As Facebook knows, a digital world raises new problems. To be sure, Facebook made a mistake not considering enough the mortality of those who would use their product. But to be fair, when have inventors or designers ever had to before? Think of other classic American brands—Ford or Coca-Cola, for example—whose products are not so …
Friday 5 — 07.26.2013
Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet. Facebook’s Q2 numbers are in and the company appears to have mastered mobile ads — which now make up 41% of ad revenue. Google delivered Chromecast, a device that lets you watch the web on your TV for $35, and competes with the likes of Apple …
Emerging law for data inheritance
More broadly, America’s Uniform Law Commission, a non-partisan group that creates model legislation that is then adopted unchanged by many American states, has a “Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets” committee working on amendments to existing ULC laws that would give executors many of the same powers over digital assets that they have over financial and …
Digital afterlife data policy
Beyond the variability among states and companies, it’s worth asking if access to data post-mortem should extend beyond family members and enter some kind of publicly accessible data repository, which data scientists and presumably anyone else could explore. In presenting this concept, Brubaker used the word “donate,” not unlike a person permitting organ donations after …
Digital afterlife
Who gets the photographs and the e-mail stored online, the contents of a Facebook account, or that digital sword won in an online game?…“There can be painful legal and emotional issues for relatives unless you decide how to handle your electronic possessions in your estate planning.” — Anne Eisenberg in yet another useful piece on …
Prepare for your digital afterlife
100% of the people who read this post will die. As will 100% of the people who have accounts with Google. And Google’s finally doing something about it with the launch of Inactive Account Manager, an awkwardly-named but sensible service for deciding what to do with your digital legacy. I’ve written about death in the …