Should my mobile phone outlive me?

[Jon]

Is it right that my mobile phone has the capacity to outlast me? Leave both of us in the same room together for 1,000 years and see what is left.

Is this argument alone worth the moral claim to an eternal life? Or is your Samsung S9 deserved of its immortal place, despite lots of bugs and lack of updates 1,000 years later?

 

[Bee]

What if, in the intervening 1,000 years, your mobile phone becomes self-aware? Would you want it to replay your private conversations, or show your photographs in some kind of museum of memory?

 

[Jon]

I'm with the Doc now on keeping threads on topic!

 

[Bee]

It is on topic. In the intervening years, you have no idea what could happen to your phone!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Wait.... ME keep threads on topic? Damn, I thought I was the master of asides, diversions, and digressions!

My smart phone will absolutely NOT outlive me - because I don't have one. I refuse to have any device that claims to be smarter than me. OK, I'm a dinosaur. (Actually, not true. I'm a dinosaur shepherd because when I was still working, my specialty was old mainframe operating systems.)

 

[Bee]

There is something though about what should happen to our data after we die. Should it be wiped? Or are our phones the modern-day equivalent of journals or diaries?

Let's say I did something notable in life - should some future researcher be able to access my phone/data to gain an insight into how I interact, what I do with my time, who I speak to - and how? The chance to have so much insight into a person has never been greater. Could you take it a step further and instead of writing a biography for someone notable, just curate moments from their online life?

Questions, questions!

 

[Jon]

Facebook already curates photos from your timeline. Google photos curates a video collection from past years. The bigger question is are you having a life worth curating?

 

[Bee]

I am, yes.

But that's not the question I'm asking. A close friend of mine died 6 years ago. Her FB account is still live, curated by her widower. It catches me out to see posts from it from time to time. But that's my issue. Do the dead have rights over how their data is used?

 

[Jon]

I think they should have some rights. But after 100 years have passed, it gets released, rather like Area 51 like documents kept secret by a government conspiracy cover up.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

At least in the USA, the dead DO have some privacy rights as administered by the executor of their estate and the family who might or might not choose to share.

 

[Bee]

Going back to my original point, what about the privacy of all of the people I've interacted with online? So, let's say I have a text message conversation with Doc. That conversation is both mine - and his. So it appears on both our phones (I know you don't have a smartphone, Doc, it's just illustrative).

If Doc dies, 100 years after his death, his records become public (according to Jon's suggestion).
But, I might not die at the same time - let's say I live 30 years beyond Doc. The conversation belongs to us both. Yet, it could be released before 100 years have passed since my death.

That's point number 1.

Point number 2 is: should all of the people I interact with expect to retain a degree of privacy? Remember - the scenario here is that I have done something notable and my life is 'of interest' to researchers. A diary is different because it doesn't contain the transcript of a conversation, whereas a phone does.