(I know I’ll make another one later, just so you know)

Long before the late 1900’s, the only people who could have lasting legacies were people who made an impact on historical significance. A legacy is something to be received from an ancestor, or a predecessor from the past. In the age of the internet, it is possible for just about anyone to leave a lasting legacy behind. That legacy can be traced through their every actions and these actions are documented for the whole internet to see. In this day and age, it is also easy to take note of this legacy once the web user has died. Since almost anyone can have a legacy, it means that almost everyone can be preserved on the internet. Furthermore, we are immortal because of what we leave behind in a digital setting. In a way, building a digital graveyard will keep mankind immortal. If you gather all the online legacies of those who are deceased, you will be able to preserve some part of a person after they are long gone. Also, the amount of legacies that can be preserved via the internet, there is a new found democracy in legacy and immortality.
Death is something that every human being worries about in various ways. Death itself is the ceasing of life, and everything tied to that life. That means no longer seeing the deceased, in real life or in the digital realm. When a person dies, their activity in the real and digital worlds stops, and someone will notice. What follows is the process of mourning the loss of the person, and taking out time to remember who they were. In the digital age, more people can pay their respects to a person, through means of digital communication, once they are gone. Dying is the last event in a person’s life, and planning for it is a part of society today. People ask themselves if they wish to be cremated or buried. Also taking care of assets once someone has passed away is an important decision to be made before one’s day of judgement. In a world where updating a Facebook page becomes crucial, it is also worth investing time planning what will happen to digital assets when a user is no longer alive.
Immortality in a digital standpoint can be traced back to traditional customs in death of a loved one, and the definition of immortality. Immortality is not being able to die or decay. This definition can be applied to something tangible, or it can be applied to things that are notmore spiritual or mythical. Mankind has always looked for a way to become immortal, to avoid death. The answer has always been in plain sight, but not in the way that is normally thought of. Humans are no longer with us once they die, but they are still here if we believe they are. The customs of how to deal with death have evolved over the years, due to the advancement of technology and advancement in human thoughts and processes. For hundred of years, burials and cremation have been a part of our society’s traditional dealings with death. With the advances in technology, some of the methods of these rituals have been changed for practically, social change, and various other reasons. Now, with the digital technology that is available to be accessed so easily, to handle the digital after the death of someone becomes just as important as handling what happens to their body and physical belongings. Now, the profiles of loved ones after they die serve as their memorial and resting place. One can visit those pages long after the person has died, and express their thoughts and feelings about them through publishing a comment on a site or social media service. Any archived material can also be a digital item that can be buried like a coffin is. If this digital information is disposed of, it becomes digital ashes. Because of how society has treated death in the past, it now inspires new rituals for death in the digital era and the digital realm.
In the Web 2.0** era, we can input and preserve almost any bit of information known to humankind. This era is marked by a rise in importance and popularity of the internet. This era also has allowed us to reach new heights in how we retrieve information, through various new innovations on the web. The main innovation from Web 2.0 was the way obtaining and contributing information People used to go to books for facts and other trivial inquiries, but now search engines can provide us with information that we need in a matter of seconds. How content gets on the internet in the first place is because the user uploads this content for the world to access. Big search engines like Google and Yahoo were born in the Web 2.0 era, and they were able to revolutionize the way that we search for information on the internet because “they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence”(Mandiberg 37). There are many search engines made by individual users and major companies that preserve information and searches. They serve as an online archives, something that can be left up for all to see for a long time. Also, archive.org does the same thing with text and visuals. If one dwells on it, they will come to see that archiving information not only immortalizes information on the web, but it also immortalizes who posted said information. A digital graveyard is what archives have become. The only difference between a digital graveyard and a real one is that we can see the remains in a digital graveyard.
Digital communication, in its simplest form, is a form of communication that will outlast non digital communication. We already see this happening around us, as digital means of communication have become preferred to the traditional methods of communication. Email now replaces mail in getting information back and forth to another person, and one can send that information to others at a rapid and efficient rate. With society’s growing demand for instantaneous communication, phones were made mobile and given digital aspects(data, internet access, applications, etc.), and are now one of the most common accessories a person can own today. These phones now have internet connection, which means there are more ways for people to communicate instantly on them. The internet itself is a means of digital communication. Email services and social networks are hosted on the internet, as well as, forums and other forms of participatory email. The internet allows us to publish and share just about anything almost instantly. That piece of them is to live on forever in the digital world.
