Your Digital Afterlife

We live online both in life and in death. Even after our lives come to an end, our digital footprint remains, in the form of pictures, friendships, videos, emails, tweets, and likes. While personal correspondence and cat videos make up much of our digital remains, we also have to think about confidential financial information, valuable e-book libraries, subscriptions, and files upon files of important documents in the cloud—all of which would traditionally have been passed on to surviving family members.

Now there is an emerging industry offering people the opportunity to extend their digital agency beyond biological death. Some of these services are as simple as making sure key documents and passwords are available for executors and the bereaved, while others send out posthumous messages at a time of the deceased’s choosing. 

Join Future Tense for a happy hour conversation to explore these new ways of living and dying online and to learn practical advice on how to set your own digital affairs in order. 

Registration and happy hour will begin at 6:00 pm; followed by the conversation at 6:30 pm. 

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. 

This event will be livestreamed on this page. Follow the conversation online using #DigitalAfterlife and following @FutureTenseNow. 

Speakers: 

Naomi R. Cahn, @NaomiCahn 
Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School 
Reporter, Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act 

Alexander Halavais, @halavais 
Associate Professor of Social Technologies, Arizona State University 

Adam Ostrow, @adamostrow 
Chief Digital Officer, TEGNA 

Moderator: 

Katherine Mangu-Ward, @kmanguward 
Editor in Chief, Reason 
Future Tense Fellow, New America