Technology on Trial is about questioning our digital age and making sure we have all the facts in context while we do it. Death is not a cheery topic but as inevitable as… well you know the phrase, death and taxes.

This is the first visit to this trial. It is to make us think and initiate conversation. It is the fundemantals of social media. What will you leave behind? What does it mean for your business?

• We are the first people in history to create vast online records of our lives. How much of it will endure when we are gone?
   
• Future historians will want to study the birth of the web using our digital trails – but how will they make sense of it all?
   
• How can we keep digital bequests safe without poking our noses where they’re not wanted?

(Questions from Forever Online: Your digital legacy by Sumit Paul-Choudhury)

Details of our ‘local legal bod’ to be anounced next week.

January Dossier

1. Solicitors confront online estate fraud by Jonathan Rayner

The Law Gazette - 19/10/2011

Fraudsters are increasingly targeting the estates of the deceased for valuable internet-hosted assets such as online bank accounts, private client lawyers have warned…

2. Leaving a digital legacy by Gillian Tett

Financial Times - 7/10/11

Jacques Mechelany, formerly a high-flying French banker, has thought a lot about death and the human legacy. One reason is that he has travelled so manically in planes that he felt impelled to update his will regularly. But also, a few years ago he inherited some stunning photo albums. They contained photos of his ancestors dating back to 1870 – but Mechelany was frustrated by how hard it was to find any personal details about them.

3. Digital legacy: The fate of your online soul by Sumit Paul-Choudhury

New Scientist - 2/5/11

We are creating digital legacies for ourselves every day - even, increasingly, every minute. More than a quarter of a million Facebook users will die this year alone. The information about ourselves that we record online is the sum of our relationships, interests and beliefs. It’s who we are. Hans-Peter Brondmo, head of social software and services at Nokia in San Francisco, calls this collection of data our “digital soul”.

4. Facebook forever? Death and the legacy by Benjamin Cohen

Sharing our lives on social networks is now commonplace, but what happens when we are gone? Channel 4 News finds people are thinking more carefully about their digital legacy.

Channel 4 News - 16/10/11

Further Reading:

Forever Online: Your digital legacy by Sumit Paul-Choudhury

Your photos, status updates and tweets will fascinate future historians. Will these online remains last forever? In this special report, newscientist.com editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury – for whom these are not idle questions – reports on life, loss, memory and forgetting in the internet age.

New Scientist - archived special various dates