I brief through Linkedin, and find a contact that is deceased.

I read the profile, and there is nothing there to suggest he is no longer with us. Obviously, even if a wife, parent or child would want to let his digital identities go to rest, they probably don’t have the credentials to actually make it happen.

It often feels like the Internet has been around always, but it’s actually so little time, altogether. While communities are completely focused on finding new members, no one seems to worry about cleaning up in the other end.

In thirty, fourty years, the Internet will hence be full of profiles whose owners fertilize the daffodils, as Robin Williams called it.

Then what?

Will there be a ”Please report to us if you find a dead man’s profile”?

Will there be false reporting? People getting even with their ex by claiming he is dead?

Will there be special sites for the deceased? With profile collections in memoriam?

I don’t know. But it seams social sites – blogs, Facebook, what not – will reach a point where they will need to deal with this, or their sites will be but graveyards – statements from those who once were, pointing to those that still live, telling us… them to carpe diem.

”Look what great grandma said in 2010!”

Hm.

I must somehow give my creds to my kids.

I don’t think I want my digital me to haunt the living.