Willow Brugh explains why we need to plan our online afterlife now, including, perhaps, donating our bodies to open-source science
What got you thinking about our digital legacy after we die?
Some of my friends, and friends of friends, dying in quick succession. That already sucks, but then you also have to deal with their online artefacts and the invasion of their privacy to get into their computer to retrieve their memories or make sure the things they're working on get published. I thought about how to digitally deal with my own death and how to ease that transition for the people I care about.
What are the necessary considerations?
To balance your own desires with the wishes of those you care about and with the wider society. And where do the wishes of those you care about matter more – the stories they don't want told, for example.
What steps can people take?
Consider what you want your trusted people to have access to, such as your passwords and materials, and how they will gain access – a cloud-based password vault, for example. And you need a mechanism that notifies them – something like an email triggered by a dead man's switch that automatically kicks in when you die because you're not there to cancel it. Then you do an online "death drill". It's a terrible name, but a great way to make sure that what you've put in place works.
What do you mean by a death drill?
It's a chance to test the infrastructure you've created. Will your mailing list deploy correctly? Can the recipients access your password vault? You troubleshoot with friends, with their clear understanding that these drills will happen.
You're also exploring the way in which people can donate their bodies to science. Why?
I wondered how it would look to apply an open-source framework to human anatomy and bodies in general. The idea is that the people who sign up for open-source donation will have something interesting about their physiology, and that the data generated from their bodies will be freely available. The question is how to make the donation robust, so it won't be a hassle for family and friends.
Why would open-source donation be useful?
More eyes on any challenge leads to more options for overcoming that challenge. A great example is 18-year-old Jack Andraka, who designed a test for pancreatic cancer after turning to Wikipedia, Google and free online journals. When advances are made in back rooms, only those who can afford access gain benefits, and that's bullshit.
How can people donate their bodies this way?
One scenario is where someone donates their tissue samples to a family member, who then donates those tissues to an open-science repository. Piecemeal but easier. The other main one is to work with a scientific institutional review board in combination with a research hospital, to try to do something with whole bodies. This is the one that we still need to work out.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Death in the digital age".
Read more: "Forever online: Your digital legacy"
Profile
Willow Brugh is a research affiliate at MIT's Center for Civic Media and the community leadership strategist at Aspiration in San Francisco, a firm that provides technological tools and training for social justice non-profit organisations
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