Recently I had the pleasure of talking at EMF Camp about machine readable wishes. The slides are
linked here.
The proposal originally was a workshop but converted to a 20min talk in the main stage of EMF Camp at 10am.
Death is inevitable, yet our digital infrastructure remains woefully unprepared for it. While traditional “Letters of Wishes” provide a static roadmap for executors, they lack the agency to interact with our complex, data-driven lives. This workshop introduces the concept of the Machine-Readable Letter of Wishes: a framework for post-mortem autonomy. By applying a “If This, Then That” (IFTTT) logic to digital legacies, we will explore how to automate final wishes across various services, ensuring data is handled with human dignity and precision.
The main reason for the workshop proposal is to hear the views of other people, which was great because in a separate tent in the sunshine; we had a 2 hour conversation about the machine readable wishes.
