Deathswitch

Yet another Internet company has sprung up that will help ensure that we are all staying connected, 24/7, 365, cradle to grave, and - as Buzz Lightyear used to say - "to infinity and beyond." The company's called Deathswitch - that's death-switch, not death's-witch - and what they do for you (or for the corpse and/or ashes that was the former corporeal you, or for your immortal soul) is throw a post-humous switch for you and send out e-mails to loved ones, former colleagues, business partners, enemies ("wish you were here"?). The possibilities are endless.

For the low-low price of just $20 per year, Deathswitch promises to send off whatever final messages you have tee'd up, once you're dead. Deathswitch uses (as noted on their site) include sending passwords...

The system pings subscribers every few weeks to make sure that they're current e-mail address is still active.

If a subscriber fails to respond for a predetermined period of time, Deathswitch assumes that he or she has died and begins sending out e-mail messages, which can contain documents, images and videos.

If users are going to be gone for a while (that is, a while that they can predict the length of), they can set the system to "vacation mode". One more thing to add to the pre-vacation check list: Hold the mail. Unplug the iron. Bring dog to kennel. De-activate Deathswitch.

According to the article by David Kaplan in The Houston Chronicle,

The idea for Deathswitch came from his [founder David Eagleman's] love of the Internet and "how it can extend our human experience." As society moves further into bionics, robotics and new uses for the Internet, the definition of being human is changing, Eagleman said.

Maybe I'm just prematurely lacking in posthumous imagination, but I don't see how my "sending" a queued-up e-mail message after I'm dead will exactly "extend [my] human experience." I'm guessing that, once I'm dead, I won't be seeing, hearing, or feeling a thing. Sure, it will extend the human experience of any message recipient, but in a kind of creepy way, no? And I'm glad that if and when the definition of a human being changes, my person matter - which, if I've got this right, can neither be created or destroyed - will be as one with the universe, with my sub-atomic particles now part of tulip fields, fluffy bunnies, and, say, a Nobel Prize winning novelist. (How come no one ever imagines that they'll come back as a part of a desk chair or piece of plastic crap on sale at WalMart?)

Not that I have any problem with leaving a message behind. One of these days , I'm planning on buying some nice Crane's stationery and using my fountain pen to write a few letters to be read "later." In fact, I think I'll write them after I redo my will, and after I label all the junk that came from my grandmother's house so that someone I care about will be able to figure out why I hung on to it. ("This was Nanny's cookie jar. Please do not ever, ever, ever throw it out.")

Having a letter from a dead loved one would actually be quite nice. I wish my father had written me one before he died 36 years ago. I know that I would have re-read it again and again.

But back-from-the-dead e-mails? This just sounds like one of those 'since it's possible, it could be a business' ideas that the Internet continues to spawn.

In Kaplan's article, Eagleman is quoted as saying "It would be so interesting to receive e-mail from someone who passed away."

I agree that it would be "interesting to receive e-mail" from a dead person. In fact, it would be a lot more than interesting. It would be phenomenal, heaven-and-earth shattering. It would be proof positive, a sign of something big.

Eagleman may be a brainiac, but getting an e-mail from Deathswitch is not quite the same as getting one from someone dead. It is, in fact, getting an e-mail written by someone alive and sent after their death. Not quite the same thing.

Kaplan quotes Brian Rosenthal, a friend and supporter of Eagleman (and Deathswitch subscriber) as saying that, with Deathswitch, "You can store some part of yourself that lasts beyond your life."

Well, there's nothing new about storing "some part of yourself that lasts beyond your life."

For starters, they're called children and grandchildren and sibs and nieces and nephews and cousins and friends and colleagues. They're the people who survive you (and, if all goes well, cherish your memory). But there's other stuff you leave behind, too. That story you wrote on the local Peace Corps volunteer, even though it only appeared in your high school newspaper. The painting you did of that vase of lilacs - sure, it's not all that great, but from some angles it doesn't look too bad. It's your Girl Scout badge sash. The letters your parents wrote each other during "The War." Your grandparents' ticket to Ellis Island. The Kodak pictures stored in the shoebox. The Bell and Howell "home movies" of you and your cousin running through the sprinkler. It's the video cams of baby's first Christmas and Grandma's 80th birthday.

I suppose that all kinds of online detritus will be added to the glorious mish-mash of stuff we leave behind. All well and good.

But anyone who thinks that an e-mail message is a breakthrough in terms of "some part of yourself that lasts beyond life" hasn't given all that much thought to what really happens when someone dies.

Begats:
In another one of those Internet/blog begats, my friend and Opinionated Marketer colleague, John Whiteside, blogged on this the other day after he read the Kaplan article in The Chronicle. Just wanted to make sure that John was credited with this find, even though I did not quote from his post here.