It seems that immortality is now on offer, digitally. Or at least a facsimile of it, until the energy runs out and we go back to communicating via grunts and running around in fur bikinis, beating each other to death with Mastodon thigh-bones. OK, there are no Mastodons, so stabbing each other to death with cat femurs. OK, so they’re a bit brittle (or so I’m told, ahem) – in that case, being particularly snitty with each other with whatever comes to hand.

Having said this, living in London, such antics are basically your average day out in the local shopping centre. But I digress.

Whatever your youthful indiscretions may be (or middle-aged malpractices), they are now preserved post-mortem via whichever digital channel with which you’ve willingly shared all that stuff you wouldn’t want to tell your mum.

An excellent ‘In Focus’ article appeared in Monday’s Metro (for non-Londoners, this is basically a free newspaper in which advertising is deftly wrapped in a few articles like fish and chips – a kind of printed Mogadon for commuters so we don’t start repeatedly head-butting the windows in desperation).

Journalist Ross McGuinness (@McGuinnessRoss) revealed that there is now a move towards enshrining access to one’s post-mortem online identity via a will, and services such as Cirrus Legacy are appearing to specifically deal with this issue.

According to the article, one in ten people have already protected their internet passwords in their will (not sure what sample was taken). Perhaps the most surprising statistic being that 80% of Britons own digital assets, worth in total an estimated £2.3 billion (and in my day you could go to the cinema, have a pint of mild, buy a kebab, some Space Dust and get a taxi home with that kind of money). Collective assets like that are worth protecting (how long before they find a way to tax it?).

Andy Warhol (look mum, no hyperlink) predicted that we would all have 15 minutes of fame, but he did not foresee the coming of the internet – which may make many of us infamous for much longer. For some, the idea of being preserved in digital amber will be a disturbing thought; others will see it as Headstone 2.0

Soon, we may have to begin to demand a more robust solution from the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn et al., or consider whom we will trust to be the executor or protector of our posthumous reputation – after all, will your profile eventually become the property of the State, having died technologically intestate? Far-fetched? Not for those of us who joined the public-facing internet at the station and have watched the paradigms shift faster than Lady Gaga’s costume changes.

In any case, it’s perhaps best not to rely on either approach, but rather think more about our personal, digital footprints – after all, never mind our Mastodon, we’re still finding those of the dinosaurs. What are you leaving behind?

Ian Allison

NB Do not mistake Mogadon for Mastodon. One is a powerful sedative, the other is much harder to swallow, unless taken in powdered form.