The ability to connect and share content on the internet is a way to establish connections to others that will last forever. Participatory media allows the online users to take a direct part in how information is gathered, and how it is spread on the web with media. Participatory media comes in many forms, allowing for interaction on the internet via shared media to be diverse as the web itself. Blogs, wiki pages, mashups, various types of video projects, and social bookmarking are all considered forms of participatory media. Participatory can be a form of journalism that can be accounted for, in some cases participatory media can get the news out to someone who would have had no idea about a certain subject quicker. This is because it is driven by people who are dedicated to the media and everything that goes into it. This type of journalism can be compared to and handled in the same way as traditional journalism.
What has changed is that professionals must now share this job with amateurs. And, as a result of interactive Internet technologies, professionals will be expected to engage in dialogue with the public about the events they are covering. (MacKinnon 2)
As for participatory media that does not fit the journalist category, this form of media still helps shape how media can be presented now and in the future. Participatory media allows for different perspectives and unique web content to live on through the people behind these projects, the practices used to form these media types, and in the communities they can build. Because we are able to connect with one another so easily, it is likely that communities will form all over the place on the internet. Virtual communities can stay together just as tightly as real ones, and they are also formed based on relation to common topics, and other demographics. “Just as viral communities are understood as having attributes of “real” communities, so, “real” communities can be seen to depend on the imaginary…”(“Media and Cultural Studies KeyWorks” 543). Participatory media and the communities it can generate allow groups of people to immortalize themselves and their creations on the internet for years to come.
User generated content allows the user and creativity on the web to live on after the user has passed away. User generated content is formed when an already existing media, and using creative tools and applications, can create something entirely new with the user’s value to the work. This can be the form of altered versions of an image or several images making a new image, user edited fan videos, blogs, podcasts, forums, just to name a few. It allows a user to become a publisher by adding their own spin on something that already exists and making a whole new entity out of it. This content can be found on social networking sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube, several forums and blogs, and anywhere else that hosts creative content. This content can be looked up on a search engine, depending on how searchable it is on a search engine. It calls into question who can take ownership, since user generated content is partly formed from someone else’s work. The laws behind copyright and fair use are very complex, and user generated content is always up for debate because of copyright, the main problem being telling if users take partial ownership in the new content made from the previous content or not. User content has the potential to obtain a longer lasting legacy than the original source material, depending on the popularity of the original source material and how the user generated content is able to reach to other users on the internet. User generated content promotes creativity, but it also changes leads to a more diverse internet and it immortalizes both the source material and the newly generated work. Stephen Jamar claims that “online social networking is perhaps the most vibrant location of the creation and dissemination of information today” (Jamar 844). In this way, user generated content gives equal opportunities to achieve digital immortality to all.
In the age of the internet an identity can last forever. Once you publish something, with a user handle or with your real name, that name along with what was published stay on the internet. Andrew Stark points out in his article “Forever Or Not” that “the irony is that in order for a memorial to call up someone’s memory, a person needs to be memorable independent of the memorial” (Stark 60). For example, if there is more than one John Smith with information about him on the internet, or publishing internet content, it will all get grouped together. Even if one of those John Smiths made an online identity, will they become immortal, or will just that online identity? Almost anyone with internet access can leave some trace of their presence on the internet through various tools of communication and information sharing. People can choose to preserve the identity they This is because
while a more persuasive interest exists for both the creator and his heirs, society also retains an interest in such creations as both informative snapshots of current society for the benefit of future generations and as a means of encouraging societal creativity. (Kaller 1654)
In today’s world, assets from digital means must also be accounted for, since they prolong the life of a person in a cyber-setting. The legal system is only just starting to factor this into the process of death, thanks to the technology we have. This type of inheritance is called digital inheritance and is the process of handing over digital property to human beneficiaries once someone dies. There are a couple of types of digital property: personal, social media, financial, and business. Things categorized as personal assets include personal photos, videos, and playlists. Anything posted on social networks, which can include video and photos, is considered to be under social media assets. Financial assets on a digital scale can include banking accounts, and any other financial items that can be accessed by a computer. Lastly, finances that involve Ebay or Amazon accounts are classified as business assets. Depending with how much one uses these digital properties, they can gain some income from it—especially with financial and business assets. Protecting this type of lasting legacy is becoming a legitimate thing when it comes to the world of business and law in today’s society. There are web services like Legacy Locker, Cirrus, and E-Z Safe that let you sign up for one of their many plans that form a digital will with beneficiaries, so when a person finally ‘kicks the bucket,’ their digital property will be in safe hands. Also, popular websites and applications may have segments in their terms and service agreements that legislate what happens to a person’s belongings through that service once the user dies. Planning ahead with digital inheritance services could violate the agreements that one made by signing up with a popular website. The concept of digital inheritance is fairly new, since the evolution of computers and their uses has allowed the issue of how to handle digital property to come up. Still,
there are strong and persuasive arguments that on-line assets should be treated in the same way as brick-and-mortar assets, able to be marshaled by executors and personal representatives, these arguments are just beginning to be developed. (Cahn)
Even if this is a developing concept, digital inheritance will be important to the way people live in the future. Humankind has adapted to technology, and so, inheritance will adapt to the computer based world of today.
