What are the virtual ashes of a person's digital life/ persona? What happens to your computer when you die? Who has the passwords? How is the information divided? Are there areas of your computer you would never want anyone to see? I am looking at the idea of a computer mortician which would come in after a person had died and construct a post mortem on their computer. Dividing and categorizing the information in order to pass it on to the family in a form of digital ashes, or bitdust.
In order to experiment with these ideas i have set about exposing all the information on my own computer. I have questioned what opinion people would have of me if all they had to go on was my digital self? Does the digital self lie? For example my movie collection is not a representation of me as it was taken directly from my friend Mark. Is i-tunes a better representative, well no because the majority of most people's i-tunes is an amalgamation of all their friends music.
However it is not just the information on your computer that you have to think about, it is also all the information about you online all your virual identies your Facebook, My Space and Flickr accouts, what will happen to them when you die? Would you want them to be closed immeadiatly or left open as a tribute?
This begins to question, why do we not have a section in our will that deals with our digital selves?
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