DigitalDeath

Digital Life:
Reminiscing, Remembering and Reflecting
with special thanks to Richard Banks, Microsoft Research Cambridge

Charlene Zvolanek
@char74
charlene.zvolanek@akqa.com

1

The unexamined life is not worth living.
-Socrates

This discussion is meant to foster thinking around how digital legacies
are being intertwined with physical ones, we might enable others to
extract stories from the digital riches we generate in our lifetimes.

2

people collect many things that help them
recall and tell their life stories
artifacts are comforting memory triggers and provide insight into an
individual’s life

- digital objects quickly outnumber physical ones
- physical objects hold more sentimentality
- digital objects are easier to generate (actively and passively)
- physical objects are currently easier to examine and organize (in part due
to low relative volume)

3

EMC/IDC study as of 2011 showed the world has generated

1.8 trillion gigabytes of data stored in
500 quadrillion “files”

the volume of data created is more than doubling every 2 years
source: http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-extracting-value-from-
chaos-ar.pdf
4

http://brandonremler.blogspot.com/2011/04/concert-recording-with-playbook-tablet.html

EMC/IDC study in 2011 showed:

75% of the information in the digital
universe is generated by individuals

90% of all data is unstructured
source: http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-extracting-value-from-
chaos-ar.pdf
5

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1009/the-world-of-data/ﬂat.html

we create as much information in two days
now as we did from the dawn of man
through 2003
-Google CEO, Eric Schmidt
source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data/

6

http://www.zdnet.com/photos/life-tracking-tools-for-a-better-healthier-you-fuelband-ﬁtbit-up-compared/

life-tracking devices are adding personal
biometric data
- personal informatics capabilities are being added to devices
- samsung and others are working on mood detection tech
source: http://phys.org/news/2012-04-samsung-patent-
user.html
7

business is looking at how to leverage big
data for profit and efficiency

how can we design experiences that allow
families to curate vast digital legacies that
include big and deep data?

8

https://wikispaces.psu.edu/download/attachments/55443576/dataownership.png

who owns the data and who will have
access to it are still being worked out
but imagine all your data was at your disposal and could be
bequeathed to a trusted friend or family member (maybe
through a FOI request from the NSA data center in Utah).
9

what stories will your data tell about you?
what might it look like to curate an experience?
e.g. the Rimmer Experience - Red Dwarf

can we curate the files and data-points to help people
experience the parts we want them to?

can we create experiences that encourage serendipitous
discovery over dictated paths?

how might the story creation process be made both personal
and collective?

how do we design digital systems that persist for the long term,
both physically and digitally?

10

http://www.quora.com/How-does-a-Puli-see

then there’s the stuff we don’t want
people to see
how can we build systems that assign access in smart ways?

how can we set rules about how and when our data is accessed?
11

people will mostly access and view files in
yet-to-be-created interfaces

http://marbl.library.emory.edu/ http://designreviver.com/ http://
www.meso.net

emulators can provide access (like those used by Emory Library
to display Salman Rushdie’s data from his Performa 5400).

how can we prepare our content to be viewed in an entirely
different context?

12

http://application.denofgeek.com/
images/m/button/ http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/27/1211654006265.html https://www.facebook.com/
comparison_motion_capture.jpg SteveMaddenShoes

technology will promise a richer
experience than a photo slideshow
what could 3D experiences be like when our data is used to
create a representation of us? (e.g. personal hologram)

13

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/heirlooms/ http://1000timesyes.com/

digital artifacts can have physical
manifestations
what data could be made more personal by creating physical
representations of it?

14

sentiment analysis of comments posted by location on Haight Street (upper to lower) show people were more negative in lower Haight

http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/03/can-data-tell-the-story-of-a-l.php

data sets get more interesting when you
overlay them with one another
and can provide us with pictures of what a place or person was
like at a given time

15

what data visualizations could you make
with layered data from your digital life?

16

purchases

16

purchases
financial records

16

purchases
financial records
medical health history

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather

16

purchases
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
financial records
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
financial records personal video
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
medical health history purchased/downloaded video
mood and biometrics
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
mood and biometrics audio files
geolocation/gps
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
geolocation/gps social media updates
voice call data
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
voice call data text files
sms history
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
sms history email
browsing history
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
sms history email
browsing history IM
transit activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
sms history email
browsing history IM
transit activity online account activity
weather
energy use

16

purchases photos
sms history email
browsing history IM
transit activity online account activity
weather what other data should be
energy use explored?

16

the distributed nature of data and atrophy
of service providers makes wrangling it
tough

http://nubifer.ﬁles.wordpress.com/
2011/08/open_cloud.jpg

how can we design systems that know where an individual’s
data exists and how to assign the right people access to it?

how can we design a data portability system to either collect or
point to distributed data?

17

we attach sentimentality to the devices
that contain our digital objects

http://www.cellphonebeat.com/5-outstanding-
http://mashable.com/2011/03/27/quirky-iphone-accessories/ cellphone-mods-created.html

18



does that attachment persist after we remove the digital
objects from their original containers?

18



does that attachment persist after we remove the digital
objects from their original containers?

how might we design systems that allow us to record why
certain things are sentimental to us?

what other uses could we find for that ‘emotional metadata’?
18

how do we want to be remembered?
is that how we should be remembered?

how do we know who will want to remember us?

will a blend of our online and offline personalities shock those
who only knew us in one or the other?

19

four strategies for preparing an estate in
the cloud
- back up content as it is created

- connect to disparate places where we keep things

- move our content from place to place

- create one central place where our content always lives

20

four estate in the cloud challenges.
how can we design systems...
- systems for backing up and preserving our content online that
don’t in and of themselves feel as fragile as the services in
which they persist?

- systems that help us more easily keep track of the sites we
care about and also give us some sense of what we have
invested in each?

- systems that encourage content mobility as well as make
content between services mesh comfortably?

- a set of services that draw from and write to a place online
that truly belongs to me?
21

digital death and online services
the digital beyond: a list of online services designed to help
plan for a digital death and afterlife or memorialization
http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/online-services-list/

22

thanks.

i hope you keep the conversation going.

Charlene Zvolanek
@char74
charlene.zvolanek@akqa.com

23

DigitalDeath

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (9)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (6)

Similar to DigitalDeath

Similar to DigitalDeath (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

DigitalDeath

Editor's Notes