Death is inevitable, yet most of us are woefully unprepared. Fear and lack of time often prevent us from putting our affairs in any order, leaving our loved ones to pick up the pieces of a difficult period compounded by uncertainty. While a legal will can address the distribution of assets, it often falls short in capturing the nuanced personal wishes that truly matter.
Its short but fear not we will be back with a longer talk and much more detail at Oggcamp Manchester 2026.
Recently I was looking around at the space of digital legacy after a conversation with a friend and ahead of a presentation myself and Sam are giving at FOSdem 2026 titled Fedi legacy; next weekend in Brussels.
I was quite shocked at some of the products and services including expensive glorified spreadsheets templates (I won’t link to it).
Then I came across noni.digital and wanted to understand how it worked, as their site didn’t make it clear. So I checked out this video. Of course I was even more confused than looking through their site, so had a browse of their blog and finally found a video which made more sense.
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So they are using the letter of wishes (the additional document for a will, which you can add almost anything to) like machine readable wishes but you need to trust them with a ton of very private information. I’m sure they have the legal backing to do this…? However I had a look through their privacy policy… Then saw a number of points, which I assume are ok in the USA? They certainly not ok by me and those wanting to keep things secure and private.
Anyway, I’m not calling them out but its certainly why machine readable wishes can be run locally, on a remote machine or be run as a service by a trusted 3rd party.
Which makes me wonder, if others have seen similar or better?
Wired magazine has a good summary of the death tech or I prefer digital legacy space. I can believe the sector is worth 125,000,000,000 dollars but people are throwing money around in the wrong places I feel.
The best part of the video comes when talking about what people can actually do to take some control over their digital legacy. First step get a will, talk with your family and finally take some control of your data now.
This is why I have been working on machine readable wishes, which work alongside a will. It could be super useful to help people take control of their legacy in the future. The beauty of it is, that it is legal now (in common law countries), doesn’t require any major changes and is open source.
I have great news I will be at Republica in Berlin this year. Its such a great festival/conference and vast in size. But better still is the subjects covered.
Last year I went to 2 great sessions about death and legacy by Linn Friedrichs, and then Savena Surana and Arda Awais from Identity 2.0. Last year Linn gave this talk and the Identity 2.0 women this one.
Framework laptop and Android phone in the Vanitas style (generated)
I enjoyed both and felt like they needed to be introduced, so I connected them, along my own interests in digital legacy. Now we’re on a stage together talking digital legacy a super important subject which doesn’t get enough attention.
How do we die online? Innovation, hypes, and glitches – the shifting tech landscape chips away at the taboos surrounding death and reshapes how we address loss and legacy. Join a candid conversation about digital death care, forever-promises, AI ‘seances’ and a new dimension of digital rights.
Six feet under a data centre, not enough storage available – Not enough storage available to access memories
How do we die online?
This is a big question and raises a lot of questions and thoughts including
🌷 The role of technology in grief and mourning
🥀 The technological and cultural shifts in how we die and remember
🌹 Possible approaches to preparing our digital afterlife.
From the use of AI for digital holograms of the dead, to poor infrastructure for managing deceased accounts, this is a problem that will only grow.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Ian thinks: Although the conversation is mainly about piracy or lack of it. There is a interesting discussion about the current idea of web3 and how the protocols used in piracy are closer to decentralisation.
Ian thinks: I love the idea of chatterbox, and the values behind the project are spot on. Just perfect for a generation growing up with voice assistants and always being listened to.
Ian thinks: This very thoughtful piece from Branch is something I think about a lot. It will have you rethinking all the recent news about space, the metaverse, web3, etc in a very different light.
Ian thinks: Ethan Zuckerman joins the EFF to discuss ways forward for public and private spaces online. Lots of mentions about the importance of interoperability
Ian thinks: There is a number of view points on this news, but its worth remembering GDPR does not apply to security agencies. Meaning the news stories are not necessarily as clean cut as the headlines say.
Ian thinks: The EFF with their bigger interest in whats happening in Europe, outline what the Digital Services Act (DSA) got right and whats missing. Its a thoughtful blog from the EFF in Europe
Ian thinks: Digital legacy is a really messy area and this wired piece covers quite a bit before ending up in the world of Black Mirror. Interesting place for public services nonetheless.
Ian thinks: What a selection of resources for tech workeds who decide to speak out on issues related to public interest, like the ones you will see in the press and across this newsletter.
Took me a long time to find a good picture, and when I saw it I thought about someone doing yoga in the evening. Although it could be someone doing yoga in the early morning – dammit!
So this bugs me… and I can’t be the only one?
When ever there is advice on being healthy, there is the typical advice of going to bed early and wake up early. Indicating the only way to be healthy is to be a morning person? (if you don’t subscribe to the notion of morning larks and night owls then this might sound like bull to you from the start)
I’m not the picture of health but I think its something which needs a rethink?
It’s clear some people are morning people, some are night people. Heck some are evening & afternoon people. Equating this with health feels like lazy nonsense.
