I’ve achieved immortality. I didn’t really know I ever wanted to – I guess none of us set out to achieve it. But through the wonders of the Internet and the digital lifestyle we’ve all come to know and love, we have, in various degrees, a measure of immortality.
Yes, we managed to best our ancestors on this one. Our ancestors are lucky if they have a headstone that has their birthdate and date of death. The wealthy ones may have gotten a nice carving or perhaps even a fitting line or two of a sonnet or poem.
Our generation and those who come after us get so much more, for our entire lives are being chronicled online. As long as the bill gets paid on our various blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ accounts, we will live virtually forever.
Who needs a hole in the ground where people can go to remember you? They can just read through your lifetime of posts and relive your life over and over again.
Some day down the road, you will find out I’m dead because my bank account will no longer be covering the server rental here. RobZerrvations will cease to exist. Judging by my current level of spending, it will be about five years after I bit the dust. The server account will be discontinued for lack of payment after I have been discontinued by the forces of nature.
However, I will continue to live on and on and on, on Facebook. Fortunately, I don’t have to pay a dime to have this record of my existence kept. Mark Zuckerberg is footing the bill. As long as there’s a Facebook, there will be a me. You can check in, look at my wonderful agelessness in the photos and read all about my exciting(?) life.
As you’ve noticed, I tend to post thoughtfully whenever I can. Do people really care what I had for breakfast or made for dinner? Do they care that I got wasted again last night? Do they really want to know that I enjoyed my workout in the gym?
Hell, no. As you know, I call all these postings banalities. It’s the mundanitries of life that aren’t worth the digital space they take up in the cloud.
Yes, in our digital world you really can continue to be a total “waste of space.” Not in the physical world, but in the ether world of a server, quietly clicking away in some server farm in the middle of nowhere.
That’s where you’ll be interred. Sure, they may stick your body in Forest Lawn so. But once you rot away, your existence will continue elsewhere in a server farm. No one asked you if you wanted your digital remains placed there. “The Man” decided it for you, a person like Mark Zuckerberg.
And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Do you know why? If you ever cared to read all that mumbo-jumbo, that slew of nonsense called the Terms and Conditions for a website like Facebook, you’d learn that you don’t own anything you post. The Man does.
In the case of Mark Zuckerberg and his minions, Facebook is the owner of all your posts, the copies of photos you posted, the embarrassing video you shot on your drunkest night, and the cooing photos of you and your ex, even the ones you removed long ago. They are already interred on a server somewhere, a virtual record of your life since the date you signed up for your account.
The Stassen family found this out the hard way. When their son committed suicide, they found his blog. They went to court to gain control of it. They were granted a court order, but Facebook still hasn’t given them access to the account, so the haunting chronicle of his pre-suicide life is still there for all to see.
But fear not. Capitalist America is alive and well. Some start-ups have begun to offer a digital vault where you can store all your logins and passwords. You can then designate who gets access to them when you bite the big one. Your “digital executor” will get all the information needed to take control of your online life and either ensure it continues on forever (well, until the executor dies, I guess), or be able to remove it, at least from the accessible world.
You see, nothing you ever delete is truly erased. Sure, it disappears from the page. But it has already been captured on a server, stored safely away, out of sight and out of mind, if you will.
I’m sure this bothers some people. It certainly doesn’t bother me. After all, I chronicle my aspects of my whole life here for better or worse every day. Hopefully, in the end, it will capture the essence of who I was, every word, every phrase, every thought.
It’s really something I wish my parents had, or my grandparents. I could have gotten to know them better. Even now I could roam through their posts, seeing the world through their eyes and finding a connection that may be deep and everlasting.
On second thought, knowing my family, I don’t think that could ever happen. I don’t exactly come from a line of deep thinkers. Horse thieves and rum runners on one side, and well, some kings and Holy Crusaders on the other.
Not a Plato, Nietzsche or Descartes in the bunch. I can only imagine what my grandfather’s postings would be like. Knowing what I do know about him, the would go something like this:
Ich hatte einen schlechten fall von gas letzte Nacht. Die spitzel und weiners Rose aus der vergangenen Nacht. Ich habe sogar pupsen hörte wie der Fuehrer seit ich heute morgen aufgewacht. Geez, die Frau versucht, mich zu töten.
Hey, my grandfather spoke a lot of German. What can I say? But if I were to guess, somewhere in there is a mention of farting. That seemed to have been his life’s work and one of his proudest achievements.
In the Emerald City, wondering what my final words will be (online),
– Robb