when a geek dies
According to Make Magazine, Mark Hoekstra died yesterday. I didn’t read his content before finding this out, but I do have a fascination with the manifestation of death in social networking.
There is a posting at Cnet today about personal syndication overload, and I have written a post about this as well.
The thing about Mark’s death: I did not know him, but I do know everything that was “last” in his too short life. I know the last song he listened to was Instant Death by the Beastie Boys. I know that Last.fm last saw him Monday evening. He has a cat, whom I hope is taken care of. Five days ago he posted a picture of a Cisco Aironet he got from Ebay. He has nephews.
I really don’t want to know all this in light of these being the last vestiges of the material life that I can see. But I do know them now, and suddenly there is a picture of a person I never knew, who died before I might be get to know them.
We are in an era of a universal panopticon which is framed through chronology. Our lives are chronicled through lists keyed to time, segmented by media and purpose. When data is only subject to mutability by the companies that house it, what is the record of the lives we leave? Our hard drives? Flickr accounts? Last.fm click-streams?
What obligations do these sites have to the deceased and how will we as a culture deal with more and more of those that built up their Lives++ growing older and eventually leaving the physical toward the ephemeral.
How do we balance death in a world that has no intrinsic life anymore?
Interesting questions.
woah. that’s some heavy stuff. i often wonder about this, too. who clears all my accounts when i die or do they just continue on? have you ever sent a message on facebook to a dead person? i haven’t, but a friend of mine has. i’m only 22 and i already have sign-ins and passwords for more things than i know of: bills, social networks, online stores!, email, etc… am i supposed to leave my passwords in my will and then will it be the responsibility of my loved ones to clear my accounts?…. answer emails on behalf of me once i’m gone saying, “chris has passed away.”…. that’d be too weird.
I gave my wife a Worst-Case Scenario list of just such information in the event of my untimely demise. Now I just gotta hope she doesn’t kick it at the same time…
Wow, that’s intense. Thanks for sharing!
Perhaps the internet will provide true life after death, for our time streams will never die, they’ll just be cached somewhere.
Wow, very thought provoking ideas! I once was on the FB acct of a friend of mine who has listed in thier friends list someone who was a close friend of my sister, her nephews, & some friends. She had recently been brutally murdered. I had attended her funeral.
I wondered at that time if her boyfriend or family would close down her account, what they would do if she received friend requests.
Do we need to add this stuff to our will:
-Will our account be closed upon our death?
-Will they be updated to let friends know that we have died and about funeral arrangements?
-If they are left up, what about friend requests – how will they be handled?
- Will our main url be changed to that of a memorial blog where people can express their condolences?
Lots to think about!
In Mark’s case, his photos are creative commons licensed. Someone in the community could gift another year of Pro on his Flickr account. I wish I had been more in tune with Mark’s site. There are just too many of us sharing content to view it all.
This made my heart skip a beat. Wow! I know I share a lot online (like this comment) but don’t think about if I die later today, all the stuff that is there ppl could pull up after. Strange thoughts indeed. Cache cache cache.