I have thought about this before, not only for myself, but for others who have already died, such as blogger Marc Orchant who died in December of 2007. Those who have died and were active online actually live on through the digital existence that they built while alive. I don't think that most people think about this, especially in America where the topic of death is just not something that is embraced. I think it's a great topic idea and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

There's a few articles over on the Capstrat Blog, where we begin to talk about some of these issues. Feel free to check them out.

blog.capstrat.com/articles/social-networking-post-mortem/

blog.capstrat.com/articles/virtual-immortality-the-digital-afterlife/

Interesting topic.. when our members die their "friends" usually insist that their profile and recipes stay up. We actually have a member who is currently facing the end and all of her friends have stressed to us that they don't want to lose her recipes. It's actually quite sweet and sad especially when they are a popular member.

Here's a quick update. There’s a new service called Dead Man’s Switch (http://www.deadmansswitch.net/) that allows you to set up e-mails to be sent after your death. We’ve contacted the creator, Stavros Korokithakis, and he is interested sitting on the panel, if it is selected.

this is an excellent and timely topic! the Open Web Foundation mailing list was just discussing it

I saw that IxDA was discussing this as well. It seems that it is prime time to talk about the digital afterlife.

http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=35136