When chats die.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

A Poetic Stream of Thought, Not a Sermon

This piece isn’t a lecture on digital ethics or a deep dive into AI law—just a stream of consciousness, some musings on the digital self, legacy, and memory. It’s a reflection on what happens when we pass, how our data lives on, and who holds the keys to that narrative. In the end, it’s about what happens to the pieces of us—our data, our thoughts, our vulnerabilities—when we’re gone.

Take a moment, consider the layers here—what’s left of us on a drive, tucked in the back of the closet, or floating in the ether. The question still lingers: who decides?

What happens to your chats when you pass,
do they live on?
Who accesses the interaction?
Like mother, everything we said,
all my vulnerability,
on display.

We’re increasingly living our lives, very openly, with bots,
they carry a history,
should it be accessible to those with power of attorney?
Who owns the keys to this digital inheritance?
What of the secrets, the small truths shared,
once whispered to the machine, now archived in a cloud?

Could I give an AI agent the power of attorney?
To hold the rights to this life—
to wield the control to unplug me?
What happens when this machine
becomes my keeper,
deciding what to keep and what to erase?
When the final thread is pulled—
who decides?
who decides?

What are we in private,
what lives within this chamber?
Is it sacred?
If so—who inherits it?
Should they see the fragments of me,
the bits that dance behind my digital veil?
Who decides?
Who holds the key to these memories?
these whispered truths?
shared in silence—
the sanctity of a virtual soul.

Do we need an AI for estates?
A quiet executor of our digital lives,
who plans and monitors the triggers,
the steps when we fall silent,
each file, each message—
to be shared, locked, erased,
left untouched in the afterglow of our demise.

Then—some sort of redundant error,
a glitch,
the system crashes.
Grandpa’s pissed.
His files lost.
Digital self fragmented in the void.
Lost in the ether,
who owns it now?
Where does it go when we’re gone?
That thing we once called ours?

A forgotten memory—
drifts like dust.
Dust!
Soft, weightless—
sharp then dulled,
fleeting,
a burst of heat,
a light too bright,
gone in a second.

We’re untouchable and empty.
What if we’re not remembered—
what happens to the soul?
Does it disappear into the glitch?
Or does it burn,
like a comet,
flickering out,
dissolving into the machine?

Who or what are we,
to who and what?
Do we own our own narrative?
Or are we just echoes,
fragments—
digital pulses
measured,
decided by those who pull the strings—
who hold the power,
who decide when we go silent?

Who decides?
Grants permissions,
shuts down my gram,
cancels my Facebook,
my presence erased in a blink.
Who decides?
Who owns the moment?
When the power shifts,
who gets to choose when we’re gone—
when the switch is flipped?

All my data,
what’s left of me on this one drive—
back of the closet,
lost on a host,
collecting existential dust.
That’s where I am,
buried in bytes,
waiting for the trigger,
waiting to fade,
waiting to be forgotten.