{"id":1024,"date":"2017-03-21T02:48:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T02:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2017-03-21T02:48:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T02:48:47","slug":"my-life-wishes-an-archive-for-the-grievers-not-the-deceased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/03\/21\/my-life-wishes-an-archive-for-the-grievers-not-the-deceased\/","title":{"rendered":"My Life & Wishes: An Archive for the Grievers, not the Deceased"},"content":{"rendered":"

While reading \u201cCyberspace While You\u2019re Dead,\u201d by Rob Walker, I was struck both by the author\u2019s commentary regarding the number of Americans that don\u2019t have a will, as well as the number that acknowledge that some sort of digital will would probably be a good idea but haven\u2019t done that either. So I decided to see what the experience would be like. After a quick Google search, I came across the site, My Life and Wishes (www.mylifeandwishes.com<\/a>), which calls itself \u201can online archive of everything you want your family to know after death.\u201d As an added bonus, there\u2019s a 30 day free trial before a subscription fee of $79 annually, so I signed up, setting the account to cancel after the free trial.<\/p>\n

The website allows you to fill in everything from financial information and healthcare information to who should get your pet and what you want to be in your eulogy. You can also set exactly who should be able to see what information. For example I set my parents able to see financial information but my siblings to be in charge of determining where my cat ends up. Additionally, the way it prompted you for answers made me include things that I can’t imagine I would have in a real will, for example, what kind of food my pet eats.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An image from the dashboard of the My Life & Wishes account. (www.mylifeandwishes.com<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In reflecting on the experience of setting the whole thing up, I had a quite similar experience to Walker when he wrote about how his wife was relatively disturbed about receiving an email detailing her role as digital executor. My parents were both confused and slightly concerned when I explained what I up to. Knowing my parents would want little to do with it, I set up my roommate as in charge of my social media accounts. I asked her what she would do with them and she said, \u201cabsolutely nothing.\u201d She also seemed slightly irritated that I was making her responsible for it, but that also could just be because I interrupted her Netflix to ask. Maybe in part because I don\u2019t have a whole lot of financial information or any dependents, I felt like the whole thing was a little unnecessary. When my roommate asked me what I would want done with my social media accounts, I came to the realization I really didn\u2019t care. I would want my friends and family to have access to whatever would help them grieve or come to terms with my death, but that\u2019s the extent of my preferences. After all, I\u2019d be dead, and whether my Facebook account remains active or not isn\u2019t going to change that, but if it helps those who mean the most to me, why not let them do what they want with it.<\/p>\n

Walker, Rob. \u201cCyberspace When You\u2019re Dead.\u201d The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Jan. 2011.\u00a0www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/09\/magazine\/09Immortality-t.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While reading \u201cCyberspace While You\u2019re Dead,\u201d by Rob Walker, I was struck both by the author\u2019s commentary regarding the number of Americans that don\u2019t have a will, as well as the number that acknowledge that some sort of digital will would probably be a good idea but haven\u2019t done that either. So I decided to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Life & Wishes: An Archive for the Grievers, not the Deceased”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[128,51,127],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b","tag-digital-will","tag-nyt","tag-rob-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}