Death of the Avatars

Nicholson, Chris. "Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches." New York Times. 1 Nov. 2009. New York Times. 1 Nov. 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/internet/02assets.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology

This article by Chris Nicholson describes what happens to virtual assets when the owner of these assets dies. It shows examples of what happens to the assets of the avatar when the user dies. One of the examples of is of Leto Yoshiro and Enchant Jacques, who met in the virtual world Second Life. Their avatars got married and bought an island. Leto later died, and with that the island and all of their belongings were erased because of the contract he signed with the creators of Second Life. Another example is when a "Chinese teenager known as Snowly died of a stroke in late 2005 after spending three consecutive days in a game." The game was World of Warcraft, and after he died, his clan wanted to hold a memorial in his honor. During this memorial, a rival clan attacked and slaughtered the mourning game users. People were angry about this, because they compared this event to attacking mourners at a real life funeral. These examples are extreme, but all of us will experience something like this whether it be an e-mail or facebook account.

I thought this article was really interesting. I have never really thought about what would happen to my accounts after I die, and frankly, I don't really care. I mean I will be dead. I think that it is kind of pathetic that America and the world is coming to the point where virtual assets' importance is increasing to the point where they matter as much as literal assets. I guess I understand why they would be so important to people. These virtual worlds are some people's lives, as shown in the examples of the boy spending 3 days on World of Warcraft and on Second Life marriages. This world is shifting towards technology, and I think soon there will be much more debate about these "virtual wills." I think that the best solution for when some user dies is the "erasure or access--and if the choice was access, to name an executor." This executor receives the passwords for the person that has died.