You do too. They are all around us, reminding us constantly of their life and death.

What happens to your online self when you die? “More than a year after his death, Aaron Huth continues to haunt those who knew him. His profile on the behemoth six-degrees-of-separation Web site Friendster.com still lets people know that in May of 2003 he was listening to bands like the Birthday Party and the Postal Service and reading Nietzsche. His likes and interests were frozen for posterity on May 26, 2003, the last time he logged into the site.” Read the rest of this article over at citypaper.com.

I have always been intrigued at what happens when you die. Offline, we may never know but online, your ‘life’ never ends. There is simply no way for sites like myspace or facebook to differentiate between dead users and inactive users. Your online profile will be frozen in time for as long as the internet exists and will remind everyone of what you were doing during your life. Of course people may forget you and stop visiting your profile but a la google, someone in the future may search for something and end up in your profile. How is he supposed to know you’re dead? The internet may be filling up with dead people, and we have no way of knowing whether they’re alive or dead.

“Voices. That’s what people are, in the hypertextual world. A multiplicity of disembodied voices. In that view, there is no concrete difference between the words of the living and the words of the deceased. The real lives of the speakers are only things that occur in the background of the wired world.” Read the rest from this in a very thoughtful article on this topic.

Image Courtesy of VintageRos.

TALLINN, Estonia, May 18 — This small Baltic country, one of the most wired societies in Europe, has been subject in recent weeks to massive and coordinated cyber attacks on Web sites of the government, banks, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and news organizations, according to Estonian and foreign officials here. Computer security specialists here call it an unprecedented assault on the public and private electronic infrastructure of a state. They say it is originating in Russia, which is angry over Estonia’s recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial. Russian officials deny any government involvement. This from an article on the Washington Post.

Well, well, and now we have virtual wars. But wasn’t it bound to happen? As the internet gets more and more important, we get more and more dependent on it. Naturally, that makes us vulnerable. So as governments, and countries, get more ‘wired’ they would be prudent to expect some form of cyber assault (e-aggression?) from those who do not agree with them. They should, therefore, guard against such assaults. It seems everything is going virtual, even war.

Is Russia really behind the assaults on Estonia? Even those who know just a little about how the internet operates know that it is very easy for experienced crackers to hide the origin of their attacks. Maybe Russia really is behind these attacks, or maybe someone wants to make it look like Russia is assaulting Estonia. No one should be too quick to judge. Remember how our own Standard Newspapers was owned, used, and abused?

What do you think of all this?

12 % of all websites are pornographic in nature.
25% of all search engine queries are porn related
35% of all internet downloads are porn related
The most visited porn site : AdultFriendFinder is also the 49th most visited site on the internet.
28% of internet porn ‘users’ are women!!

Techcrunch had a very interesting video on internet porn statistics. I’ll post the video here but please head over there and read the comments – very interesting stuff.

My take on the video : it is a very clever way of the woman in it to promote her adult (of course) website. Some of the figures from the statistics are rather dubious. I’d say the internet porn industry is worth much more than just $ 2.5 billion. Still, the video gives us a glimpse of just how big internet porn is.

The post over at Techcrunch had an interesting footnote: Usually the porn industry innovates first and key features make their way to more mainstream sites. But over the last couple of years, many of the new ideas around web applications, like user generated content, video sharing, etc., went mainstream first and are now hitting the porn sites.

That statement describes this video very well, the video is perhaps the first foray into viral marketing for internet porn.

I’ve written quite a bit on internet porn:
Predicting the Next billionaires – how live-streaming can get real big, real fast.
Geeks gone Wild! The story of why internet porn is so big.
Interview with Angel – an internet cam girl shares a few words.