I hate thinking about death. It’s a morbid topic. Scary. Depressing. But in today’s day and age where sudden death seems almost inevitable it’s becoming increasingly necessary. Which brings me to the million dollar question: are you ready to die?
I don’t mean that psychologically. I am certainly not ready and probably never will be. Rather, what I mean is…do you have your affairs in order? Have you communicated your DNR wishes? Have you created a will or communicated your wishes in some other formal way?
I haven’t because I’ve always assumed that I will have plenty of time to do those things when I get older and there’s inherently a greater sense of urgency at play. But I can’t think like that anymore. No one can. There’s too much uncertainty in the world. And between COVID-19 and Climate Change that’s not going to change anytime soon.
It’s with that in mind that I’d like to develop a new way for communicating one’s wishes and handling their affairs as they transition from this world into the next. A way that would fit in with today’s media driven mass consumption society and especially resonate with younger generations. A multi-faceted, tech-savvy way that would make the act of completing a will a social experience of sorts. Here’s what I’m imagining:
- A video recording feature that would let people record a message or series of messages to be played back either to specific individuals, groups of people, or the general public after their death.
- A journaling feature that will let people record their thoughts in a diary or leave written messages for loved ones that similar to the videos will be released after a person’s death.
- A “Shoe Box” section that would feature pictures from throughout a person’s life (culled from Facebook and Instagram and supplemented by user uploads). Ideally, there would also be a “Flipbook” feature (comprised of one picture from each year of a person’s life) that lets you see at a glance how they evolved. If older pictures aren’t available or if you wanted to project ahead you could have the option of using face swap app technology to make a person look younger or older allowing you to reminisce or wonder what if.
- An interactive Bucketlist feature that tracks a person’s progress on knocking items off their list. Items that have been crossed off will be supplemented with virtual memories of that experience (photo and video highlights, ticket stubs and receipts, imaged postcards, etc.) while items that have not yet been tackled will be infused with links and advise/instructions/coupons for completing in the future so that others can be inspired to try and follow in this person’s footsteps.
- Similar to the information found on the back of a baseball card a statistics section that would list fun facts or actual data about a person such as their skills, hobbies, athletic accomplishments, educational background, credit score and in the near future even their social credit score. You could even have Family Tree information from genealogy websites and for certain enterprising individuals who really want to get hardcore DNA based data if they’ve had their genome sequenced.
- There would also be an AI chat bot that gets created from a combination of a person’s writings, Facebook posts, message board comments, Yelp reviews, voicemails, emails, texts, etc. that perfectly captures their essence i.e. their syntax, style of talking, catchphrases that they like to use, etc. enabling people to still carry on conversations with deceases loved ones. It’ll be a futuristic equivalent of visiting someone at their grave site to talk to them, except this time you’ll be able to have a conversation with them.
- And of course a “housekeeping section” to let a user house all of their official DNR wishes, burial instructions, legal documents, and of course, their actual will. They can even link their bank accounts, set up TOD accounts, conduct estate planning, set up beneficiaries, give out power of attorney privileges, etc.
- But seeing as how this is supposed to be a social experience there would also be an unexpected feature – a not so silent auction of sorts that would let friends and family of this individual (anyone provided with a link) to peruse a list of this person’s prized possessions and sign up for them/stake their claim to them by describing what receiving that item would mean to them and why they think they would deserve it. Other people with access to this section would see these claims and could comment on them to either agree or make counter arguments potentially leading to some witty banter as two life-long friends battle it out for who gets to have their other friend’s prized baseball card collection. All in all, this information would help the individual or their estate make informed decisions when the time comes to divvy up their assets.
- Aside from just bookkeeping and methods of communication I would like for this site to go a step further and really enable people to get to know the deceased person. You see, I’m reading a biography of Thomas Edison at the moment and the biographer does a great job of really trying to understand Thomas Edison the man. His motivations for acting the way he acts. His rationales for making the decisions that he makes. Thanks to how famous he was and all of the media accounts of his interactions as well as diary and journal entries from himself or anyone who encountered him there is a lot of information for this author to work with when drawing these conclusions. But for a regular person like you or me? There’s no such authority on our lives. I would hope then that this site could change that. Really make it so that the true essence of who a person was could be captured. To achieve that I’m thinking that there would be a profile section featuring a biographical account of this person was. To make it social there would be an opportunity for this person to write an autobiography of who they were and what they hoped to accomplish and there would also be an opportunity for their friends and family to write testimonials about them as well. But beyond that there would also be Rorschach and Myers-Briggs personality test results and lists/rankings of everything they liked or didn’t like. Anything that could be used to develop a psychological profile of a person. In short, a way for people to view this person at a glance or conduct a deeper dive to understand/appreciate who this person was at a high or granular level.
In a way this site would be like a Wikipedia for people. A social, highly interactive communal experience of reporting on and understanding who a person was. Not what they broadcast to the world on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram but rather who they really are. What they are really thinking. In short it’s an Anti-Social Media experience – a way to get to know a person from the inside out. And it’s something that we should really consider doing. Before it’s too late.
Is a social website for wills the Greatest Idea Ever?
Leave a comment