iWill: Britons leaving heirs “digital inheritance”

Around 11 percent of the 2,000 British people surveyed by  the Centre for Creative & Social Technology (CAST) at the  University of London for their “Cloud Generation” report said  they had included internet passwords or plan to include them in  th
“It’s an area that will become increasingly important given,  for instance, the monetary value of music collections and  sentimental value of photograph collections – fewer people now  keep hard copies of either,” the report quoted Steven Thorpe,  partner at Gardner Thorpe Solicitors, as saying.

“Cloud Generation” co-authors Chris Brauer and Jennifer  Barth used 15 in-depth case studies and the larger poll to  investigate the implications for people whose personal and  cultural keepsakes increasingly exist only in the so-called  cloud — online services run on remote computers rather than  one’s own PC. In the course of their study, they discovered people  naturally wanted to save valuable music, photos and videos for  their own use during their lifetime, but now increasingly are  seeking to preserve those things for their heirs.

“It’s that it’s representative of your identity, of who you  are,” Brauer told Reuters on Friday.

Brauer said they discovered that “digital natives” as — he  called them — now instinctively rely on the cloud to interact,  save, store and share their personal tastes and data.