NYTimes on Your Google Afterlife: Who Will Say Kaddish Over Your Digital Soul?

After you die, your digital soul will live on - all the data in your Google and other accounts. That material contains personal and impersonal captures of aspects of your consciousness - what some creative social scientists might try figuratively to label as parts of your "soul".

From The New York Times BITS BLOG we learned that, "Google Introduces a Tool for Planning for Your Digital Afterlife. As Web companies and legislators grapple with who controls your digital life after you die, Google introduced a tool for designating what you want to happen to your data after you die." The tool is called the "Inactive Accounts Manager".

Google users can choose whether they want their information deleted or to name a beneficiary, as in a will. Users can have different directives for different products — deleting Gmail and Drive but sharing Picasa and YouTube content, for instance...

Google users choose whether to activate the feature after their accounts are inactive for three, six, nine or 12 months. Google will send a text message and e-mail before taking any action. The feature, called Inactive Account Manager, is accessible on the account settings page.

This subject causes us to reflect. In a truly digital mode, what do you say to a person about the loss of a loved one?

Perhaps this: "May your loved one's data live on in the cloud of eternal storage."