I saw a Tweet today from a law firm, quite sensibly asking people if they didn’t have a will, what did they think was going to happen to their digital legacy when they died?
I don’t have any next of kin to leave things to but it set me wondering what kind of digital legacy they really meant. I invented some software once. Well, twice, to be honest. The first one got stymied by a “Top Six” firm of accountants, whose Watford branch was absolutely no help raising VC money AT ALL, for all their ‘we can get you a million’ hot air. Much like Tony Blair, the person in charge of the project didn’t really do email. And yes, that’s exactly what they said. To both things. As someone more sensible than me pointed out, the Top Six is a very, very different thing to the Top Five.
Then a tech crash and the dawning realisation that these provincial accountants had no more real access to that kind of money than I did and relied on going round asking people if they’d like to invest in something. Which I could have done myself. The other was a bit more successful, and would be today if the company who were buying it hadn’t been bought and then bought again and re-structured and moved and all the associated disruption that goes with that. Still. Don’t look back in anger and all that. And relax.
I made a Moodle website for Chalmers University in Sweden, the first one they had. Does that count?
What?
I don’t just sit here writing this stuff, you know. Although some days it feels like that. Maybe this is the kind of digital legacy they were talking about. I hope so. Because otherwise we’re going to have to consider who I bequeath my collection of Tweets about Kate Bush and New Labour to. My Facebook posts of videos of Wendy James.
I mean, really? Surely people could go and look at You Tube themselves. If not at Wendy James. I saw her down Portobello you know. She was sitting on a wooden pallet, I was selling Georgian tea caddies…. oh, you don’t need to know the rest, do you? Really?
Digital legacy, d’you see. You lucky people.
