The Big Log Off<\/p>\n
Where do computer files go when you die?<\/p>\n
A couple of months ago, I was in the middle of one of those grand reveries we all indulge in every so often: I was imagining my funeral. After pondering the finer details (finger food or steam tables, Metallica or Elgar), I started debating what I should leave to various people. I was mentally moving through my house and dispensing items when I arrived at my basement office.<\/p>\n
Egad! What about my computer? My whole life is in the thing, and I\u2019d never considered what to do with it. It holds, among other things, the novel I\u2019ve slaved over for five years, legal files, about 6,000 emails, and a heck of a lot of photos, some of them pretty racy. (Yes, that\u2019s really me on a topless beach, years ago. Those men sans clothing were, sigh, prospective Internet suitors. And that extremely well-endowed specimen? Research.)<\/p>\n
I figured I\u2019d better check around and see what everyone else was planning to do with their cyber remains. I was sure \u201cChris,\u201d a married friend of mine who initiates all of his extramarital affairs online, would have some strategy in place. \u201cI\u2019ve saved all of the emails from [one former flame],\u201d he confided, \u201cbecause I still love reading them. They\u2019re in a separate folder on my computer.\u201d Chris carries his laptop with him everywhere, so his wife won\u2019t find his personal stuff. But what if you were to die tomorrow? I asked him. \u201cI do worry about that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want your kids knowing your indiscretions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the stuff we might actually want people to find, like our brilliant, unpublished manuscripts. I asked Governor General\u2019s Award\u2013winning playwright Judith Thompson if she had a plan to take care of all of her plays-in-progress. \u201cI carelessly have not made any provision for my desktop in the event of my death,\u201d she emailed back, \u201cand the way I ride my bike every day without a helmet, it could happen sooner than the date I have in my mind.\u201d A writer with a highly idiosyncratic voice, Thompson was horrified by the thought that someone would discover a half-finished play and take a stab at completing it.<\/p>\n
I knew I\u2019d hit on something big when I quizzed Frank Cipolla, one of the composers of the score for the off-Broadway show Evil Dead: The Musical, and he started worrying, too. He\u2019s stored the entire development of the show (from conception to recording) on very specific music software. \u201cHow would anyone other than a musician know how to use my files? \u201d he squeaked. \u201cI can\u2019t leave everything to my mother \u2014 she doesn\u2019t even know how to use a computer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surely this is fodder for the next worldwide panic-cum-business opportunity. Lawyers should be sharpening their pencils. Not so, according to John Poyser of the Canadian Bar Association\u2019s Wills, Estates, and Trusts section. He told me the cba has \u201cno position\u201d on the bequest of computers technology and that adding a provision to one\u2019s will would suffice.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s no great surprise that lawyers have missed the boat on this one \u2014 most of them are still faxing, for God\u2019s sake. But what about the real money-makers? I called Steve Wozniak, inventor of the first Apple computer. \u201cI don\u2019t have time to figure out what to do with the stuff in my computer,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cI\u2019m in the celebrity category where so many people write about me I don\u2019t need to save anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as we continued to speak, I could tell the possibilities were starting to churn in his brain. \u201cThis really strikes out into a new area,\u201d he said, sounding chirpier. \u201cPeople could prepare to leave behind a lot of their records in a My-Space format, prepaid perhaps, so they could stay online forever and others could go back and see what they were all about . . . It\u2019s probably a good business opportunity.\u201d I ought to hang up now and get myself a lawyer, I thought. But Steve was probably emailing his Apple geeks as we spoke, and he\u2019d be taking advance orders for iDead by sundown.<\/p>\n
