The Internet is a unique form of communication because it allows us to become penpals with virtually anyone in the world.  However, due to its disjointed nature, the passing of someone can be just as painful as your close family, but the ability for closure is sometimes denied to us.  Since a person can develop relationships online that, in many cases, are unknown to their own family, the family is then unaware of how close online bonds are and how those bonds are severed completely, often without any further word of what has happened to their online friend.

If anything, read this story and understand just how important it is to be ready before you are gone.

Several bloggers just posted a few days ago contemplating what would happen to their blog/site if they should pass away.  Many had the idea that there should be a way of archiving information for the future.  As pointed out in one post, what format would best serve to carry on into the future?  We don’t know what may happen with Internet 2.0 (not Web 2.0, but the next version/replacement of the Internet) and whether or not our material will carry over.

If any of you saw Johnny Mnemonic, you saw a potential future of the Internet that was really cool, but have you ever thought that maybe files/sites as we know them today will no longer exist in their current format? Imagine being a digital archaeologist in the future trying to extract data from a PDF when the format has been dead for several decades.  Imagine right now trying to get some data off an old 8″ floppy disk and you’ll have a pretty good idea of just how difficult it might be.

Thus, the question is, just how much of what you maintain as digital work should be extracted into other forms of media?  Do you have a huge photo library on Picasa or Flickr?  Maybe you need to print some photo albums just in case (and these sites have been known to lose/delete files on occasion).  Do you have a large journal or blog?  Maybe you need to export it to your word processor, clean it up, and print it (preferrably something other than just some paper you have lying around… like lulu.com, maybe?).

Or, better yet, let’s all keep an eye out for a trustworthy archive service that will allow you to do what you already do, but know that your data is backed up regularly in another location so that it is recoverable and preserved.  However, get ready to pay through the nose too… after all, once you are gone, who keeps up the payments for the backup?

(Here’s a thought, why not allow for those who wish the site to continue to make donations for the preservation of the site like museums do?  Hmmm.)

About five years ago, I got into the Dune series by Frank Herbert and loved them.  They were so off the wall and original and you never knew the direction that the next book would take the story.  I was really digging the books and looking online to find out when the next book would be coming out to enjoy.  That’s when I found out that Frank Herbert had already passed away and almost all of his plans for the series went with him.  Wow… I felt a little bit upset because the story was left unfinished. 

I went on to other books and finally came across another series I really got into, the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  The author had slated for 12 books in the full series and the 11^th book was published just last year.  I had mentioned to a friend of mine on Saturday that the author was so close to finishing the series.  I had hoped for a long time that the same thing would not occur as had happened with the Dune series.  I knew I was depending on this one person to be around long enough to bring closure to the series I had read over the last few years.

Alas, once again, my own hopes were derailed by life and reality.  Robert Jordan passed away yesterday.  It is hoped that he left behind enough notes (which he often recorded on a voice recorder and were dictated by assistants) that someone could step in and finish the last book.

What are you going to leave unfinished?

CNET has an article about people who have left this mortal life and took their passwords with them.  I’m sure that eventually this issue will be more common as time passes.  What are you going to do about it?

via LifeHacker.com

The following story comes to us from Ron Gines (president of Connexus, Inc., and his personal site) and was originally posted on Slashdot.org:

My mother passed away last month. She had been the family archivist for well over a decade already and had stacks of family history that had not been organized too much. To keep her “occupied” after my father’s death nearly 17 years prior, I suggested that she start putting the genealogy on a computer to help organize it.

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