Following up on my blog article on Life after Death in December last year, there is a report in CNN on the provision of life after death service on the Internet. If you are interested, please read this report on Digital Afterlife.
There are now providers of immortal life which is considered to be a booming business in the near future. The most prominent ones are Legacy Locker and Entrustet. These online services offer to handle people's digital assets when they die. The purpose is to bequeath the owners' e-mail accounts, social network identities, blogs, and other websites when they are no longer alive, thus preserving one's life forever on the Internet.
There are cases where post-death legal battles broke out over access to online material left behind by a person when they died. The service could help plan ahead and maintain such materials according to pre-arranged instructions. An online post-death plan could mean things like valuable web addresses, treasured photos and even access to online bank accounts may not be lost for good. Thus a person could live his previous life virtually forever.
These companies have an unofficial motto: "Everybody uses the Internet and everybody dies." This reflects the enormous market for the service because everyone wishes to live forever.
Since the inception last April, one company has signed up with 3,000 users. All of them are still alive. The company expects that the business will explode into a boom when the present Internet generation gets a bit older. People will eventually realize that the main activities they do all day online are actually real digital assets. Once they make the mental leap, actions will be taken to protect and preserve such assets. The notion that the digital life of themselves living on forever is an undeniable incentive.
This is an interesting Internet service. I think I am a potential customer of this service.
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