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The internet’s initial conception was, in an abbreviated sense, a fear-response to nuclear attack. It was to solve the problem of communicating with the president because all existing avenues for doing so were fragile and centralized. Source
As far as the United States military is concerned, I believe this mission could be marked Successful.
We, however, are somewhat stuck navigating the online world as consumers. Whether we realize it or not, this means putting a phenomenal amount of faith in the corporations that manage our personal data. I’ve touched on the imperfections of the platforms- the deep frustration and pain that can come from being so close yet so far from a truly empathetic digital space. While the internet was conceived to be decentralized and durable, how it has changed and how the public use it feels more fragile than ever.
As of now there are a plethora of ways to share your active life with your people, but few ways to control or even advocate for what happens to that presence when you go- or what happens to the collective data when the site you put your faith in goes.
Following are excerpts from a story that does not directly involve death, but illustrates the precarious situation we find ourselves in succinctly.
Regarding Picturelife- a photo management app that went under and promptly lost 220 million user photos.
ALEX: So I Iooked into it and the company had been bought by this guy named Jonathan Benassaya. And about a year after he bought the company, it started failing, and he had to lay off all of his employees, and because he had no money he had to downsize really, really quick. And due to a series of sort of questionable decisions and some bad luck, he screwed up the database of pictures he had and then suddenly no one who used Picturelife could access any of their pictures.
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PJ: So the plan he had, which is that he and he alone was going to rescue everything, turned out to not be true.ALEX: Yes. So I talked to Jonathan and he told me that what actually happened is that another photo hosting company, this company called SmugMug, swooped in and saved all of Picturelife’s photos. Basically, they’ve made them all available on their platform, former Picturelife users can sign up for a free SmugMug trial, and once they sign up they get 60 days to download their photos or become a SmugMug member.
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RACHEL: You pay for a thing because you trust that the thing is the thing that you’re paying for. That actually just … taxes my sense of the world in a way that’s not--I don’t want to live th-(laughs). Like, I’d rather, like, go to the drug store and print them all out, I guess. You know what I mean? Like, c’mon with this three backups. That’s so stupid.PJ: It’s like all good advice. It’s like, “Yes. You should use the cloud and also have a redundant backup on an external hard drive. And then, you should take that external hard drive and put it in a safe deposit box and put that safe deposit box in the care of a private army.” Like--I’m gonna save stuff on my desktop and when it goes away I’m gonna be angry and sad.
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RACHEL: It’s so great. Like, see, there’s — oh my gosh, look at my mom. My mom’s had ovarian cancer for five years. She has gone through periods of feeling really good and then periods of feeling really terrible. And she started wearing this long blonde wig — it looks so, so silly. Like, that’s not a picture I knew existed. That’s, like, my mom wearing long, fake blonde hair and holding like a brand, brand brand, new baby. I’m just really glad — I’m so happy. It’s a miracle.
Source
This kind of data has become deeply important sentimentally to the living and bereaved alike- and a situation like this happening in the midst of a loss could act as a second kind of death- a catalyst for additional trauma. How we approach the long term storage and management- and more importantly how we impart its importance to our friends and family, (likely we don’t,) is a cultural mindset facilitated by technological and corporate shortcomings.