The news of death can be spread quicker on the internet, and because of that, more can remember the dead long after they are gone. This trend happens quite frequently in the world of celebrities. When a celebrity dies, the news of the celebrity’s passing can spread like wildfire through tweets on Twitter. It acts as a new type of obituary, where people can post about the dead immediately after their departure from our world. When a young person dies, texting and posting on social networking sites happen right away, because it is the new way to spread the news of someone’s death. Their pages will still be intact and posting on those pages will increase the popularity of that person’s death and that person’s online account. As more people talk about the death, the more this person’s memory becomes immortal on the internet. In turn, the news spreading about someone’s death is almost like a memorial service that is starting up in their honor in the cyber realm.
What also comes with the digital age is a way to reach and let the dead live on through the pages they established on the internet. A study done by A. I. Williams and M. J Merten was done to study how death would affect a youth community via digital means. In this study the conductors of the experiment focused on twenty online profiles of teens that had committed suicide and tracked the posting on their online profile’s comment or blog section for a designated amount of time. The reason for studying this was because the conductors of the experiment noticed that about 93 percent of the youth today have access to a computer and they wanted to prove that the internet could provide teens with a unique place to grieve after death. This means that there are tons of kids and teens that can reach out to one another. One of the many common findings was that no matter if kids knew the deceased personally or not, they still felt the effects of losing someone close. They also found that posting were an outlet for emotional expression, some of the most popular responses paying their respects to the deceased and asking them to watch over others from beyond the grave. They concluded that “The unlimited availability of online social networking sites and the freedom of speech provided there have created a virtual community that can assist surviving adolescents as they pick up the pieces and try to move on.”(Widstrom 84)
Experiments like this show that it is easier to connect to one another, and it is easier for the death of one person to immortalize someone in the hearts and minds of others.
Because immortality in digital form is so easy to obtain, it means that immortality has been democratized. There is a well-known concept, the Long Tail that helps explain the new found access to digital immortality and how it has become a democratized entity. It is believed that the long tail demonstrates economic growth in statistics, in the form of a “long tail”. In the business world, this happens when more of a product is bought in smaller quantities, from many sources, over time. It is also believed that the amount that the profits from the smaller quantities will add up to more than the sales of one thing that is already widely known. In the case of the internet and digital immortality, all digital accounts of individuals will make immortality common for all in the digital age. With the concept of The Long Tail, the minority is filling a niche that the majority cannot fill. Part of this is can be explained in the case of digital immortality because “steady improvements in computer software and hardware are making it possible to develop increasingly capable and steadily cheaper tools for innovation that require less and less skill and training to use.”(Von Hippel 121) Also, it allows the niche group, in this case the common internet user, to outnumber the corporations in preserving legacies online. “A long tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity”(Anderson 53).
In conclusion, the technologies and uses of the internet today provide the online user with the opportunity to live forever on the web. Through information publishing, sharing content, creating content, and simply updating social media, one can be immortal even after death. With the technology in the Web 2.0 era, leaving a legacy is now a democratic thing, and all of these lasting legacies add up and take up a considerable amount of the Internet. Immortality is on our computers and smart phones, and it was established with our first clicks on webpages. There’s a famous saying by Mark Twain that the only two things that are certain in this life are death and taxes.; however, maybe death may not be so certain anymore.