I have been thinking about mortality and my stuff lately.As some of you know, I post a fair amount of thoughts, questions, links, and other information on various online networking sites, most on teaching, learning, leadership, and workplace behavior. Some of these are true gems and others are really not worth much. Most are somewhere between the two extremes.
Now I might die someday. Everyone does, eventually. So the questions bugging me of late include:
“When I die, what happens to all my online stuff?”
“Will my Facebook page live on forever, even without me to add my pithy observations about life every so often?
“Will I always count as someone’s Twitter follower, even if I pass on?”
“How can the site administrators tell the difference between a merely inactive participant and a no-longer-breathing participant?”
“What happens to my email archives if Hotmail goes “belly-up” some bright morning? ”
I once built a profile on a website only to watch it abruptly shut down without earlier warning. I lost no money in this, but did give significant time to creating a positive and comprehensive online presence . . . all up in digital smoke.
I’ll bet that those EULA (End User Licensing Agreements) that we are all required to “read” when we sign up for various online sites and services address these issues. I’ll bet if I had ever read one all the way through I would not be pondering these questions. I’ll bet I”m not the only one who has not read those wordy and mysterious documents.
Solution:
For those getting nervous, read a recent post about how to save your stuff on various social networks. This helped me become motivated to set up archive files, so my priceless online mutterings would be safe for the ages:). If nothing else, at least I now have a copy of what I should consider my property.
Sigh . . . Dying used to be so simple.
Considering my demise in the Heartland . . .
John
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