Pragmatism and passing away

This post is a considerable diversion from the recent topics of discussion, and if you, fair reader, want to avoid feeling depressed, it'd probably be best to skip this one.

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day at a funeral. It was the first time I have buried a friend. That's not what this post is ultimately about, but it is what evoked these thoughts and questions.

In this modern and connected world, what happens when someone passes away? What happens to the web presence? The domains, email addresses, myspace account? What happens to one's media collection, widescreen TV, and car? What happens to the gigabytes of, umm, "fringe-interest media" that one accumulates? When I've thought about my own possible passing, near- or far-term (hoping for the latter!), it seems that Google will perpetuate this blog for an eternity, but email to my domain will collect for a year before I get cut off for non-payment, but my gmail account will likely collect email for the rest of eternity also. I find this very strange, and somewhat unsettling.

While the presence is now virtual in many senses of the word, it's also somewhat indelible. Hunting for a new place to lay a new blog, I tried all sorts of clever variations of words related to the topic and everything was taken. Sadly, none of them were actually utilized; one had a one post that's four years old, another had one post that was random typing on a keyboard ("does this work"-style), and three or four others had no posts at all (but creation dates more than a year ago). Now here we are in this new frontier, quickly staking our claims and then in many cases letting them completely rot. In some senses I'm glad I'll have at least a little more content to be my legacy, but in other senses I don't really want to consume a place that someone else might want to inhabit after I'm no longer using it. I suppose one could say that's part of the reason why I made up a word to name this thing; it's slightly less likely that someone else will choose to take it up. ...by that time, my hold on the domain through Network Solutions will likely be expired anyway.

Good times.