Turning my attention back to the \u201clittle picture,\u201d I did the obvious and went to the web. \u201cWhat happens to your online life when your real life has ended? \u201d is the tag line for beforeyouaregone.com, a blog started by Texas deacon Charles Martin in March 2006. He posts sporadically with tidbits \u2014 articles, websites, online forums \u2014 culled from around the world, addressing not only what information needs to be documented, but the various methods of capturing it and making it easily accessible, Martin says, \u201cto those who will carry on the torch or just calmly put it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there just isn\u2019t much out there to share, I discovered. Businesses are only starting to circle around. Billed as a solution to \u201cpassword fatigue,\u201d clipperz.com is a free confidential storage service for passwords, burglar alarm codes, credit and debit card details, pins, software keys, etc. Martin, who reviews the site on his blog, points out that it will soon also enable clients to \u201cshare secrets\u201d with family and friends. Another website, mylastemail.com, run by the UK\u2019s Alphatalk Limited, is way ahead of them.<\/p>\n
The company offers online memorials that remain accessible to recipients of your choice for twenty-five years posthumously. Posting a document, picture, and video file is free, while uploading more material starts at around $10 annually. Mylastemail.com also offers obituaries and a book of condolences. The only things missing are the floral arrangements and the organ music.<\/p>\n
The company doesn\u2019t appear to be wildly popular. Browsing the obituaries turned up a grand total of four, one of them for an individual named Ali Baba. Martin believes the issue just isn\u2019t on people\u2019s radar, and told me the volume of response to his site has also been low. \u201cI\u2019m sure teens couldn\u2019t care less about who should know their MySpace account password in case they end up in a coma.\u201d Most people just don\u2019t expect to die.<\/p>\n
I was convinced I would never find anyone who had prepared for the Big Log Off, when I happened upon Shirley Chinneck. The seventy-nine-year-old artist, who lives in the Rocky Mountain community of Canmore, Alberta, has a fairly straightforward plan that doesn\u2019t involve any fancy computer programs. She\u2019s stored all her \u201clife data\u201d \u2014 computer codes, safety deposit box information, and bank account numbers \u2014 on a memory stick for her sons. Other than a commercial website, which she\u2019s given them permission to close down when she dies, if they wish, she has no virtual legacy. \u201cI don\u2019t have time for chat rooms,\u201d she explained, \u201cand I\u2019ve made a point of deleting most of my emails. Who\u2019s going to have time to go through all of this stuff? \u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m with Shirley. My novel\u2019s going on a memory stick, and I vow to resave every single time I work on it. I\u2019ll alert my family to my password so they can access everything. Those questionable photos? I\u2019ll look at them one more time and press Delete. I might also record some kind of video message on my webcam and write a couple of emails to be opened by close family members upon my demise. I\u2019m almost feeling good about dying, in fact. Almost.<\/p>\n
I still have to figure out what to do with all those emails \u2014 a tricky call. They\u2019ve essentially taken the place of letters, which I\u2019d never trash. On the other hand, I never would have sent and received thousands of letters in the past ten years. The correspondence of Virginia Woolf might merit publication in six volumes, but it\u2019s unlikely this oeuvre would make the cut (\u201cI can\u2019t do Tuesday. How about Wednesday?\u201d). And yet, because so much of our lives flows into our emails, I worry that erasing the lot would deprive my relatives of the right to properly grieve me. I heard about a woman who, after her teenage son died, found solace in reading his emails to friends.<\/p>\n
And suddenly it hit me. We can delete all we want, but unless others do the same our emails will linger long after we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n
A magazine editor with whom I was friendly died recently of breast cancer. I hadn\u2019t known she was sick and never got to tell her what a fine person I thought she was. As I sat in front of my computer feeling sad, I discovered several cheery emails she\u2019d sent me. They gave me the feeling I was still somehow in touch with her. There was no good reason to keep these messages, but I did. I\u2019ve decided they will be part of my virtual estate, for the cyber-forensic specialists of the future to study.<\/p>\n
Home arrow Magazines arrow The Walrus arrow The Big Log Off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Big Log Off Where do computer files go when you die? A couple of months ago, I was in the middle of one of those grand reveries we all indulge in every so often: I was imagining my funeral. After pondering the finer details (finger food or steam tables, Metallica or Elgar), I started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-81","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81\/revisions\/83"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgiebinks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}