5 ms·

This is really interesting. The site is very beautiful! I'm curious: let's say I'm 30 years old. How can I be sure that 'posterity.life' will be around if I liv

This is really interesting. The site is very beautiful! I'm curious: let's say I'm 30 years old. How can I be sure that 'posterity.life' will be around if I live a full and long life. A _lot_ can change in fifty years. This seems like an obvious concern and I don't see it covered in your FAQ. This is not hypothetical. There are many similar (not identical) services that are no more. See SafeBeyond for one such example. What do you say to folks who wonder about whether their lives will be longer than that of this site?

soco 4y ago
I see a market opening: a service to track and manage the afterlife of afterlife services.
- yborg 4y ago
  This. Unless you are a mayfly, you are highly likely to outlive any new business. Simpler approach is to have an executor have a way to access a password manager to be able to identify and close out online services.
- donclark 4y ago
  Seeing this makes me also think... why not offer a service that will lock down all finance, identity and other related services upon the event of a perceived attack? Sure, it would be worthless if it was too sensitive. I key feature would be that it could be unlocked in 5mins or less by an account holder.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    this would be vulnerable to DOSing. Imagine me, your competition, with a finger over a button that can make your money useless for the next five minutes.
mohamedattahri 4y ago
This is a good question. The way to think about us is more like a home insurance. When you purchase a policy, your home is covered if something happens to it for one year. When it expires, you can renew it again. If the insurance goes out of business, you can choose another carrier or find another alternative. It’s not so different with us. You purchase a subscription, and it covers you for one year if you pass away during that time, and you can renew it afterwards. The services we offer never extend more than 6 months after one’s passing, so you don’t have to really be worried about us being in business for more than 18 months after you become a user, which is really not excessive and in the ballpark of most other services you use. Edit — Typo.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  I've been thinking about this topic after I got married, and realized that I wanted to back up my wedding photos for 100+ years so my great-great-grandkids have the originals. I wonder if this is a good use of blockchain technology. The company sets things up in such a way where there are resources and mechanisms to keep things running after the company collapses. Theoretically, as long as the s3 bills are paid, things keep running - the money pool pays for that, getting annual refreshes from data owners. Then money also exists for maintenance - s3 will shut down some day, but with money in escrow, developers can create proposals for maintenance that the token owners vote on. Just a lot of hand waving away problems on my part, but I think it's an interesting question: how do people store data for 100+ years?
  - imhoguy 4y ago
    > how do people store data for 100+ years? Print it.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      On acid-free paper.
      - courgette 4y ago
        In a decent box.
        aaronbrethorst 4y ago
        With archival quality pigment inks https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how-long-will-your-photograph-last https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how-long-will-your-photog...
        vermilingua 4y ago
        Do you have any insight on whether NeverTear would be good media for long-term archival? Waterproof and damage resistant is a big plus, but I wonder if they come at the cost of pigmant durability.
sebhook 4y ago
I wonder if the whole site could be put in a trust with legal stipulations to maintain hosting funds. The trustees would be the management teams, then potentially a corporate trustee who could keep the lights on in the event of a permanent code freeze. I think partnering with a forward thinking legal firm that specializes in estate planning would be a cool avenue to explore that further.
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  or maybe structure the organization as two parts, an independent trust that acts as a custodian with set aside assets to cover the running costs over the expected lifetime of the covered population , and a technology company that builds markets and operates the service on behalf of the trust (or trusts)? kind of like how a regulated brokerage, pension fund or insurance company operates. The difficult part is credibly ensuring that the companies will follow the rules when there is no legal big stick hanging over them. Maybe you could have the company buy and issue performance bonds to the policy holders , so if the company disappears, the policy holder or their family gets a lump sum? And have the (independent) company issuing the bonds have the contractual right to display the current pricing of the performance bonds, so if the bond company starts to suspects mismanagement, the price goes up, and that has an immediate effect on the company’s standing (and is therefore likely to deter bad behavior)
  - irq-1 4y ago
    The oldest organizations are churches and universities. Seems like they should be involved managing something like this.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      Banks and trusts management firms generally have a good track record. Lately banks have been much more speculative but historically existed because they had peoples trust. Trust management firms that manage trusts have to last because it’s part of the purpose of a trust. I’d imagine a digital trust could have potential, where you add some sort of digital artifact and it’s expected to be accessible. Churches and universities are not something I would bet heavily on in the next 100 years. Some will survive, but society may not continue to favor them like we’ve seen recently. Churches surely have ahem a hand in the afterlife planning of many people, and a good track record for being their at time of death, but they’ve recently taken a massive beating in terms of attendance in much of American. Universities were pretty rare a long time ago, and society has seen lots of new ones recently. I don’t know if I’d bet that any but the biggest names (endowments) eg ivy leagues, Oxford etc. can be counted on to last another hundred+ years.
ankaAr 4y ago
They can ghost you

soco 4y ago

I see a market opening: a service to track and manage the afterlife of afterlife services.

