What other people might want or need

From a conversation at The Berkman Center.
Erhardt: Resolving what we want versus what other people want after we die.

Sarah: Example of a German author who wanted the details of his suicide published in his blog. Newspapers then published the details, even though in some places you are not supposed to publish details because of immitation concerns. Can you have a will that challenges the norm or gentleman's agreement among journalists? His will, but was it okay for everyone else?

Becca: Obligation of the thing that gives us closure. Differences of people's needs and how they want to interact with the spotify playlist for example.

Separation of physical things and digital things. Flea markets - 'adopt an ancestor' pile of pictures. Obligation of people to handle and pass on as heirlooms?

Ellery: Useful to talk about family and intimate relationships, versus people who are public figures, people that publish things that is of value to the public.

Beatrice: Who care about the materials? So many people writing blogs. How do we decide that it is important? Publishing question about the importance of these things.

Becca: What are the costs to doing things for the people who have different concerns?

Erhardt: What if we reach a point that we can't keep paying out for storage for all our digital assets? What if the internet becomes like Detroit and it's storing all these defunct assets from all these dead people?

SJ: Historical archives problems about what's valuable and what's worth keeping.

Kate: Differences among family members about what they want. Told us what they wanted, who was going to be the executor in the family. What other people want: clarity about who is making the decision. Who is responisble is clear.

Erhardt: We don't know what the memento is going to be for others. Anticipating what is going to be meaningful is difficult.

People want different things from you. Your things mean different things to others (public vs non public figures)

Design ideas:
A system that publishes the possessions of the person and brokers agreement among friends about who would receive which of the person's possessions

Take a photo and move on, to satisfy the nostalgia preference. Could we 3D scan things?

Could we create a DKP system-- maybe your family and friends accumulate DKP over the course of your time together across a life, and then you use those DKP to bid on a person's things when they pass away

Relevant Writeups
Ethics of Patient Privacy