…my site will go on…
The CF Jedi Master is asking if anyone has thought of what will happen to their digital legacy when they die (presumably if it happens prematurely). Their blog, sites they maintain, any community resources they’ve made themselves responsible for.
Interesting thought. I don’t want my sites to disappear if I kick the bucket next week. There’s useful stuff on some of them! On the other hand, I find it hard enough to keep “my affairs in order” for my own purposes, let alone for someone else to make heads or tails of it all. I think some kind of final instructions, perhaps as part of a will, is the way to go.
Something related that has freaked me out before… in past generations, when people died they left behind maybe a house, some furniture, books and maybe a box of letters or something that their children would go through. I don’t have a box of letters… but I do have 10 or 12 gigs worth of archived emails and personal files and related “stuff”. The thought of someone else rifling through my digital “life” is very disturbing. Violating even, not that I’ll care when I’m dead, I dare say. Not to mention the archiving and file formats issue – Tantek touched on that in his Web Essentials session on microformats. Will future generatons be able to open our files, assuming they can even read the storage media?
Definitely stuff to think about. I’m off to do some filing.
Hi Goatloady,
I aggree with your thought on others going through our digital life and that it being disturbing – best it only be left for son or daughter i reckon, rather them know some of your secrets, other than a cousin or a long lost rellie.
I do reckon todays format will readable in 10 or 50 years. As technology changes, it wont be so drastic as to leave as in the cold, so to speak. So long as we keep up with it, then we will be fine.