Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What’s Your Legacy?

Chapter 7. The Opportunity of Digital Legacy

Creating and leaving behind things for future generations can be a way to preserve a person’s identity. The desire for immortality, or at least remembrance, is a persistent human trait. To see a master of immortality at work, look no further than Pharaoh Khufu or Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Over 4,500 years ago, Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Giza in order to leave behind the most spectacular tomb in history. And 2,300 years later, the first emperor of China’s Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang, took his shot at immortality when he commissioned the largest tomb ever built and a terracotta army—an array of over 8,000 unique clay soldiers and chariots that he would be able to command after his death. These were ...