth of photo-album memories.<\/p>\n
All of which is why a new study being conducted at the University of Manitoba\u2019s computer-science department is worthy of attention, and could ultimately produce interesting and useful direction for people engaged in the necessary exercise of end-of-life planning.<\/p>\n
The initiative\u2019s self-imposed mandate is to better understand and improve \u201cdigital legacy planning,\u201d and the group is seeking participants aged 18 or older to complete a survey focused on their virtual assets, spirituality and the level to which they have planned or are planning for the end of their 21st-century lives.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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\u201cMost people aren\u2019t aware of this (digital) part of estate and legacy planning,\u201d says graduate student researcher Simon Wermie.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s much to ponder. How many different passwords, for how many assorted website accounts, do you have? Are they stored in a manner that will make them accessible for those dealing with your estate after you\u2019re gone? Have you set up an inactive account manager on Google or another similar platform \u2014 in other words, made choices while you\u2019re alive for what will happen to your data when you stop using those account(s)?<\/p>\n
These are some of the more practical questions that must be faced by the human inhabitants of an increasingly digital world. There are also some more ethereal and decidedly more quirky considerations, as well; the U of M team\u2019s examination of post-mortem privacy also asks survey participants to consider the ethics of creating \u201cchatbots\u201d modelled after departed loved ones\u2019 texts and other personal data, or perhaps being represented by a \u201cdeadbot\u201d \u2014 in other words, an AI-generated ghost \u2014 that allows friends and relatives to continue to communicate with a version of you after you\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n
These are not things end-of-life planners had to consider in generations past, but they should be front-of-mind considerations for all of us now.<\/p>\n
In posing its very relevant questions, the U of M survey also offers some sound advice for all of us: regardless of whether you do or don\u2019t believe in a heavenly destination that awaits us after we die, it\u2019s important to make serious down-to-earth plans for the part of us that exists in the cloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sooner or later, we will all face it; if we\u2019re wise, we plan for its arrival. Death. Notwithstanding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-856702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}