The easy way out would be to opt for the automated message , but I thought about the recipient and the message that they might someday be on the business end of : would I want it to be dry tech boilerplate , or a true message from me to them ?
COMMUNICATING ACROSS THE VOID While a final will and testament is meant to be a last word , sending messages to loved ones after the fact is also an area that ’ s being explored in both Western and Eastern cultures . In Otsuchi , a town in northeastern Japan , following the death of a cousin , 70-year old Itaru Sasaki set up a space in his backyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean that would afford him a way to cope . Consisting of an empty phone booth — complete with a phone connected to nothing — it allowed Itaru the space in which to communicate with his cousin over the waves of the wind , hence its name : Kaze no Denwa ( The Wind Phone ). After the devastation of the 2011 tsunami , others heard about his phone booth and began to make the trek to Otsuchi in order to similarly communicate with relatives that had been lost in the disaster . The Kaze no Denwa was the subject of an NHK documentary in early 2016 , the footage of which was recently featured in a full episode of This American Life .
While the Kaze no Denwa gives survivors an avenue to communicate with those that have passed , SafeBeyond is attempting to do something similar in reverse . The service allows its users to save messages and upload messages to SafeBeyond ’ s servers , which can then be sent to their loved ones in a variety of ways , whether it be during special occasions ( such as weddings ), when they are in a specific geographic location , or on predetermined dates . In addition , the service can manage a user ’ s digital estate , storing things like social media accounts , email addresses , passwords , and digital media files to be passed on after one ’ s death . WHAT SHOULD WE BE THINKING ABOUT ?
Having gone through the process of setting up Google and Facebook ’ s legacy contacts , as well as the questionnaires for Cake , Willing , and other services , I was struck by a few things : Your circle is smaller than you might think . We all likely speak and interact with our co-workers and friends on a regular basis , but when questions such as “ who will receive your property ?” or “ to whom should all of your emails and passwords be given ?” arise , you might find that the circle of people that you truly trust gets very small , very fast .
Services like online will-builders expect consumers to have an answer at the ready for a question they might never have considered . Instead of asking “ who ” when it comes to these types of questions , might it actually be more beneficial for these services to ask “ why ”?
24 | ART OF DYING