Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web

SxSW 2016: Everybody Dies: What Is Your Digital Legacy? Friday, March 11 @ 5pm

Everybody Dies: What Is Your Digital Legacy?
SxSW 2016 Panel with Alethea Lange, Dr. John Troyer (from Death Ref!), Megan Yip, and Vanessa Callison-Burch
Friday, March 11, 2016 @ 5pm
Austin Convention Center
Room 8ABC

Death Ref John will be at the South-by-Southwest 2016 Interactive conference on Friday, March 11 to discuss digital technology and legacy issues. He’s speaking with a really dynamic group, all of whom represent different angles on the Death and Digital Technology world:

Alethea Lange (@AletheaLange)
Policy Analyst, Center for Democracy & Technology

Megan Yip (@MeganYip)
Lawyer, Law Office of Megan Yip

Vanessa Callison-Burch (@vcb)
Product Manager for Memorialisation, Facebook

And here’s what they will all be discussing:

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Ben Franklin’s quote has survived because he was a famous man in his time. But haven’t you said some clever things in your time? Maybe even Tweeted them? Technology has democratized history–no longer are only the lives of the rich and famous carefully preserved, now most of us have exhaustive records of our lives in our emails, chats, social media posts, and digital photos. States across the country are updating their estate laws to reflect this new reality, but the right answers aren’t obvious. Should your emails be passed along? Should your online presence die with you? How do you want to be remembered?

You can send the panel questions by using this hashtag: #techlegacy

Death and the Internet. It’s kind of a big deal.

Categories
Death + Disaster Death + Technology

How to Build a Survivor Library Before the Grid Goes Down — Embalming Books Included

The Survivor Library
One the Media, WNYC Public Radio (2014 and 2015)

WNYC’s radio show On The Media is a constant source of solid information for the Death Reference Desk.

OTM has run the following story a few times and it’s worth listening to.

In a nutshell, a group of volunteers are creating something called the Survivor Library in the event a massive solar event ever takes down the electrical grid.

OTM explains:

In 1859, a solar storm threw an electromagnetic pulse at Earth so strong, it fried the telegraph system. A whole lot more is on the line now. Bob speaks with Rocky Rawlins of the Survivor Library about his preparations for getting zapped back to a time before computers and an electric grid.

In the interview, Rocky Rawlins explains that one of the industrial era technologies that the Survivor Library documents is 19th century embalming.

Death Ref can only hope that somehow everything we’ve done also contributes to the post-grid world!

Check out the library. In the dark. Alone.

Survivor Library, or…How to survive and prosper without Modern Technology