I understand in the age before electricity, indoor lighting and 24hour access to a lot of things (including gyms, travel, etc), it made sense that maybe healthy people fitted the profile of someone who went to bed during darkness and got the most sunshine during the day. However maybe things are different now? Especially now Owls can work the hours which fit their natural circadian rhythm. Surely the effect of trying to fit into a world made for Larks has a negative effect and so the amount of people who are healthy Owls will increase over future generations? Just a thought?
But I’m more thinking about the perception of larks as the image of health, pictures of people doing yoga during the sunrise, etc. My nonscientific advice follows this one, should an owl try to turn into a lark?.
Whether you’re a lark or an owl, you still likely need seven to eight hours of sleep.
• If you don’t get enough sleep, what time you go to bed or rise won’t matter-you’ll still experience the side-effects, from depression to a lack of concentration to problems with coordination.
• If you break your natural sleep cycle by forcing yourself to get up early, you’ll be tired, less attentive, and not nearly as productive throughout the day.
Something else to keep in mind: Not all “high-powered” people are early risers. Though we do hear stories about tycoons who don’t need more than four hours of sleep at night, these are the exception-not the rule.
Last year, scientists discovered that our skin cells may hold the clues to whether or not we are larks or owls. That’s right: you’re internal clock may be pre-programmed to be an early riser or late-nighter. So don’t mess with Mother Nature. Go to bed when you are tired, and get up when you are well-rested. Period.
This is consistent with everything I have read to date, also begging the question I answered at the start?
Of course I wrote this at night and published it at night.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Ian thinks: There is so much good thinking here from Nesta’s Katja Bego. This why the infrastructure is so important as a base for privacy focused better/smarter systems.
Ian thinks: This is great news and hope it spreads to other EU nations and further a field. Although it should also cover video and audio and highlight whats in the metadata too.
Ian thinks: So many of been horrified by where Youtube recommendations can lead you, and this crowdfunded campaign speaks volumes. Will Google do anything about this, its very unlikely.
Ian thinks: Elaine is right on the button, if you think the data ecosystem is bad now, what happens when most of the dead outnumber the living on social networks. Those terms and conditions need a massive reform.
Ian thinks: Although its a cameo video and its Wozniak, I do think his thoughts are genuine. Does this make much of a difference in the right to repair? Unlikely.
Ian thinks: I wonder how much of this is the drivers, public understanding of the gig economy and the investors finally wanting their return on investment?
Ian thinks: Its funny but with a deadly serious message. Its also well researched too, its good to see the data ownership/misuse is getting attention everywhere. Even the daily show.
There is a lot happening around black lives matter and sometimes its worth celebrating some of small things as we move closer to a much more antiracist stance (don’t get me wrong I know its a long long way off, but hearing some news it feels closer than ever)
Removing slave and master from openZFS, GitHub abandons ‘master’ and ‘slave’ and theres been moves to remove terms like whitelist.
I remember the first time I learned to build a PC being faced with the IDE/UDMA bus with master and slave devices. It bugged me but just lived with it. Its about time it was changed because it can easily be called something else. Its only legacy which has kept it as it is.
Finally another good friend floated this lecture series to me recently. Modernity + Coloniality A free online summer course on coloniality and decoloniality. Looks really good but I’m not so keen on the open zoom, after my experience of zoombombing.
Ok you got to have a bit of fun in the wake of something which might turn out to be an epidemic. I certainly feel Vice were thinking this as they wrote the click bait headline, Seize the Coronavirus Moment and Abolish the Handshake Forever. However I got to say there is good points about the handshake.
Life desk senior staff writer Hannah Smothers recently wrote about how groups from Silicon Valley investment firms to Canadian minor-league soccer teams were banning handshakes in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Instead of banning handshakes, everyone could simply wash their hands—something that is always a good idea, especially when we are staring down the barrel of a global epidemic.
I disagree that we should keep on shaking hands with each other, as if the very act of doing so is not totally deranged. Think about it: You walk into a party. Someone’s like “Hey, Kristy Marceline!” (Your name is Kristy Marceline.) “Come meet my friend David.” You hold out your hand. David holds out his. You clasp hands and move your claspèd doublehand up and down and up and down with a lot of force to prove to that you’re happy to see each other. You use a lot of force, but not too much force, as shaking hands with David too strongly or too weakly will make him think that you’re a terrible person, fundamentally flawed to her core.
This is ridiculous logic, and we just accept it on a daily basis without thinking twice!
Like the writer, I get the historical reason but maybe its time for something different. For example friends of mine have been doing the elbow bump, which has some strong legacy in the outbreak space.
I was thinking about something quite different… something like Kid n Play’s power dance move the kickstep. Yes I can hear you laugh but heck its one of the most dirty parts of our general body space and you are still looking each other directly in the face. Although I admit theres a lot of timing needed and maybe its best done with close friends for those mis-steps? It certainly bring something to those boring meets at least.
