When you die, what happens to your blog(s)? What happens to all that writing? Think about how things have changed… traditional “writers” have always left behind their writings. On paper, in journals/diaries, in printed books and magazines. Perhaps out in public view or perhaps in the “box up in the attic”. However they are stored, the writings survive the death of the writer and then are seen some day by family or perhaps by researchers. Indeed, historians relish finding old caches of (snail-mail) letters, diaries, unfinished books or poems. Famous (or wealthy) people have bequeathed their “papers” to a library, often at the university they attended. Families pass down the “family bible” through generations. It’s all part and parcel of how we have accounted for – and preserved – our history as a culture. Often the historians prize most the “everyday” writings… the letters… the postcards… the brief notes… as they offer a glimpse into a distant era.
Fast forward to today… while we still generate printed books by the millions and while people still do write in paper diaries/journals/etc., so much of our writing has moved online. Yet let’s think about what happens when you die:
- Sooner or later, the registration for your domain(s) will expire and people won’t be able to find your material at the regular URL.
- Likewise, sooner or later your subscription at your hosting provider expires. (whether that is a true hosting provider where you are running your own software or a hosted blogging provider like TypePad)
- Because of #2, your files are eventually purged from the hosting provider.
- Your writing disappears… except, perhaps, to maybe live on in the Way Back Machine if your site was included in one of its snapshots.
Now, #1 and #2 might be delayed a bit if you set your subscriptions/registrations to “auto-renew”. They would keep auto-renewing at least until the credit card they have listed expired. (Which, one might think, might be relatively soon if your bank cancels it.) Perhaps you could tie it to a bank account that might live longer… but the point is that sooner or later it runs out.
What about the “free” blogging sites like Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, etc? Good question. Blogs that are created there do seem to stay around for a very long time after they’ve been updated. But still, you’d have to think that after some (potentially lengthy) period of inactivity, eventually the system admins are going to archive off inactive accounts. Odds are that some historian 20 years from now won’t see your pages on LiveJournal (if, indeed, LiveJournal is even still around in its current form).
So what does happen? Do your entries… just… stop? Does someone else go in and put in a final entry? (as was done for Dave Ross in “Oh Crap. I have Cancer.“) Who has your username(s) and password(s) to be able to go and do this? Does someone else pay for your domain name? Or print it all out? Do you have instructions for someone? (Is this a new area to be added to wills?)
Or do you even care? Are your online writings not worth saving? Do you want them all to die out with you?
(I got on this train of thought because of recent conversations on FIR and in other places about “what happens to your corporate blog when you leave the company?” Should it stay up? Or should it be removed? (as email addresses would be removed for employees who left the company) It just occurred to me that the argument begged the follow-on question raised here.)
Kudos for raising this, Dan. I’ve thought of it, too.
I don’t know: maybe bloggers need to appoint a trusted person to also handle this part of our affairs as well? If said person doesn’t have access to our login information or a way to renew our domain(s), maybe he or she would be instructed to set up another blog — a tribute blog, of sorts — on our behalf and re-create at least some of the posts from our original work. Of course, that person would then carry on the responsibility of renewing the domain name on that tribute blog every year or two.
Thoughts?
This question really got me thinking, Dan. I’d like for some of my online writing to survive. I haven’t updated my list of account names / passwords in a few months. That would be important for someone trusted to have.
Another idea would be to take the best / favorite blog posts or online writings and format them into a print-on-demand book. That would leave behind some “hard copy” of your work.
Dan, I was just talking to someone about this the other day, after receving a link to the “Oh crap, I have cancer” blog. It leads me to think about two things:
1. Being sure to leave all your passwords etc. with your will.
2. The bigger question: will electronic media change the way history is recorded? Years ago, as you say in your post, people wrote things down on paper. That paper was stored and eventually archived. And historians had access to it and would use it to research people, places and events. If we begin to record information exclusively electronically, how will it be preserved?
Yes, leaving passwords/instructions with your will is no doubt part of the new era of things. But as both of you, Connie and Bryan, raise, there’s really the need for a “trusted person” to be identified. It may not be, for instance, that family members would necessarily know how to post messages to the blog(s), make updates, etc. Nor may they have any interest in figuring it out in the chaos following a death.
Donna,
Yes, I think the question has already been decided. Electronic media has already changed the way history is recorded. Just this morning I was listening to a segment on Vermont Public Radio about Margaret Fuller, Thoreau, Emerson and friends and some of the romantic liaisons that may or may not have occurred between the whole group. The researcher who was being interviewed had pulled most of the information from letters and journals from the various people.
Fifty years from now, will a researcher have similar success? On one level, it may be easier in that there may be more material available about people. Blogs, if they are still around. Email list archives – or archives of email inboxes. In fact, the researcher’s chore may be that much larger because they will have to sift through a gargantuan amount of material to separate the wheat from the chaff.
On the other hand, there may be less material as archives age and material gets consigned to the invisible but efficient bit bucket. Email inboxes may be deleted. As I noted here, blog postings may fade away. Over time a person’s trace may slowly disappear. (Or not… it may indeed live forever in caches.)
What’s interesting to consider is the potential “Loss of The Mundane”. We know a lot about the history of the USA because there were a lot of letters, journals, etc. preserved that documented the mundane details of everyday life. Not the exciting stuff, but rather the price of milk or what items someone picked up at a store on some day. The trivial stuff that is so UNimportant on a daily basis but turns out to greatly aid historians in understanding the civilization at that point in time. Today that type of info is most often captured – maybe – in personal email or blog entries in personal diary-style blogs. But would that be the type of stuff you might think to preserve? Probably not…
I guess it really does come down to two different viewpoints: 1) the view that the databases and disk caches out there will capture everything and keep it around forever; or 2) some data will live on but much of the rest of the data will fade away.
Interesting things to think about.
Someone should come up with an “in perpetuity” blog model, sort of like the pre-paid funeral. Deposit, say, $10,000 into an escrow account, and the interest will be used to keep your stuff online forever. Sort of like social media immortality – pyramids for the blogging set.
Hmmm. I think there’s a business opprtunity in there somewhere…
Dan-
Its very strange that I would find this and also find you referencing the blog you did. I just sent you some personal email on this. Dave Ross was a work colleague of mine and a dear friend that worked at Levanta when I did. It seems so strange but yet so linked in a cosmic way that I would find this after missing Dave Ross since his untimely departure. Dave and I were good friends and shared a lot of life type stuff as he went through his journey.
Thanks a lot for posting this when you did and I’m glad the comments stay open on things like this.