We've been setting up vacation messages on our email servers for a long time. We give some fixed message to our correspondents that we're away and will not be able to respond for a while. Sometimes we will set up some rules, for example that we will send the message only to people who are already in our address book.
This idea could be taken a lot further. I seem to spend more and more time telling people and computers my date of birth, my mother's maiden name, the name of my first pet, my first motor car and a whole raft of other personal identity, allegedly for my own security, but clearly to make it easier for others to pay out if my money is stolen. It would be fairly easy for me to build up a comprehensive (within the universe of questions asked by banks) database of answers which some automated system could reveal to those with suitable credentials.
This kind of thing could be extended further with access control lists for part of the information controlling access from others, maybe family or friends. The great thing about this is that these questions could keep being answered after my death. Perhaps the set of questions and answers could be extended to those related to my wishes for how my funeral should be arranged, who should be invited, and who should not.
It will be quite tedious to write all this information in a rigid format, but a general computer analysis of my writings and statements could be used to infer my answers to all sorts of questions, even to the extent of my voting preferences. A virtual me could be constructed that would be almost as good as the real thing, although this virtual me would not be of much practical help when it comes to DIY or giving lifts. I'm sure the system could be designed to answer questions in my distinctive, if not literary, style of English. I'm not sure how the system would cope when I've expressed diametrically-opposed views in the past. Maybe some kind of time decay could be incorporated, giving more weight to recent assertions. These are mere technical details!
Currently we try to specify rules for financial arrangements after death. We might specify some rules for the management of trusts and bequests. Writing this in paper form will give rise to lots of problems of interpretation. Some format capable of being analysed by machine, like a programming language, would surely be preferable. Perhaps computers will, at last, provide us with life after death, if only in a limited way.
