[Air-l] World of Warcraft 'funeral' virtual wills

[GTa3411203 at aol.com]

>Something that I have not seen that much discussion of in respect of  
>current virtual world technology is what one does with the avatar of  
>someone that has died and in what way the person might live on  
>virtually. We had a brief discssion on this topic on TerraNova  
>earlier this year: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/07/ 
>after_me_after_.html.

Interesting issue and something that has crossed the mind with regard to 
having virtual identities that span the globe in various forms. In organizational 
settings, dead leaders are memorialized by adorning hallway and office walls 
with their paintings or photographs. Talk of doing the same for the avatars of 
the deceased? I keep a record of all online identities (i.e. email, 
listservers, groups, etc.) so that a loved one or friend can notify the administrators 
to bring closure to this part of life. It would be interesting to do a study to 
determine how many other people have establised what might be considered as a 
virtual will. How about those of you reading this posting? Do you have a 
virtual will?

-- Gail

-------------------------
Gail Taylor, M.Ed.
Human Resource Education Ph.D. student
Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant
University of IL Urbana-Champaign