What happens to our websites when we die?

I was reading my favorite webcomic, the Irregular Webcomic when the question of what happens to our websites when we die crossed my mind. I remember that a while back, just after the 911 attacks, Yahoo was in a spot for refusing to release the email passwords of the victims to the family members.

So what happens to our websites when we die? Weblogs are an emerging phenomenon, and most owners of weblogs are under the age of 40. (This is an assumption from personal experience, and the experiences of others. In no way has this claim been statistically verified.) As such, I believe there has not been many cases of people with weblogs, or other such personal websites dying. What would happen should one of us die? Would the weblog be left in neglect and eventually deleted from the system?

Weblogs are such wealthy banks of personal history. They should not be left to dust when the mortal body of it's owner crumbles. Each and every weblog tells a story. For sure, not every one might be interesting or particularly important, but they are a snapshot of humanity in the early 21st century. Imagine just how much more we would know about the 19th century if we had surviving diarys from peasants, factory workers, craftsmen, merchants and aristocrats. We would be able to see 19th century life from all the different points of view. Weblogs are an evolution of the way our racial memories are stored. Now, more than ever, historians in the future will have a clearer picture of how life was in our time.

I think that when we die, provided we leave instructions on how to access our weblogs, we will live on vividly in our loved ones' memories. Weblogs will be virtual shrines where people can visit to relive those good times that we had spent together while we were still on this earth.

In that sense, everyone with access to a computer can leave his mark on history. Every man woman or child, regardless or race or creed, as long as they have access to a computer, they will leave their names in history. They might not be very famous, but they'll still play a part, just like the small parts that they played in life.

Maybe someday in the future, some historian will look through this weblog, find this article and say that Vic was a person with foresight. Here's to you, future historian. Here's a voice from 2005 saying, cheers to you, and whichever time you may be from.