Immortality: The internet, privacy and the after-life

I recently read an English translation (with Google translate) of an interesting article (http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/20110722_van_leven_ga_je_niet_meer_dood?sqr=van%20leven%20ga%20je%20niet%20meer%20dood&) by Erik van der Dussen. No its not because his name is Dutch and I am suspecting-despite my minimalist affection for football- the Dutch will take the Bola, but because I was researching on some ‘cloud’ issues.
The article got me thinking of how the internet has revolutionized our life, and immortalised us. This year marked the 25th anniversary of the internet and i read a couple of statements about what the next 25 years of the internet will be. “One recurring theme among the experts was the notion that the Internet may become less visible in daily life, becoming, instead, ‘like electricity’.” Another statement that i felt was profound-with only a glimpse into what google glass can tell about you for example- is that today, we have to go online to ‘get into’ the internet; in another 25 years, you will wake up and ‘be’ online… (…tadadada!…….) (http://www.voanews.com/content/experts-share-visions-for-future-web-technology/1868325.html and http://www.elon.edu/e-net/Article/89854 )
Most obviously- and i also got this from the very loosely translated version of Erik’s article- our lives today are as private as our twitter or FB or google or instagram or whatsapp activities; once you press/tap on ‘send’ or ‘post’, there goes privacy. Someone can easily profile you, get to know your likes and dislikes, your family, your name, where you live and  where and what you were up to in the last week by checking your linkedin profile (who have you been ‘linking’ with), your instagram pics, your whatsapp profile, your tweets and your FB posts. What do you think of Ellen DeGeneris World Cup tweet http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MWkqKhQWqic/U5-ARYdtx-I/AAAAAAADB3Q/lWBBPntEFKc/s1600/Screenshot_2014-06-17-00-07-32.png. Beyond the fact that when your tweets are seen a private group of people, these can be retweeted virtually to the world, for those who believe that privacy settings on FB or Twitter or Whatsapp give you the power to remain private, just try a google search “are my private twitter posts really private” for some interesting answers and views. While it is easy to shrug and ask why all this matters, the reality is that the stuff you put up on the internet cannot be erased and it will be outed one day when you are running for president or when you are famous and being held to account for the tiniest of ‘irresponsible’ acts of your youths or for something you allegedly said which was caught on camera and has been uploaded, like Paula Deen’s sponsorships and star chef career! Your children may get to read about your eight previous relationships -‘in a relationship with Mark’ “in a relationship with Steve’ ‘engaged to Jacob’- before your ‘married to Joseph’….
When you die, unfortunately or fortunately, whatever is on the internet about you doesn’t die with you. Your great grandchildren born long after your death will get to read about your posts bragging about your DUI at age 15….There are now many services available to people aimed at ‘cleaning’ or deleting information about you on the internet (http://www.netlingo.com/more/Become_Web_Dead.pdf) but if you die before engaging their services, your profile and your internet life lives on…forever… just as you left it.
I have received several requests on linkedin to link/connect with a friend who passed away a while back, and she still appears on my ‘whatsapp’ contacts with her status (when she last updated) reading “In the gym”, all of which bring mixed feelings to friends and loved ones of a deceased person.
In another 50 years, how many Twitter or FB profiles of dead people will there be? Well the ‘memorialise’ option that FB gives for profiles of dead users (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8327607.stm) probably has (should have) a way to prevent those memorialised accounts from popping up in ‘friend request’ options at least. I am not aware of other social media/networks that allow people to do this. However, assuming no one memorialises the account/profile of a friend or family, these people who have long passed on keep showing up in friend requests and keep appearing to be ‘available’ on networks.
I recently learnt that you can set your social network profile (not sure if it was yahoo or FB or google or whatever) to automatically send a ‘happy birthday’ or such message yearly on a birthday event to your friends and family. That way, you can keep getting happy birthday messages every year…forever…from your long passed loved one. How’s that for remembering a loved one?
Have you tried the ‘lookback’ video on FB (https://www.facebook.com/lookback )? Read here ( http://news.yahoo.com/video/facebook-responds-father-39-plea-175300281.html ) about a father’s plea to watch the lookback video of his son who has passed away.
As online data privacy and cybercrime issues are now being considered for specific legislation in Kenya, I wonder if it would be possible to lobby for specific requirements to require internet social networking site terms of use/internet agreements to provide for a mechanism to memorialise the profile of a person who passes away (perhaps by requiring a person at time of registration to provide email addresses of 5 close relatives or friends who are notified of this and who are authorised to request your profile to be memorialised, maybe with proof of death)?
The limits of right to privacy, also referred to by Louis Brandeis as ‘the right to be left alone’ in his 1890 article (…gasp…yes originally published in the Harvard Law Review, V. IV, No. 5, December 1890) which you can find here (http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/Brandeisprivacy.htm ) are called into question when you are dead. Should we, the living, memorialise you? Should you profile read ‘dead’? Should it be deleted? Err…
Some interesting stuff here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_the_internet )about death and the internet.
Back to my bola… Even with my stated little love for bola, ’tis the season so, I predict a final between Netherlands and Brazil. Penalty shoot out 4-3 in favour of Netherlands!