yborg 4y ago
This. Unless you are a mayfly, you are highly likely to outlive any new business. Simpler approach is to have an executor have a way to access a password manager to be able to identify and close out online services.
donclark 4y ago
Seeing this makes me also think... why not offer a service that will lock down all finance, identity and other related services upon the event of a perceived attack? Sure, it would be worthless if it was too sensitive. I key feature would be that it could be unlocked in 5mins or less by an account holder.
- pksebben 4y ago
  this would be vulnerable to DOSing. Imagine me, your competition, with a finger over a button that can make your money useless for the next five minutes.

mohamedattahri 4y ago

This is a good question. The way to think about us is more like a home insurance. When you purchase a policy, your home is covered if something happens to it for one year. When it expires, you can renew it again. If the insurance goes out of business, you can choose another carrier or find another alternative. It’s not so different with us. You purchase a subscription, and it covers you for one year if you pass away during that time, and you can renew it afterwards. The services we offer never extend more than 6 months after one’s passing, so you don’t have to really be worried about us being in business for more than 18 months after you become a user, which is really not excessive and in the ballpark of most other services you use. Edit — Typo.

edmundsauto 4y ago
I've been thinking about this topic after I got married, and realized that I wanted to back up my wedding photos for 100+ years so my great-great-grandkids have the originals. I wonder if this is a good use of blockchain technology. The company sets things up in such a way where there are resources and mechanisms to keep things running after the company collapses. Theoretically, as long as the s3 bills are paid, things keep running - the money pool pays for that, getting annual refreshes from data owners. Then money also exists for maintenance - s3 will shut down some day, but with money in escrow, developers can create proposals for maintenance that the token owners vote on. Just a lot of hand waving away problems on my part, but I think it's an interesting question: how do people store data for 100+ years?
- imhoguy 4y ago
  > how do people store data for 100+ years? Print it.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    On acid-free paper.
    - courgette 4y ago
      In a decent box.
      - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
        With archival quality pigment inks https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how-long-will-your-photograph-last https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how-long-will-your-photog...
        vermilingua 4y ago
        Do you have any insight on whether NeverTear would be good media for long-term archival? Waterproof and damage resistant is a big plus, but I wonder if they come at the cost of pigmant durability.

sebhook 4y ago

I wonder if the whole site could be put in a trust with legal stipulations to maintain hosting funds. The trustees would be the management teams, then potentially a corporate trustee who could keep the lights on in the event of a permanent code freeze. I think partnering with a forward thinking legal firm that specializes in estate planning would be a cool avenue to explore that further.

ghufran_syed 4y ago
or maybe structure the organization as two parts, an independent trust that acts as a custodian with set aside assets to cover the running costs over the expected lifetime of the covered population , and a technology company that builds markets and operates the service on behalf of the trust (or trusts)? kind of like how a regulated brokerage, pension fund or insurance company operates. The difficult part is credibly ensuring that the companies will follow the rules when there is no legal big stick hanging over them. Maybe you could have the company buy and issue performance bonds to the policy holders , so if the company disappears, the policy holder or their family gets a lump sum? And have the (independent) company issuing the bonds have the contractual right to display the current pricing of the performance bonds, so if the bond company starts to suspects mismanagement, the price goes up, and that has an immediate effect on the company’s standing (and is therefore likely to deter bad behavior)
- irq-1 4y ago
  The oldest organizations are churches and universities. Seems like they should be involved managing something like this.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Banks and trusts management firms generally have a good track record. Lately banks have been much more speculative but historically existed because they had peoples trust. Trust management firms that manage trusts have to last because it’s part of the purpose of a trust. I’d imagine a digital trust could have potential, where you add some sort of digital artifact and it’s expected to be accessible. Churches and universities are not something I would bet heavily on in the next 100 years. Some will survive, but society may not continue to favor them like we’ve seen recently. Churches surely have ahem a hand in the afterlife planning of many people, and a good track record for being their at time of death, but they’ve recently taken a massive beating in terms of attendance in much of American. Universities were pretty rare a long time ago, and society has seen lots of new ones recently. I don’t know if I’d bet that any but the biggest names (endowments) eg ivy leagues, Oxford etc. can be counted on to last another hundred+ years.

ankaAr 4y ago

They can ghost you