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> Imagine a ... that could comb through your digital life, archive it all No, and no thanks. Every company already does that. :) A better idea would be someth

> Imagine a ... that could comb through your digital life, archive it all No, and no thanks. Every company already does that. :) A better idea would be something like a GitHub or Dropbox option that makes your content public after your death. Unfinished projects for others to take up, ideas you never got to work on, thoughts you couldn't speak out when alive, secrets you didn't dare spill, stuff like that.

stefco_ 7y ago
I think gp's point is that nobody does this in an organized way that's not tied to a platform. When Facebook and Google eventually die, their archives will die too. You'd ideally have some format with the openness and durability of an ASCII file that could be stored in a single location and survive multiple storage medium migrations trivially; something like a photograph in a box, which anyone can interact with easily regardless of whether the camera maker is still in business. And while a GitHub or Dropbox sounds great, the issue is that most people don't have the technical ability to collate their data from all the places its stored, and their descendants also mostly won't have the ability to pore through it unless it's pithy and organized--and if that's the case, then that it just means that the deceased came up with their own ad hoc durable "life archive" data format.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Yes, it wasn't cool of me to cut them off at one sentence. Sorry. Still though, instead of having a firm scour ALL your data, including things that you may not wish for others to discover, wouldn't it be better to let you choose what you want to be released after your death? For example, besides marking select files/repositories, and setting my own criteria for releasing them (e.g. 1 year after I haven't logged on), I would have the option to notify specific individuals when my data is released, or even have it automatically posted on places like HN/Reddit/etc. Other people would then have the choice of what to do with my data. They could archive it, enshrine it, build upon it, whatever.

stefco_ 7y ago

I think gp's point is that nobody does this in an organized way that's not tied to a platform. When Facebook and Google eventually die, their archives will die too. You'd ideally have some format with the openness and durability of an ASCII file that could be stored in a single location and survive multiple storage medium migrations trivially; something like a photograph in a box, which anyone can interact with easily regardless of whether the camera maker is still in business. And while a GitHub or Dropbox sounds great, the issue is that most people don't have the technical ability to collate their data from all the places its stored, and their descendants also mostly won't have the ability to pore through it unless it's pithy and organized--and if that's the case, then that it just means that the deceased came up with their own ad hoc durable "life archive" data format.

Razengan 7y ago
Yes, it wasn't cool of me to cut them off at one sentence. Sorry. Still though, instead of having a firm scour ALL your data, including things that you may not wish for others to discover, wouldn't it be better to let you choose what you want to be released after your death? For example, besides marking select files/repositories, and setting my own criteria for releasing them (e.g. 1 year after I haven't logged on), I would have the option to notify specific individuals when my data is released, or even have it automatically posted on places like HN/Reddit/etc. Other people would then have the choice of what to do with my data. They could archive it, enshrine it, build upon it, whatever.