How Data Dies
What will happen to all my information when I die? As of today, I have over a TB of music, movies, files, documents, images and other stuff on disks and drives. Some of it is in my possession and some of it is on servers all over the world, just a password away. When I pass away, hopefully that won't be for several more decades, I may have thousands of terabytes.
When I pass away someone will grab one of those big drives and do what with it? Presumably it would be a family member...maybe one of the more luddite ones. They will throw it in a box or a garbage can. All of the data I have stored on servers spread across the world don't know me or have any connections to me and will have no idea.
What do they do with aging data? Does it have a life? Does privacy keep everyone from accessing it? Does your data have a will? Do you have impossible passwords that will guarantee no one will ever see it? Weird to imagine, isn't it?
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This is fascinating to think about. The same way poets and historians donate their papers to a university library, maybe people of the future will donate their old hard drives and backup DVDs. Of course who knows if they'll have "Word Perfect" or other obsolete software to even read the files, but that's a whole different conversation.
If you take the long view, you can see the possibilities for a new business - permanent data archiving and management for individuals as part of end of life funeral preparations.
Imagine, decades from now, your children are preparing for your funeral. Part of the process is to archive your entire digital life. Pack it away somewhere permanent where your descendants can access it, so they can find out what you were like, what you thought, and how you lived.
Services might fold in family tree info so generations from now people can find that data. Data management might be included to update files to newer file types. Those old Word DOCs won't be usable in 20 years unless someone knows how to open them.
Yes there are privacy issues, data ownership issues, and long term management issues. But wouldn't you feel better knowing that your loved one's digital life is safe for all time?
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