Creeva’s World 2.0

One thing I’ve been work­ing on for awhile is and Inter­net Deadman’s Switch.  With all of my cross­post­ing and media re-usage activ­i­ties in the grand scheme this should be fairly triv­ial.   I am sure how­ever that some things will slip me up.   We’ll start in this sec­tion of iden­ti­fy­ing the goals I wish to acom­plish and work through some of the stages in part two.

What do I mean by Deadman’s Switch?

A deadman’s switch is some­thing that is trig­gered nor­mally to keep you alive.   A quick exam­ple is the pres­sure plate on a rid­ing lawn mower.   The pres­sure plate must have weight on it or the lawn more will not start and if the weight is removed the lawn mower will shut off.  So essen­tially one action cause another action to occur when cer­tain vari­ables are met.   My trig­ger would be my death.  If I didn’t ver­ify if I was alive after a cer­tain period of time to a program/website/etc.  the a seri­ous of scripts and actions would trig­ger leav­ing behind all the infor­ma­tion I wish to impart on those behind me.

Why do I want a Deadman’s Switch?

This idea started in my head about 7–8 years.   There used to be a web­site that had you check in once a month and if you didn’t log in it will send off emails to the ones you care about (or the ones you don’t).   This gives you the final word and allows you to send of those things that might be impor­tant.   I can leave my wife infor­ma­tion about all my accounts and pass­word, any rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion that she may need and won’t be able to gather up, part­ing words to friends and fam­i­lies.   I would also thanks to my cur­rent setup be able to post to all my social net­works and make an announce­ment of my death.   This I find intrigu­ing and I’ll at least go through all the steps of imple­ment­ing this (whether I actu­ally use it and main­tain it will remain to be seen).

What would I send?

I’ve bro­ken down what I would want to send into four sections:

• My wife — I can deliver my final mes­sage, copies of impor­tant doc­u­ments, access to all of my accounts and any other rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion she needs
• My fam­ily — I would send each fam­ily mem­ber a per­sonal mes­sage from the beyond — I also would send them a fol­low up to do with my wife in case some­thing hap­pened to her at the same time, that way there would still be some­one i could trust that would have access to the infor­ma­tion they may need to clean up my estate.
• Friends — I would send each of my “high level” friends an indi­vid­ual mes­sage — if some­how my whole fam­ily is taken out in one full attack — I don’t think I’m pass­ing any of my per­sonal infor­ma­tion off to them.
• Pub­lic Inter­net at Large — this is bro­ken into a few more sec­tions, but essen­tially I’ll be leav­ing a video, audio post­ings, sta­tus updates to my social net­works (“I’m dead thanks for all the fish”)), and a few final blog postings.

The trick to all of this is of course is reliant on a few things.   The first and fore­most being that I can send email after I’m dead.   It also can not be reliant on my home PC (if a house­fire hits or a tor­nado takes me out I don’t want my home to be the weak­est link).   Finally what­ever script I use must be able to pull from an FTP site (for the audio and video).    Once those can be accom­p­ished I’m fairly sure I can get every­thing else done.

When would I send it?

This is the other conun­drum isn’t it?  How do you net tell every­one you have passed on while you are still alive (that could be embar­rass­ing).    You need to pick a time period that seems suit­able to you (every 12 hours is not suit­able).  I’m think­ing either every two weeks or every month I would have to login and ver­ify that yes I am still alive and kick­ing.  The only prob­lem this would really cause is if I’m kid­napped or held hostage.   The chances of those being so min­i­mal that it is unlikely so I won’t really take those into account.   So to be safe I’ll set it for some­where between 14 and 31 days.

Another thing I would like to do is con­fig­ure it to be stag­gered.  That way I’ll be able to send a mes­sage to my wife warn­ing her about the upcom­ing announce­ment of what is going to occur before it actu­ally does.  Then to fam­ily, then to friends, and finally to the Inter­net as a whole.   This would keep it from being one big whirl­wind hit­ting every­one at once like a ton of bricks.   I don’t want some­one com­pletely freaked out when they see a new youtube movie of my me uploaded.    So a stag­gered release would be the best sce­nario (if it’s possible).

How am I going to do this?

You’ll just have to wait for part 2.