Managing Digital Legacies

Foreword

How I Came to Write This Report

Most of us live in a highly connected digital world now. Talking about how to prepare for and manage death in this world is not something people generally want to discuss, so I want to give you a bit of background on what prompted me to research and write about this topic. I do recommend that you read through this foreword section, and see how and why this topic became so important to me, and as an example of how a sudden death can affect those you care about. It’s not the happiest feel-good story of the year, so feel free to skip ahead to the practical advice portion, starting with the Introduction, if you wish.

Something that I’ve learned as I’ve gone through life is that we really have no idea how much time we have in our lives. It is far too easy to abstract the topic of death away from ourselves, to think of a sudden death as something that happens to other people but not to us. It’s human nature to deny that this could happen to us or our loved ones. Especially when we are young, we have a feeling of immortality and assume that we have an abundance of time and possibilities, stretched out before us like an empty road. But, the sad and difficult reality is that we have no idea of how much time we actually have on this mortal coil.

I want to tell you a story of this reality smacking my life around, and the life of those close to me. I want to tell you about an amazing man, taken from us far too soon in the blink of an eye. I also want ...