Your Digital Afterlife

We live online both in life and in death. Even after our lives come to an end, our digital footprint remains, in the form of pictures, friendships, videos, emails, tweets, and likes. While personal correspondence and cat videos make up much of our digital remains, we also have to think about confidential financial information, valuable e-book libraries, subscriptions, and files upon files of important documents in the cloud—all of which would traditionally have been passed on to surviving family members.

Now there is an emerging industry offering people the opportunity to extend their digital agency beyond biological death. Some of these services are as simple as making sure key documents and passwords are available for executors and the bereaved, while others send out posthumous messages at a time of the deceased’s choosing. 

The event explored these new ways of living and dying online and to learn practical advice on how to set your own digital affairs in order. 

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. 

Featured speakers included Naomi R. Cahn, Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School and Reporter, Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act; Alexander Halavais, Associate Professor of Social Technologies, Arizona State University; and, Adam Ostrow, Chief Digital Officer, TEGNA. Moderated by Katherine Mangu-Ward, Editor in Chief, Reason and Future Tense Fellow, New America.