by Brooks Riley
As I hover over my life in cyberspace, I look down at the various trails emanating from me that find their way across the globe to multiple destinations, known and unknown, whether or not they were ever intended to travel that far. Interconnectivity has increased exponentially since 2009 when I bought the notebook whose recent demise forced me to confront a sea change. Up to now, I’d left a line of breadcrumbs, for Windows, for McAfee, for Google, for the NSA, for my e-mail contacts, for who knows who else. Now those breadcrumbs have become loaves and like the parable they have multiplied.
I loved my old notebook: Except for the odd update or security scan, it was just it and I, two symbiotic pals going about our business. Now I find myself constantly confronted with geek issues such as OS updates, software compatibility, multiple preference settings and cloud management. Is Microsoft my new best friend because it greets me (Hello from Seattle) and promises to guide me? Is Apple my new best friend because it promises chic design? Is Google my new best friend because it finds things, shows me where I live and offers to hardwire my nest? Is Amazon my new best friend because it delivers? None of the above. They fall into the category of useful acquaintances to whom I turn when I need them. My new best friend turns out to be my old best friend, Wikipedia, without which the world would be a poorer place for one who wants to know everything.
What does it mean to leave behind such spoors (to borrow language of the hunted), when most of the billions before us left only genetic traces in the form of offspring and descendants? An electronic version of each one of us will haunt the internet after we’re gone, as immutable and indestructible as the risus rigidus of a Guy Fawkes mask on the trash heap after the party’s over.
Facebook is beginning to deal with death, but only with issues of access, not with the fate of the pages themselves. Nearly 3 million Facebook users worldwide were predicted to die in 2012 alone, their pages achieving an immortality denied to their progenitors. Will famous last words be replaced by famous last entries? Will Stephen King write a ghoulish story about a Facebook user who updates his page from heaven? Will some start-up create a ‘dropped box’ in cyberspace for the dearly departed? And what about all those other clouds? Your stuff is safe and backed up. You are not.