Your organic body has failed, and at that moment, you officially no longer exist as a human being. Amongst whatever faith you follow, your soul may pass beyond this realm. Or if you are of atheistic bent, the energy ends and so does the life force, dissipating into the universe.
In your passing, your digital body and whatever is the energy imprint you left continue to exist. Since its property, possession of it goes to whomever you designated as the holder of your memories. For most of us, and it has happened, you will become a ghost, a corpse to be left behind. The value of all your time and energy will simply become fodder.
In 2020, Your Social media will continue, unless someone has a password to shut it off. They may be able to memorialize the pages, so you’re on there for as long as the site lasts. Every account you have will begin logging the amount of days you are absent, without much consideration. Your subscription accounts will continue to gobble up your cash in your online banking accounts until the Credit Card is expired, or you run out of cash. Then it simply shuts you off into a dormant account. Your email accounts and the potentially dozens to thousands of places you have logged into will either make you dormant, or continue, unless someone has a password or access. In essence, your data will fall into the substrata, just as dinosaurs became covered in the earth, and only their fossilized remains are there for eventually to be picked up, if your family is lucky.
What is not seen yet, will be the predatorial hackers, data lords, and corporations who will be allowed to access and utilize this decaying data, for various purposes. Easy threat of cybertomb robbing can begin with residual funds, open credit cards with value, and various forms of items of value. Then the real experts come in for vital family financial information, and things we may not yet understand. Necrohunters will come into play and find ways to crack and sniff the information needed, which allows them control of the carcass of your informational life, to gain valuable knowledge that can be used against a grandchild, great grand-child, or even longer. You remains can potentially become the cyber equivalent of a familial curse.
In the future, Necrotech will begin to kick in, according to your original commands. It begins with unlocking your vaults of information, your passwords, allowing your Presence to be gathered. Those items owned by you, by virtue of paid copies of digital songs, movies etc, can be passed onto heirs. The pages of personal communication such as Facebook etc, become memorials. Finally, every image, sound, video, text and written material you ever produced will be brought into a single space, where it can be centered and remembered. Your cybertomb where people can find what was once your life. Who will maintain this cybertomb is yet to be seen.
If you have left enough exchangeable value, including money, the cybertomb becomes the basis of an AI, composed of all the information within, allowing for access of families and friends. Possibly in the distant future, researchers and descendants yet unknown, will continue to learn who you were, through the artistic expression of a simulacrum, an AI with all your thoughts that remain behind. The Necrotech will work to keep your Presence intact.
Now, we are heading towards an event called the Singularity, the moment that technology can upload the human mind into Cyberspace. Now with digital auras and presence, we will be able to create more context and memory to build from. Once the organic passes, the mind in Cyberspace will recognize itself as you. It is then you can enter a mental afterlife, or eternity, regardless if you believe it is your soul, your mind, or just a copy. The emerging Necrotech will allow this creation,
So it comes down to who will maintain the structures, the servers and systems to store these memories, these digitized souls, living in their cybertombs and afterlives. Historically, it has been the church or religious force that maintains the commentaries, speaking as caretakers of the dead, and maintainers of family and culture. So it is likely this action of preservation will fall to the Church and Family. The Servers will be as holy artifact, living worlds of digital presence, much as modern reliquary of our ancestors and saints.
Things of value:
The value of your emails, is that it will allow the necrotechs to establish who you had connections with. The types of conversations that help give context, as a living timeline.
Owned digital files will represent in the future real value. As we move from ownership and possession to shared and streamed, those digital items we own will have increasing value. It will be like antiques and fine art. The movies, books, and music you have today are under different agreements then the same objects in the future. The bundle of intellectual property rights allowed for a single copy to belong to a individual, is allowed to be transferred to another individual. In time, these family archives of books, music, and art imagery will increase in value, as they will become part of the property one may be able to pass on.
As video games become more sophisticated, so too will the time and energy into the characters. They are representative of the individual playing, and is part of their timeline. Insights through recorded conversations and communications can provide depth. As characters individualize and improve, they become inherently more unique and interesting. Today, characters in many games are considered valueable enough that large sums of money is transferred for the right of ownership of a developed character. As time goes on, these characters will take on even more attributes and will become valued assets. In time, they can manifest into a form of army or soldiers in future digital war games. Over generations these characters, owned by you, will either will vanish along with their games, or remain in the hands of your family or friends, increasingly powerful in cyberspace. These are not to be forgotten and taken lightly in games that have already lasts a decade or more.
Recordings of all kinds are worth saving. Again it may be that they may seem mundane by the amount of recorded personal material from photos, to writings to audio to video are unique to you and thus valued by your family. Few families maintain good records and are subject to physical damage and destruction. Once a digital version is made, preservation of the image, increases dramatically. As history unfolds, these pieces of knowledge will be important to your family, friends, and future intelligences in general. It will be worth saving your life story.
Medical data of all manner is likely most significant knowledge to pass on. From life records of every disease and illness, every treatment, every test, will save the lives of those who share your genetics. Have preserved samples of your genetics will give the future descendants a record to help themselves, to watch the changes. There is a non-zero chance that they may be able to bring you back to the physical plane at some future point.
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